Mission

The Center for Information Technology and Society: Studying Societies in Transition since 1999

The Center for Information Technology and Society will become the preeminent national resource for knowledge and insight about cultural transitions and social innovations associated with technology. CITS specializes in researching, educating, and connecting with diverse audiences about the relationship between technology and society in dynamic environments—where technology and social processes are in transition. The Center will become an international hub for researchers, policymakers, industry leaders, and journalists who want to access expertise and forums for exchanging ideas about the changing human and technological environment.

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Background:
Societies are witnessing the complex ways that technological development stimulates social innovations that profoundly change the ways people live, work, and interact. People also radically repurpose and reconfigure technologies as they adopt—and adapt—these technologies. Researchers from every field should join in multidisciplinary efforts to deepen our collective understanding of the cultural transitions and social innovations associated with technology.

Core Beliefs:
1) We are specialists in the technology/society relationship. Analyzing rapid social and technological transitions is a skill set that CITS researchers have developed and are committed to refining, teaching, sharing, and deploying.
2) Excellence grows from interdisciplinary teams. Understanding the social implications of digital technologies requires interdisciplinary teamwork.
3) We create, and study, technology. Social understandings can be embedded in, and thereby improve, new technological innovations.
4) We connect technology with humanity. Understanding how people use, adopt, adapt, and create technologies can help us understand what it means to be human.

Three Core Activities:
1) We research. At CITS, interdisciplinary teams composed of nationally and internationally recognized scholars study how societies and social groups are affected by technologies and how social dynamics impact technological innovation and diffusion.
2) We educate. CITS is dedicated to refining and passing along the skills involved in understanding transitions in technological and social environments to the next generation of researchers, inventors, educators, policy-makers and citizens. We offer a PhD emphasis in Technology and Society and involve undergraduate and graduate students in our research.
3) We connect people. It is vital to connect with other academic units on campus and at other institutions, with industry, with policy-makers, and to connect with the wider public. We accomplish this through public lectures, conferences, media outreach, multimedia content on our website, and a quarterly newsletter.