This project explores a new approach to analyzing the impacts derived from Federal funding for basic computer and information science research. The motivation for pursuing this work comes in response to a series of charts developed by the Computer Sciences and Telecommunications Board of the National Academies of Science (CSTB, 2003). These charts detail the connections from modest levels of Federal funding of basic research into computing and the impressive number of $1 Billion industries that have emerged due in part to the technological innovations that arise from this research.
This work will expand the CSTB charts to showcase the development and evolution of the human capital through which the technological innovations currently depicted arise. It will bring to the foreground the development and value of the human capital, the formation of intellectual communities, and the social ties and networks of relations among scholars that provide a vehicle to inform funding for scholarly development, improve technology transfer, and amplify the value to the Nation for funding computing research.
This research will be done in the social informatics tradition. That is, inquiry at multiple levels of analysis, moving between macro-scale interests and detailed micro-scale analyses. The macro-scale interests are the development and evolution of the scientific communities from which technological innovations in computing arise, focusing on the ways in which the development of human capital is shaped by, and shapes, the technological innovations and situated contexts. The detailed micro-scale analysis will be the development of the recently announced Microsoft computing surface (see www.microsoft.com/surface/).
The intellectual merit of this activity is twofold: 1.) Develop better insights into the growth, evolution and role of Federal funding to nurture and sustain the human capital and intellectual communities from which arise the technological innovations that drive the U.S. economy, 2.) Make clear the situated, mutually-interdependent, and evolving patterns of social and technological activities from which innovations arise.
There are at least two broader impacts that arise from this activity: 1.) Provide empirical insights and support for the importance of Federal funding for basic research into computing by highlighting the development of the human capital and intellectual communities that support technological innovation, 2.) Showcasing the forms and levels of technology transfer among industry and academe, and the roles that Federal funding plays in supporting these activities.
