On the second day of the workshop, I asked as many of the participants as possible the following question: "If you could have one project done, one type of research, in addition to your own work, what would it be, or what questions or issues might it address?"

My co-organizer, Terry Smith, and I have folded many of these responses into our general report on the workshop, but here are the answers as I wrote them in my notes, in no particular order and without attribution to speaker. (Given the interesting array of the responses, it makes me wish that we had done this as a more "formal" exercise.)

a. "What are the implications of knowledge networking research (or this way of organizing research) for open science and open scholarship?"

b. "What might be the effect of knowledge networking on those not traditionally on the network?" (There was an additional reference by the speaker to the study conducted by Jim Katz, suggesting that it would be interesting also to examine the effect on those who have "dropped out" of Internet us.) c. "What sort of [organizational] environments should we design for doing interdisciplinary work, for sharing ideas, for interdisciplinary activity?"

d. "Integrate historical data for use in hypothesis testing and research on the 'here and now'. If we had these cases in one place, would we see some discernable pattern, some questions that might flow from them and help us predict?"

e. "What sort of historical-sociological framework (model) might be developed from knowledge networking in the future? There are 'disparate data bases' (e.g, in how data are organized, in accessibility of data)--how might a set of case studies be developed from them?

f. "Take some interdisciplinary projects that worked (or didn't work), then disaggregate them, reverse engineer them."

g. "More study of failures and anomalies."

h. "What are the incentives structures to participate in knowledge networking--and how are they likely to be changing as the knowledge networking concept develops?"

i. "What types of pricing [structures or models] are likely to emerge in Knowledge Networks and with what effect?"

j. "What would be the nature of the efficient subsidies for public funding of Knowledge Networking and its development?"

k. "As new and important roles emerge within large knowledge networking projects, how will they challenge existing power structures and lines of authority?"

l. "As new and important roles emerge within large knowledge networking projects, will they require new skills? if so, what? will they require a new articulation of old norms or development of new ones?"

m. "What makes [research] collaborations fail? [On the basis of what we know about such failures], what conditions should be set for knowledge networking collaborations?"

n. "What is the relationship between knowledge and responsibility?" "How are the criteria for responsibility set?"

o. "What alters in a knowledge network?"

p. "How will people who engage in interdisciplinary knowledge networking projects get credit and reward in 'realtime' organizations?"

2. UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS

During the plane trip home, as I reflected on the workshop discussions, I realized that we had all seemed to be making unchallenged assertions or appeared to be holding certain "default assumptions" about the nature or future development of knowledge networking and that these underlying assumption probably influenced the suggestions made. As we point out in the full workshop report, the history of technology has demonstrated that early assumptions, even by experts, about the exact nature of the adoption or adaptation of new communications technologies have not always been correct (Claude Fischer's _America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940_ describes one of many such examples). And so it may be worthwhile to look more closely at some of these assumptions.

Here is the list that I made. Others may have observed additional default assumptions.

Which of these are supportable? And which may be, in fact, testable hypotheses?

a. The workshop discussants appeared to assume that potential users of (and participants in) knowledge networks will not be scientists alone. This is interesting in view of the assumptions that have been made in the past about who would be using computer networks. Initially, there was an assumption that the users would primarily be scientists; later, the users were largely imagined as being in some type of educational or research organization.

b. We all seemed to assume that the future participants in knowledge networks will be diverse (in disciplinary specialties, work ethic, cultural norms, economic background, and so forth) rather than homogenous. That is, there was an assumption that knowledge networks might not cluster around participants and organizations with like values, like world-views. etc., or tend to grow homogenous over time (as some research in psychology suggests that they might).

c. There was an assumption that users' lack of familiarity with complex techniques and technologies would produce additional ambiguity in how they participated in knowledge networking, and that increasing familiarity or skills would reduce ambiguity.

d. In contrast to assumption b, however, we did seem to assume (pragmatically?) that the interests of users (both individual users and organizations) are likely to differ and that such differences may produce conflict. Such conflicts of interest may be economic, but may also be social, political, cultural, and normal.

e. We all seemed to assume that introduction of knowledge networking techniques and organization, as outlined by the National Science Foundation, will change scientific research. However, workshop participants seemed less certain about exactly HOW it would change: they pointed out only a few likely aspects, most of which were quite broad, such as in research processes or research management. Clearly, this is a question that could be explored in further detail.

f. Within the breakout group on "leisure", there seemed to be significant concern about the longterm effect of the permeability in the borders between uses of electronic communication networks, about the continuous merging of work and play (as professional work is "interleaved" with activities such as computer games). Policy issues such as the controversy over moral standards for Internet content will have an effect on research-related content. We appeared to be assuming that this permeability was increasing the level of ambiguity (in standards, tasking, etc.) and that the permeability of borders would be significant in some way to understanding knowledge networking. But how?

g. A number of assumptions about knowledge networks themselves seemed to be implicit in the discussions:

-- that knowledge networking nodes will be spatially and temporally distributed;

-- that such spatial and temporal distribution will influence the success (and efficiency?) of knowledge networking;

-- that knowledge networks will be immense, complex, synergistic, evolving collaborative ventures;

-- that most knowledge networks are likely to be hierarchically organized, but that not all will be; and

-- that knowledge networks will have "a succession of one or more purposes" and that those differences in goals will significantly impact outcomes.

h. There was also an assumption that the organizational contexts for knowledge networking are changing, within the universities as well as in all of society and that these changes will influence successful implementation of the concept. For example, if there are more cross-institutional relationships, and more "mixed and uneven" technical environments in which these cross-institutional relationships are emerging, then that could, in turn, lead to significant inequities or problems of interoperability.

3. A SUGGESTION FOR ORGANIZING THE SOCIAL SCIENCE RESPONSE

Based on what I learned from the Santa Barbara Workshop (and, in part, an answer to my own "priority-setting" question), I believe strongly that NSF should consider organizing its social science research effort to coordinate very closely with the engineering and computer science research on knowledge networking.

Moreover, NSF should take the lead in actively encouraging all the social sciences to work together to develop a rapid response template for application to emerging knowledge networks, and should enable such development through targeted funding. There should be a strategic plan for organizing interdisciplinary teams to collect data on the establishment and work of knowledge networks which could be rapidly fed back into management and development of those networks. There should also be concurrent creation of an open database to facilitate future cross-disciplinary study of complex knowledge organizations.

This program should incorporate two aspects:

(a) One or more research centers established or designated especially to conduct and/or coordinate such research.

These centers would be poised to arrange immediately for data collection as research projects are approved and funded by NSF (or by other organizations linked to NSF knowledge networks).

All the centers would receive some type of baseline funding which would allow staff to collect data on existing knowledge networks, to monitor emerging networks, and to assist other social science group wishing to carry out research using the knowledge networking concept. Centers could apply for project funding related to specific opportunities.

(b) Multi-year funding of social science projects focused on specific broadscale aspects of knowledge networks (e.g., on psychology and innovation, on ethics and policy issues, on economic and management issues).

This differs from the conventional model of a social science "add-on" to technical science and engineering projects, as has been tried for the study of ethical issues. Neither such add-ons nor continued reliance on investigator-initiated projects in the social sciences is likely to provide data useful for understanding the broad-scale notion of coordinated knowledge networks.

NSF -- with the active participation of the larger community of social scientists -- should develop a plan for directed social science research in service of national needs, and develop clear policies for what data should be collected, how such data should be collected, and how it should be shared.

As a researcher, writer, and journal editor who has participated in the development of the social studies of science, its organizations and its publications, I urge the science studies community to participate vigorously in these discussions and I believe that their input can be useful. Planning, funding, and discussion must engage the attention of ALL social scientists, however. To confine the effort within the "science studies" community would be counterproductive to national needs and to the broadscale application of computer and "knowledge" networking.

To enhance the relevance of such strategic funding, there should be interlinked and interactive external advisory committees, which are coordinated either through the professional organizations in the social sciences (such as the Federation for Behavioral, Cognitive, and Psychological Sciences) or through the National Academy of Sciences, and to which participants in the NSF-funded knowledge networking projects are required to provide feedback.

There should also be explicit interagency communication about this effort from the onset, both for development of a shared resource base relating to existing projects and for avoiding (or, as appropriate, building upon) duplication with information research funded by other federal agencies.

In addition to applying social science expertise more directly to a specific national need, this approach would help to stimulate research techniques directly related to information technologies and to link together user research, research on education and training, and communications research, among others, which has traditionally developed along separate lines and with little incentive or encouragement for cross-fertilization.

As the discussions at all three "knowledge networking" workshops have shown unambiguously, the major concerns related to knowledge networking and to the development of computer networking generally, in all sectors and in all disciplines, are ones which naturally fall within the topics explored by the social sciences.

The technology can be built. It is the operators of the technology who appear to worry us.

The technology can be applied. It is how such application will affect the quality of human life which concerns us.

A mature and coordinated approach by all the social sciences is appropriate and essential.