Informatics and the Digital Society

Book excerpt: SECIII-Social, Ethical and Cognitive Issues of Informatics and ICT Welcome to the post-conference book of SECIII, the IFIP Open Conference on Social, Ethical and Cognitive Issues of Informatics and ICT (Information and Communication Technology) which took place from July 22-26, 2002 at the University of Dortmund, Germany, in co-operation with the German computer society (Gesellschaft flir Informatik). Unlike most international conferences, those organised within the IFIP education community are active events. This wasn't a dry academic conference - teachers, lecturers and curriculum experts, policy makers, researchers and manufacturers mingled and worked together to explore, reflect and discuss social, ethical and cognitive issues. The added value lies in what they, the participants, took away in new ideas for future research and practice, and in the new networks that were formed, both virtual and real. In addition to Keynote Addresses and Paper Presentations from international authors, there were Provocative Paper sessions, Case Studies, Focussed Debates and Creative Exchange sessions as well as professional Working Groups who debated particular themes. The Focussed Debate sessions helped to stimulate the sense of engagement among conference participants. A Market Place with follow-up Working Groups was a positive highlight and galvanised participants to produce interesting reports. These were presented to the conference on its last day. Cross-fertilisation between the papers generated some surprising and useful cross-referencing and a plethora of social, ethical and cognitive issues emerged in the discussions that followed the paper presentations.