The National Science Foundation has awarded $2.8 million to a UCI group to study how the Internet, personal computers and cell phones are affecting individuals and organizations.
The Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations will undertake a five-year study to analyze the effects and potential effects of information technology in four areas: households, workplaces, schools and governments. The researchers,led by political science professor James Danziger along with education professor Henry Becker and management professor Alladi Venkatesh,are interested in ways new information and communications technologies create networks that enable individuals to engage in multiple functions and to link these functions and social institutions in novel ways.
“This study will ask to what extent and in what ways does information technology, particularly the Internet, transform people’s lives,” said Danziger. “While there is research and considerable theorizing about the emerging impacts of information technology in different contexts of people’s lives, no large-scale study has attempted to investigate such impacts simultaneously.”
