[esocialaction] CfP: Personal and Ubiquitous Computing: Bridging the Digital Divide: Experiences and Perspectives

[Dearden, Andrew M]

Call for Papers: Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Special Issue:

Bridging the Digital Divide: Experiences and Perspectives


Editors

Lucia Terrenghi, Vodafone GROUP Services R&D, Germany

Gary Marsden, University of Cape Town, South Africa


Synopsis

For a portion of the global population, communication capabilities have
reached the status of a commodity. Some of us can afford a complex
portfolio of communication genres, such as voice over mobile networks,
voice over IP, e-mails, sms, mms, instant messaging...The list is long
and diverse, and we, as members of the industrialized society, have
developed a vocabulary and a semantics of communication genres.  
These guides our use of one or another particular genre according to the
context, to our recipient, to our personal lifestyles and objectives for
self-expression and communication. One could actually say that we have
developed a culture of communication around the media we can dispose of.
Furthermore, our lives and economy in industrialized societies heavily
rely on communication technologies (e.g., business, banking, health,
public services, and security). We sometimes take for granted, though,
that such communication capabilities are equally distributed globally.
Similarly, we take for granted that our communication culture, heavily
relying on digital media, can be understood and shared globally. Like
water and food, one can rather think of communication capabilities as a
resource (fulfilling a human need) we are globally sharing and
responsible for:  
in these terms, we need to acknowledge that digital communication is a
resource that at present is not equally and democratically distributed
in the world. As such, work must be done to "give voice" to those
portions of the population which are cut out from the global discourse,
so as to preserve cultural diversity and contribute to filling the
economical gap.

This special issue of the Personal and Ubiquitous Computing journal aims
at collecting experiences and perspectives which address the bridging of
the digital divide. With the term "digital divide", we in fact address
the communication divide, and the lack of digital communication
capabilities in terms of access and generation of content.



Topics which are relevant for this issue include, although are not
limited to:

-       elicitation of  requirements in unconnected communities  
(methodologies, results...)

-       projects aiming at bridging the digital divide: successes,  
failures, lessons learned

-       guidelines and/or manifestos for an HCI agenda in unconnected  
communities (e.g., rural areas, developing countries, elderly people,
disabled people)

-       examples of appropriation of a communication technology in a  
community previously unconnected

-       examples/ideas about how to sensitize social responsibility in  
the networked society (e.g., recycling hardware, stimulating social
networks...)



Submission details

Submissions should be between 3000 and 4000 words and authors are
encouraged to use the Springer guidelines for authors, available at
ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/Word/journal

Submission in pdf electronic format should be emailed to
bridgingdivide at vodafone.com



Important dates

15 September: deadline for abstract submission (300 words)

03 November: deadline for full paper submission

24 November: notification of acceptance and changes requests for camera
ready version

08 December: camera ready version due



Reviewing Committee:

Abigail Sellen, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK

Andy Dearden,  Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Ann Light, Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Anxo Cereijo-Roibas, Vodafone GROUP Services, UK

Derrick L. Cogburn, Syracuse University, USA

Edwin Blake, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Eli Blevis, University of Indiana, USA

Ingrid Mulder, Telematica Institute, The Netherlands

Keith Cheverst, Lancaster University, UK

Matt Jones, Swansea University, UK

Mike Best, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Nic Bidwell, James Cook University, Australia

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Andy Dearden
Reader in e-SocialAction
Communication and Computing Research Centre
Sheffield Hallam University
Furnival Building
153 Arundel St
Sheffield
S1 2NU
T: 0114 225 6878
F: 0114 225 3161