Orientation of proposal

A permanent workspace should be set up to create an interface between the scientific community and community and social actors to ensure that the former are aware of social demands vis-à-vis ICTs.

This space should bring together :
  scientists working to develop future information technologies ;
  civic and social actors that use information technologies, and the inventors of new uses ;
  sociologists and ergonomic designers capable of synthesising these new practices and helping to formulate demands to be satisfied by these scientists and technology in general.

Likewise, twinning agreements could be made between research centres and community networks.

Context

The strategic development options taken by public research and development institutes (for example, CNRS, INRIA, CNET, in France, the European framework programme for research and development, the National Science Foundation in the United States, etc.) and the actors that link the public and private sectors in the development of these technologies only take into account the needs of companies and the market. This can be explained by the brief given to them by the ministries having responsibility for them and also by the composition of their management boards, none of which include representatives from the community and social Internet sector. Failing the possibility of sitting on the management boards of these bodies, permanent workspaces should permit scientists and industrial companies to become more sensitive to the problems they simply ignore most of the time. They should also become more aware of social expectations while community and social actors would be obliged to formulate their demands as a function of technological progress. Certain organised groups, such as the handicapped, succeed in doing just this.

Experience has shown that these civic and social actors :
  contribute new uses and contents that can lead to technological developments ;
  but they are limited by technologies that do not satisfy their expectations (e.g. immigrant communities that require oral rather than written vectors of communication).