Interactions - September/October 2009

EDITOR Jonathan Grudin jgrudin@microsoft.com

Editor’s Note: New fields, such as computer science, cognitive science, neuroscience, human-computer interaction, and now information, have multidisciplinary origins. To overcome communication difficulties as they worked to define the field and set priorities, pioneers developed a pidgin language. Soon came a generation of scholars, who staked their careers on the new field, creolizing the language and shaping a coherent framework relatively free of the legacy disciplines. In this article three research faculty members from the Information School of the University of Washington, discuss the tensions and opportunities in this 21st-century discipline that could become the most influential of all. —Jonathan Grudin

Reflections on the Future
of iSchools from Inspired
Junior Faculty
Jacob O. Wobbrock

University of Washington | wobbrock@u.washington.edu

Andrew J. Ko

University of Washington | ajko@u.washington.edu

Julie A. Kientz

University of Washington | jkientz@u.washington.edu

Most academic units primarily either “describe things” or “invent things.” They are either Einstein or Edison. Very few are Pasteur, who did both

[ 1]. But as the recent article by Gary Olson and Jonathan Grudin entitled “The Information School Phenomenon” [ 2] made clear, this is exactly what dozens of emerging information schools (iSchools) across the world propose to do. So what, then, should information school faculty look like? What should the core competency of iSchools be? What is it exactly that iSchools do? What should they do? As three junior faculty at a top-ranked iSchool poised to lead the affectionately termed “ iMovement,” we have been discussing these questions since our first days on the job. We all know how vital first impressions are, and we’d like to share a few of our own.

One thing seems clear: It is not enough to answer these questions simply by saying, “We study information.” As an identity statement, this is not going to get the job done outside our privileged walls. For starters, there is no such thing as an informationless field of study, degree, professor, or student. By trying to claim “information” as our own, we may alienate (and mystify) faculty and students from other disciplines. Another problem is that nonacademics regard information as both obvious and confusing—a bad combination. It is obvious in that people have experienced having or lacking information, for example, when

traveling in a foreign country and searching for a meal. It is confusing because information is hard to define and impossible to see, but it is everywhere. While most other academic disciplines—at least those claiming to be part of the sciences— have concrete objects of study in the world, information is simply too everywhere and yet nowhere. It isn’t a mass on a spring, a star, a chemical, a plant, a microbe, a brain, a computer, a political system, or an ancient civilization. Academic information scientists can and should debate what information is, but nonacademics aren’t generally interested in this question—people just want information when and where they need it.

The best identity statement we have devised for iSchools is that they are places “where people and technology meet.” They are places where social scientists study things and technologists invent things. Of course, by “technology” we mean information technology in its most inclusive sense. It may or may not be computerized—books and card catalogs are information technologies. Not all technologies of interest to iSchools will be computerized, but all will convey information.

There is a conspicuous lack of the word “ information” in our proposed identity statement. (Heresy, we know, but bear with us.) The adopted slogan of iSchools, “people, technology, information,” identifies information as an object separate from the other two. But to do information justice,