[A2k] conference annoucement: Design Cyberinfrastructure for Collaboration and Innovation, Jan 29-30, Washington DC

[Brian Kahin]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
[subtitle: Emerging Frameworks and Strategies for
Enabling and Controlling Knowledge]

On January 29-30, 2007, the Committee for
Economic Development, the Council on
Competitiveness, the National Science Foundation,
Science Commons, and the University of Michigan
will hold a conference on =93Designing
Cyberinfrastructure for Collaboration and
Innovation=94 at the National Academies Building in
Washington.  See
<http://cyberinfrastructure.us/>http://cyberinfrastructure.us.
This conference, the fourth in a series on the
economic implications of advancing digital
technology and infrastructure, builds on core
problems and issues examined two years earlier in
=93Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy=94
(<http://advancingknowledge.com/>http://advancingknowledge.com;
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=3D2&tid=3D11009>htt=
p://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=3D2&tid=3D11009).


Investments in cyberinfrastructure, like early
investments in the Internet, will pay off not
only in research and education but in the
development of new products and services.  Yet as
knowledge-enabling infrastructure becomes more
powerful and extensive, its users interact with
traditional rules and practices for controlling
and deriving value from knowledge.  Patents,
licensing, contracts, and other mechanisms and
institutions have also become more potent,
pervasive, diversified, and complex.  Some fear
that these controls may favor older, more
familiar models of innovation such as solitary
invention, R&D pipelines, and discrete product
technologies =96 perhaps to the detriment of new
cyberinfrastructure-empowered models that are
more collaborative, cumulative, or distributed in
nature.  However, =93private ordering=94 mechanisms,
such as patent pools, data commons, open
standards, and a variety of private and public
licensing models, have arisen as ad hoc
infrastructure to support new forms of innovation
and common interest in the development of new
knowledge and new markets.  How well do these
emergent mechanisms and institutions work?  How
well do they succeed in mitigating tensions and
conflicts among different practices and
policies?  To what extent can or should they be
incorporated into the broader knowledge-driven
vision and design of cyberinfrastructure?

For further information, see
<http://cyberinfrastructure.us/>http://cyberinfrastructure.us
(updated regularly).
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