Archives of IT (AIT) has secured two keynote speakers for its second one-day academic-practitioner forum on Norms for the Digital Age from Students to States to take place on 28 January 2025.
Confirmed keynote speakers are prominent communications scholar, Professor, Rich Ling and BBC journalist Bill Thompson.
Ling was the Shaw Foundation Professor of Media Technology, at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore until his retirement in 2021. He studies the social consequences of mobile communication. Ling has written a number of books including, The mobile connection (2004), New Tech, New Ties (2008) and Taken for grantedness (2012).
He also edited the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication and is a founding co-editor of the journal Mobile Media and Communication. He is a member of Academia Europaea, Det Norske Vitenskaps Akademi (The Norwegian Academy of Arts and Letters), and a fellow of the International Communication Association.
The evolution of digital norms
Ling will open up proceedings for AIT’s 2025 Forum at the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists’ Livery Hall with a talk entitled, Everything, Everywhere, all at once: the evolution of digital norms.
He will examine the evolution of norms regarding various digital domains (remote work, remote education, online shopping, etc.) before, during and after COVID. Many of these applications were first conceived in the 1980s and ‘90s as digitalisation was developing. With the return to the ‘new normal’ after the pandemic, he argues we were again forced to choose the degree to which we would retain the use of these technologies as they continue to be a part of our lives albeit with a reduced role.
Journalism in the digital age
Bill Thompson will give a talk on Journalism in the Digital Age: Changing Roles and Norms. Thompson describes himself as having had parallel careers as a journalist and technologist. He was co-presenter of Digital Planet on BBC World Service for 20 years, head of new media at The Guardian in the 1990s and is currently Head of Public Value Research in BBC Research & Development.
He has worked in and around the internet since 1984, and was internet ambassador for the UK’s first ISP, PIPEX, before joining The Guardian. He taught in the Journalism Department at City University London and is an adjunct Professor at Southampton University, a board member of the Web Science Trust, and an Advisory Board member of the Oxford Internet Institute.
Thompson will argue that digital media have created networked amateur or citizen journalists, some of whom have been perceived as a challenge to professional journalists. New media has also changed what journalists need to be able to do, such as to be able to communicate online, and even be more like an influencer, than an objective reporter. So, he will pose the question: What does it mean to be a profession journalist in the digital age?
IT Professionalism in the Digital Age
Professor Jim Norton OBE is also confirmed as the chair of a session and roundtable discussion on IT Professionalism in the Digital Age. In the backdrop of long-running ‘Horizon’ Post Office Saga, and the rise of ransomware and denial of service, this session will explore the idea that the time has come to apply the same logic of professional competence, responsibility and enforcement to software engineering as has long been present in disciplines such as medicine and law.
This panel will also explore the history of ‘current competence’ status in IT and consider what should be done to resurrect the norms of professionalism in IT and related fields. The UK has a long tradition of defining, promoting and certifying professions not least drawing on the Guilds of the City of London, which is appropriate, given the venue for this Forum is the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.
Submitted papers
AIT would also like thank those who have submitted papers. Following a Programme Committee meeting this week three papers have been chosen. These include Dr Vassilis Galanos, Lecturer in Digital Work at the University of Stirling, who will give a talk on the concept of ‘Positionality of Norms’ and Dr Kate Bradley, University of Kent, will give a talk on Telephone helplines in Britain, 1965-1999: Countercultural DIY activism to professional welfare services over the phone.
Norms for Students of the Digital Age
At the Forum there will also be a session on Norms for Students of the Digital Age: From Calculators to ChatGPT.
The aim of this panel will be to discover what technology students should be permitted to use in the classroom and in their writing and other creative work and also what will that future digital classroom be like and how students will be judged and evaluated.
—
The forum will run from 10am to 4pm on Tuesday 28 January 2025 with spaces for up to 50 in-person participants at the Livery Hall of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists in central London, as well as limited tickets for online participants.
The final programme and booking arrangements are expected to be available in mid-October.
