EAGER: RDSV: Envisioning Sociotechnical Ecosystems Research

Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) research produces many innovations. The impact of these innovations depends on their adoption in the greater sociotechnical ecosystem – the set of technical components and actors, the economic transactions between these entities, the legal system governing them, and the human end users. Thus, anticipating the impact of new research directions requires a broad range of expertise.

This award will go towards the development of a new organizational structure for envisioning new research directions for CISE that is informed by representatives of the social sciences, legal studies, and civil society, as well as scientific, industry, and government leaders. Through a systematic process of interviews and workshops, the investigators will elicit these experts’ best ideas about new research directions, as well as the theories of change that motivate these ideas.

Computational models of sociotechnical ecosystems based on these ideas will then serve as tools in visioning workshops where assumptions are revealed and challenged. The goal is to develop a process for strategic visioning of CISE research that is both sensitive to complex sociotechnical and ecosystemic change and consistent with computational thinking.

The investigators will iteratively perform a visioning process, improving each cycle. The process involves five steps. First, the investigators will identify seed participants.

In addition to scientific, industry, and government experts, the team will seed their study with non-technical scholars of technology policy and ethics, as well as computational social scientists. Second, the investigators will conduct semi-structured interviews, starting with the initial seed participants and expanding through snowball sampling, to elicit their views of promising research directions and potential social impacts, as well as the theories of change that motivate their recommendations.

Third, the investigators will compile these results into structured data and build composite models of sociotechnical ecosystems and the hypothesized dynamics of research impact. Fourth, the investigators will hold workshops in which the interview process and the resulting composite models are reviewed, critiqued, and “red-teamed”. Lastly, the investigators will disseminate the results on-line, back to participants, and to NSF program officers.

This work will culminate in a written report published to the profession, and a tutorial on running such processes.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.