The Network of Excellence in Internet Science aims to achieve a deeper multidisciplinary understanding of the Internet as a societal and technological artefact. More information: http://internet-science.eu/ Twitter: @i_scienceEU

1. Multidisciplinarity and its
Implications:
View from Ljubljana
dr. Žiga Turk
professor, University of Ljubljana,
Slovenia
EINS project kick-off meeting,
Brussels, 21.12.2011

2. Contents
• Past in Ljubljana
– briefly about the
research team
• Future of Europe
– Reflection Group on
the Future of Europe
• Future of GEANT
– GEANT Expert Group
• Future of the World
EU ISS: The world in
2030

3. Past in Ljubljana
• Chair of Construction
Informatics
– how IT has been
changing the creation,
maintenance and use
of the built
environment
• role of technology,
philosophy of
information modeling,
core construction
topics

4. Interdisciplinary:
Built Environment and Society
• Richard Florida:
– “Human Talent is the Ultimate
Economic Resource”
• The War on Talent:
– Quantity, Quality, Impowerment
• Immigration
• Construction provides
– housing,
– work environment,
– civil infrastrcture
• Provides an attractive place for talent

5. Reflection Group on the Future of
Europe
The Group is chaired by Mr. Felipe Gonzalez Marquez, assisted by two Vice-Chairs,
Ms. Vaira Vike-Freiberga and Mr. Jorma Ollila, and includes 9 more members, all
eminent experts in their own fields: Ms. Lykke Friis, Mr. Rem Koolhaas, Mr. Richard
Lambert, Mr. Mario Monti, Mr. Rainer Munz, Ms. Kalypso Nicolaidis, Ms. Nicole
Notat, Mr. Wolfgang Schuster and Mr. Lech Walesa. The Group is supported by a
secretariat headed by Secretary-General, Mr. Žiga Turk.

6. .

7. ABCDE of grand transformations
• automation and abundance
• BRICs and globalization
• climate change and energy
• demography
• e-everything

8. Europe has choices across ABCDE
• restructure for post • cherish industrial
A industrial society traditions
• agent of change, trend • bunch of passive selfish
B setter, player
• maintain technological
former superpowers
• build walls for migrants
C and political lead
• family and immigration
and dams for seas
• a continent of grumpy
D friendly
• embrace digital like we
old men (an women)
• defend the ways of
E embraced print paper based society

9. Chapter: Growth Through Knowledge:
Empowering the Individual
• “Knowledge-based and creative industries and
services have expanded significantly over the last
two decades, becoming the central pillars for
employment and economic dynamism in Europe”
• “European Research Area must become a reality
– an area without borders where all scientific
potential, wherever it is, can be fully tapped
thanks to the free movement of researchers,
ideas, technologies and capital”

10. Interdisciplinary:
• Impact of Internet on Europe
• e.g. European Research Area

11. GEANT Expert Group
• task:
– “articulate a 2020 vision for European Research and
Education networking and will identify an action plan for
realizing this vision”
• members:
– Žiga Turk (chair), Arndt Bode, Vasilis Maglaris, Dorte
Olesen, Roberto Saracco, Peter Tindemans, Pedro Veiga
• timeframe:
– december 2010-august 2011

12. The Vision of
GEG
• “GÉANT 2020” is the
European communications
commons
• where talent anywhere is
able to collaborate with
their peers around the
world and
• to have instantaneous and
unlimited access to any
resource for knowledge
creation, innovation and
learning,
• unconstrained by the
barriers of the pre-digital
world.

13. Goals that Fulfill the Vision
1. Support knowledge communities by providing
world-class connectivity and services.
2. Support the growth of these communities, in
both breadth and depth within Europe, and
opening up to talent beyond Europe’s borders ;
3. Push the state-of-the-art of the communications
commons by constant innovation and by
translating this innovation into a competitive
European ICT sector;
4. Reorganize to cope with the constantly changing
environment.

14. Interdisciplinarity:
• Impact of Internet on Scientific Communities
• also past research:
– open access publishing

15. ESPAS Project
• Global Tredns
2030
• interconnected
world

16. Society is organized according to its
communication means

17. Can information technology bring about a change from a
totalitarian to a democratic system?

18. How change happens
technological
populism
innovation
habitualization
(gets widely
adopted)
objectification
(orgs. start to
adapt)
sedimentation
(becomes part
of the norms)
(Scotts Institutional Theory, cascade by Tolbert and Zucker)

19. Interdisciplinary:
Throughout History ICTs
were empowering
• exclusive technologies were
empowering the centre
• democratic technologies
empowered masses
– paper in the renaissance
– paper based democracy
• internet?

20. Interdisciplinary: Summary
• Internet and the Built
Environment
• Internet and Broadest European
Political Strategies
• Internet and the Empowering
Talent
• Internet and Democracy

21. Eins, zwei, drei:
• “The essence
of technology
is nothing
technical”