This award is for NSF sponsorship of the first national conference on the Social and Economic Implications of Information Technology (IT). The two-day conference will bring together academic researchers, commercial research and consulting firms and the policy community to review research that contributes to a broad and contextual understanding of social and economic change, as it relates to IT. It will stimulate debate on research strategies, policy implications and a future research agenda, and it will offer a prototype annual conference for this area of research. The conference will reflect the concerns of the Presidents Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) that we have insufficient scientific understanding of the actual scope and trajectory of the socio-technical transformations related to IT and that we need to build a national infrastructure to support this area of research.
