Informatics and

Social Impact of IT on Society

2013

Prof. Eduard Babulak D.Sc., Ph.D.,

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

College of Information and Communication Engineering

SKKU, Suwon, Korea

Copernicus: http://my.indexcopernicus,com/babulak

E-mail: babulak@ieee.org

5/3/2015

Agenda

• Philosophy Governs Life

• General Theory of Systems

• Informatics: – Origins

– Definition

– Importance

– Research

• Future Communications Technologies

• What’s Next for the Internet & Society

• Summary & Questions

Phi Beta Kappa - philosophia biou kybernetes

Philosophy Governs Life

• Philosophy

• Mathematics

• Natural Philosophy

• Physics

• Engineering

• General Theory of Systems

• Cybernetics

• Informatics Kybernetes

Governs

Cybernetics

General Theory of Systems

Bertalanffy (Austria-Hungary), Bogdanov (Russia) - 1908

Crash of empires after the Great War

The Second World War: FLAK, Enigma

Norbert Wiener (MIT):

Cybernetics: Control and Communication in the

Animal and the Machine - 1948

Theory of Information, Finite Mathematics, Probabilities

John von Neumann (Princeton)

Alan Turing (Bletchley Park)

Claud Shannon (MIT)

Andrey Kolmogorov (Moscow State)

Origins of ‘Informatics’

• 1962 France: Phillipe Dreyfus, a French information

system/software pioneer.

• Combination of “information” and “automatic”

“tic” in Greek = “theory”

• 1962 US: Walter Bauer founded a company named

Informatics.

• Today Europe: “Informatics” = Computer Science

• Today US: widely used in application contexts:

medical informatics, chemical informatics, bioinformatics

Definition

• Informatics is the interdisciplinary study of the design, use,

applications and implications of Computer Science and

Engineering, in conjunction with the Information Systems

and Information Technology.

• Informatics bridges Information System Design in the real-

world settings.

• These investigations lead to creation of:

• new system architectures,

• new approaches to system design and development,

• new means of information system implementation

• new models of interaction between technology and

social, cultural and organizational settings.

Cybernetics

• Theory of Information Communications

Coding

Algorithms

Probabilities and Stochastic Processes

• Theory of Control Operations Research

Optimization

Management Science

• Systems Analysis

Applications

– Live, bio-systems

– Engineering, machines, robots

– Organizational systems

– Computer Science

– Systems Analysis

Decision Support, Artificial Intelligence

– Computer Science and Informatics are practically synonyms: the

difference in emphasizing the application aspect

– Informatics is frequently understood as broadly as Cybernetics

– Information Processing including Decision Making and Systems

Analysis

• Concept of Cybernetics too broad

• Word Cybernetics tarnished, devalued by Sci-

Fi and Pop culture

• Pragmatic reduction to Computer Science

in USA

• CS translated into INFORMATIQUE in France

• Backward translation of CS as INFORMATICS

expanding the scope

10

Informatics is:

• Study of the structure and behavior of natural and artificial systems that generate, process, store, and communicate information

• Study of cognitive, social, legal, and economic impact of information systems

• Research and development of technologies needed to implement artificial systems that enhance our cognitive abilities

• Development and use of advanced information systems in science, arts, humanities (bioinformatics, social informatics, digital art…)

Importance

• Every day we are touched/influenced by

informatics

– Email, Google, YouTube, Blogs, FaceBook,

Travelocity, GPS systems, iTunes, Univ. Registrar,

.........!

• data-centric world

– new data acquisition devices

– everyone is creating content

• data information knowledge

– key to advances in science, engineering, medicine, ...

• People & systems view of informatics

• Tools for

– memory,

– routine activity,

– modeling, inference, and visualization,

– decision making and problem solving

– communication, networking, and interaction

• Still a combination of how information is collected, stored, manipulated,

classified, organized, retrieved, visualized

• Data keeps coming

– data acquisition tools

– everyone publishes

• People with needs and hunger for tools

• Systems encapsulate functionality

• Result: Tools for....

Informatics!

Informatics

• Data acquisition explosion

– {Remote} sensing/scanning technologies, motes, ....

– Automated data collection

• Biology: Experiments can collect 1 Gigabyte (GB) / day (10^9 bytes)

• Astronomy: 1 Terabyte / day (10^12 bytes)

• Information

– Automated “curation” of data

– Store, organize, manipulate, retrieve

• Knowledge

– Automation of hypothesis formation & experimentation: “machine learning”

– Working on this!

• Informatics delivers this process as a system

15

Why Is Informatics Important?

• It changes our – society and economy

– research and discovery of new knowledge

– educational practice

• It enables us to – access, analyze, and visualize large amounts of

information

– collaborate with others

– create virtual worlds

Why Informatics Discipline?

• Computer Science/Engineering: – Focus on a set of core technological and theoretical concepts

• Advances of computing: – Need to solve increasing complex problems in domain outside

traditional computer science

• Computing and computational thinking: – Embedded in all aspects of science, research, industry,

government, and social introduction

• Computing Education – Need to change to respond to the new reality and future

development

– Natural evolution of computing

– Require greater understanding of the problems in other domains

• Informatics – Solving problems through the application of computing or

computation, in the context of the domain of the problem

: social, cultural, organizational, scientific settings

16

What is Informatics?

• The study of the design, application, use, and impact of

information technology

– applies information technology to real world problems

– studying cognitive, social, legal, and economic impact of

information systems

• Moving away from a focus on computers alone to a focus

on computing in context.

• Applying IT to multiple domains:

– Business, Finance, Social, Law, Humanities

– Fine Arts and Design, Media

– Pharmacology, Nursing, Medicine, Biology, Science

– Applies computer science principles to a broad range of fields

Tech Centered Informatics

Computer & Information Science

Including Web, Text, Date Mining

Human Centered Informatics

Human Computer Interaction, New Media,

Social/Organizational Informatics, Security

Domain/Context Centered Informatics

Bio-, Health-, Chemical-, Music-, etc.

Informatics, e-Science, Complex systems.

Modeling, Simulation

Technol

ogy Content

(Informati

on)

Peolpe

What is Informatics?

Computing Discipline

EE CS IS

EE CE CS SE IS IT

Pre-’90s

Post-’90s

Hardware Software Business

Hardware Software Organizational needs

EE: Electrical Engineering CE : Computer Engineering CS : Computer Science

SE : Software Engineering IT : Information Technology IS : Information Systems

Systems

Informatics

Example: What is Business Informatics?

• The bridge between technology and business practices.

• The application of computer technology to the study of the information systems of business. – Marketing

– Accounting / Finance

– Customer Relationship Management

– E-commerce & Internet Business

– Project Management

BIS Professionals must

understand the basic

business processes.

BIS Professionals must

understand how to

automate business

processes.

Senior

Capstone (10 credit hours)

Informatics

Electives (10-15 credit hours)

Informatics Core (35-40 credit hours)

General Education (40 credit hours)

Cognate (20-25 credit hours)

Curriculum Structure

Cognate(Domain):

- Business, Finance, Social, Humanities, Law, Art & Design, Game

- Biology, Health, Media,

Research in informatics

The Informatics promotes interdisciplinary research, while creating

multiple multidisciplinary collaborative research teams of scientists

working together in the areas of:

• Future Cyberspace and Cybersecurity;

• Social Informatics;

• Medical Informatics

• Digital Forensic;

• Law, Ethics and Social Impact of IT on Society;

• Ubiquitous Computing and Future e-Services:

– e-Health; e-Government; e-Learning; e-Commerce; e-Manufacturing; e-

Transport, etc.

5/3/2015

23

Mission

• Informatics Department will coordinate and

integrate informatics research and education

across campus

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Why Informatics and SKUU

• Promote multidisciplinary curriculum and collaborative interdisciplinary culture;

• Addresses broad policy issues related to informatics

• Create a pilot industrial incubators

• Promote interdisciplinary curriculum research sat SKKU;

• Promote the College & SKKU Informatics bridging all units in research, education, in conjunction with creating solutions for society in Korea dynamic growth for the betterment of all citizens.

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Contributions

1. Informatics Department will make a significant contribution to the College and the SKKU;

2. Informatics Department will have positive impact in the process of preparing the new generation of scientist and engineers at the SKKU

3. The Informatics Department will contribute to excellence in the field of studies all across the disciplines at the SKUU

5/3/2015

• Current Connectedness

• Anybody may connected to everybody

• RFIDs (Radio Frequency Identifiers) WiFi New protocols for

interconnection

• Convergence- E-mail, voice, pictures all from the same device

• Future: Anything may be connected to everything!

• Understanding of future technologies:

• Smarter search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft)

• The Semantic Web (Tim Berners-Lee)

• Future automation

Future Cyberspace

Credit to Professor C C Gotlieb

5/3/2015

What’s Next for Society

Another trend More surveillance: less privacy!

Hard lesson

Once a technology becomes very widely deployed, there are unanticipated side effects, not always beneficial

Internal combustion engine, motor cars huge dependence on oil

highway networks fill the city and countryside

Television: not mainly educational as was at first hoped and believed

medium captured by commercial and entertainment interest: Obesity!

Nuclear power Dangerous waste products, lasting for centuries

New institutes for studying effects of the Internet on Society

Oxford University, United Kingdom

University of California at Berkeley

Credit to Professor C C Gotlieb

Did science find the answers to simple question such as:

1) “Why it is that if little spider falls from the table down on the

kitchen floor, it never breaks it’s tiny legs?”

2) “Did we really made progress in Automation and if yes to

what extend?”

3) “What is the ultimate Internet access?”

4) “What is the truly Intelligent Fully-Automated Cyberspace?”

THANK YOU

ANY QUESTIONS?