Key concepts Aims Course content The course covers the development - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Summary

Key concepts

Aims

• Course content

The course covers the development and use of large networks aimed at supporting collaborations within and between organisations and different sectors of society. Examples include large in-house corporate networks, public information networks at sector and national level, open electronic market places, digital libraries etc. The course considers various dimensions of such networks, crucial problems linked to their realisation and use, and key topics in current research.

• Learning outcomes

The course aims to provide students with a good understanding of important factors for successfully developing and using information infrastructures, and to enable students to assess how specific plans on establishing such networks can be realised.

II Theory

• Design theory

– Kernel theory – Design principles and guidelines

• Cases (paradigm examples?)

Towards a Theory of Information Infrastructures

A Theories of Information Infrastructures (Evolution & Design) Assemblage Theory

Process Strategies Architecture Governance Complexity Science Actor Network Theory Reflexive Modernisation

Kernel Theory

• IIs:

– Evolving installed base (not designed from scratch) – complex evolving system/assemblage/network

• Complexity theories

ANT

• Actant
• Association
• Enrollment
• Alignment
• Inscription

• Compl. Science

– side-effects (network externalities, network effects,..) – Increasing return – Path dependency – Lock-in

Reflexive Modernization

• (globalization)
• Reflexivity: boomerang effects

Assemblage theory

• Relations of exteriority (=association)

– Properties – Capacities to interact

• Two dimentions

– Material-expressive – Stabilizing-destabilizing

• (standardization-flexibility)

– Thresholds, emergence, non-linearity

Theories of Technology

• Thomas P. Hughes: Large Technologival

Systems

• W. Brian Arthur: The Nature of Technology:

What It Is and How It Evolves

II Kernel Theory

• Evolution of the installed base – shaped by

interactions between – Process Strategy – Architecture – Governance regimes

• Complexity theories: What is common for

all systems

• II Theory: How specific features of the

system shape its evolution

Process strategy

• Strategies

– T-D, B-U, specification driven, experimental/learning driven, incremental, iterative, .. – bootstrapping ,...

Architecture

– Modularization

• Degree (loose/tight couplings)
• How

– Generic: » Generativity » Open (extensible) or closed » Gateways » Layered, platform, end-2-end, SOA, INA, SPA, .. – Specific » ......

Governance regimes

• Organizing

– Involvement – Tightly controlled hierarchy or loosely coupled informal network

• Legal issues

– Licenses – Contracts

• Tools

– Project management tools (planning, milestones, accounting, ..) – Tools for communication and information sharing

• Examples:

– Internet (Open Source) vs. Telecom – Android vs. Apple – iMode vs. CPA – National EPR in Denmark

Design guidelines: Installed base cultivation

• Processes

– Scaling, adoption, innovation – Restructuring

• Simplicity: Arch, gov. regime,
• Generativity (not always: e.g. eCustoms)
• Bootstrapping
• Installed base as resource (design for, with

and against IB)