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Introduction
Luís Borges Gouveia, Sofia Gaio
Universidade Fernando Pessoa

The Information Society Workshop

Information technologies, particularly the Internet, have exerted an ever-increasing influence on all aspects of society. Even though this is a relatively recent development, associated with much uncertainty and even speculation, it already plays an undeniably crucial role in the every day life of people and organisations.

The revolution brought about by the Internet has meant the transfer of a significant part of activities from the physical to the virtual space. This justifies that the Information Society, within the framework of a set of worries that cross our society, whether through public discussion and action policy that involves its development, or through the economic and social consequences they entail, has made this a recurrent subject from 1994 until today.

In 1997 the Green Book of the Information Society was developed in Portugal and in 2000 the conditions for a European policy that stimulates the Information Society were created in Lisbon, which culminated in eEurope2002 and more recently eEurope2005. It is therefore important to discuss the impact and implications that these events have caused since 1994. 

The growing omnipresence of the Information and Communication Technologies are the direct cause of deep changes in our way of living, learning and entertaining, leading to new ways of being and acting by social and commercial actors.

In view of the paradigms promoted by the Information Society, it is urgent to undertake discussion and reflection, in order to contribute to a better understanding of the milieu and a consequently better adaptation of the acting parts. It is from this awareness that the impulse emerges to carry out this book Readings in Information Society.  

The book is part of the result of the organisation of the Information Society Workshop – Balance and Implications that took place on the 11th and 12th of December of 2004, at Fernando Pessoa University.

The event was an initiative of two colleagues that, although come from different fields of research, have in common the interest on how Information Society influences several fields of knowledge. Their aim was to get together several contributions that help to promote the discution on the implications of Information Society as well as make a balance of the current situation.

The following researchers integrated the scientific Commission of the Workshop:

Alan Dix, Lancaster University, England

Avi Wasser, University of Haifa, Israel

Bulas Cruz, Universidade de Trás os Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal

David Seth Preston, Oxford University, England

Emanuel Leite, Universidade de Pernanbuco, Brazil

Feliz Ribeiro Gouveia, Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Portugal

Francisco Restivo, Universidade do Porto, Portugal

Frank Biocca, Michigan State University, USA

Georgios Tsourvakas, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Ian Sommerville, Lancaster University, England

Jan Frick, Stavanger University Center, Norway

Joaquim Borges Gouveia, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal

Jorge Costa, Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Portugal

Jose A. Olivas, Universidad Castilha de La Mancha, Spain

José Dias Coelho, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

Jose Maria Ricarte, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

Karl Donert, Liverpool Hope University College, England

Luis Amaral, Universidade do Minho, Portugal

Luis Borges Gouveia, Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Portugal

Maria Suzana Marc Amoretti, Universidade de Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mark Roucefield, Lancaster University, England

Masao Hijikata, Waseda University, Japan

Miguel Moital, Escola Superior de Hotelaria e Turismo do Estoril, Portugal

Oscar Mealha, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal

Paulo Cardoso, Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Portugal

Ricardo Pinto, Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Portugal

Sofia Gaio, Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Portugal

Stefan Aufenanger, Hamburg University, Germany

Tomás Patrocínio, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

Xose Lopez Pereira, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Spain

The event congregated around 120 persons and lead to the publication of two books. One in portuguese that counts with 27 articles and this in English that counts with 15 articles and the contribution of 30 authors from countries like Portugal, England, Russia, Netherlands, Brazil, Greece and Ukraine.

Information Society issues and the book organisation

Given the amplitude and heterogeneity of sectors that reinvent themselves in the light of a technological society, as well as of the sometimes enormous hiatus between potentialities and realities associated with the new Information and Communication Technologies, these were the main goals of the Workshop:

• To reflect on the Information Society in Portugal and in a wider context;
• To diagnose and characterize the state-of-the-art in different economic and social sectors;
• To discuss possible pathways for the Information Society;
• To reflect on paradigms characteristic of the Information Society.

It was intended that contributions to the Information Society Workshop – Balance and Implications – constituted a set of texts which took a position on the problematics.

The participants had therefore the challenge to cooperate by handing in an article that established the connection between their field of work and the Information Society, contributing this way to the reflection on the problematics and associated issues.

For the last twenty years, Information and Communication Technologies have been taken as the main evidence for a new way of doing old things that emerges in everyday activities. Since then, a number of authors and institutions take a considerable amount of energy in delivering services, applications and even studies that demonstrate the existence of a true Information Society with a new order for dealing with the individual, the group and the community. This implies a number of changes that, even today; we still need to discover both the extent and the implication of what will be their real impact.

This book results as one of these studies that intends to provoke the discussion on how Information Society will affect our life. The book is organised into three parts: Digital Cities, which deals with territory impact; Education and Learning, which deals with one of the most important human abilities, and the last part concerns with Economics and Communities who presents a number of positions from authors all over the world about how Information Society may impact on activities as diverse as technology use, e-commerce, enterprise creation, World Wide Web use, and tourism.

We are thankful to all that participated in this initiative and that with their research and opinions contributed through different ways for the reflection around this more and more emergent subject.

The book Readings in Information Society is, by itself, a living testimonial of how a group of people around the world can organise, produce and deliver a common works within six months from the idea, the group formation, the gathering of works, the physical meeting, the selection of book chapters, the editing and finally, the making of the physical product.

What a wonderful world we live, where an idea of producing a book can be globally supported and produced in so little time, by taking advantage of network of people who meet, change ideas and finished the job, some of them, even without to meet one unique time face to face – a clear evidence of the existence of digital places!

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CV
Luís Borges Gouveia
lmbg@ufp.pt, http://www.ufp.pt/~lmbg 

Luis Borges Gouveia hold a PhD (UK, Lancaster, 2002) in Computer Science, with a thesis on Virtual Environments for Sharing Knowledge, a Master Degree (FEUP, Portugal, 1995) in Electrical and Computer Engineering, with a dissertation on Multimedia Applications, and a diploma (UPT, Portugal, 1989), on Informatics / Applied Maths, with a diploma project on the Videotext service.

He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Science and Technology Faculty of Fernando Pessoa University and first responsible for the conceptualisation and strategy of the Gaia Global project, a digital city initiative. His main interests are the implication that both computer and telecommunications can have on how humans perceive time and space. He has about one and half hundred scientific works published in books, journals and conference proceedings. He has a  Web page and a digital diary (BLOG).

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CV
Sofia Gaio
sgaio@ufp.pt, http://www.ufp.pt/homepage/sgaio/

Sofia Gaio is a teaching assistant at the University Fernando Pessoa in the fields of Marketing, Public Relations and Corporate Communication. She has a Master's degree in Communication Science with specialisation in Marketing and Strategic Communication by the UFP

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