1. INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION
Computer systems are integrated on ever larger scales:
- logic gates, LSI, VLSI, chipsets, PCs, LANs, WANs, grids, web, internet,
but parallel development on the human side is even more important:
- isolated single users, time sharing, groupware, communities (P2P),
ubiquitous, wireless, context-aware multimodal mobile computing.
Organizations integrate communication & computation ("convergence")
to better coordinate quasi-independent units (neither centralized nor
independent) on global scale (e.g., systems engeering and the "enterprise
level").
Thus social & cultural issues become ever more crucial.
CSCW, ethnomethodology & sociology of technology help us to
- see values in all situations, and
- see that values give situations the coherence that lets us understand
them.
In this sense, values are the essence of social interaction,
and thus of contemporary IT.
The Value Sensitive Design of Batya Friedman, Peter Kahn, Alan Borning &
others is less formal & more focused on large gran values, like informed
consent, privacy, universal accesability and democracy; however, their
approach is very close in spirit to our approach.