The Empowered Individual in the Knowledge Society

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The Empowered Individualin the Knowledge Society
Paul HearnNew Working Environments UnitDG
Information SocietyEuropean Commissionpaul.hearn
_at_cec.eu.int
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Reflections

• All change _at_work by 2010
• 3 emerging challenges
• Mastering Complexity
• Empowering users
• Sharing knowledge
• Activities

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Societal Challenge

• To create new living and working environments for
  all
• when and where the individual wishes
• with access by whatever means is appropriate
• access to whatever knowledge is available and
  relevant to the task at hand
• with opportunities for all according to their
  ability and desire

Putting people in the centre of the Knowledge
Society
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All change _at_work
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Competence nodes networking
Competence nodes networking
MManagement response of a given task in a given
time point is given to the competence node which
understands the customers problem best
How to share knowledge?
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Ambient Intelligence _at_work

• Different perspectives needed
• the work and collaboration process
• how to collaborate, how to transfer and
  accumulate knowledge, skills...
• the immediate working surrounding
• media-rich location independent environment and
  connectivity
• the context sensitivity
• how to set the individuals personal environment,
  preferences, identity in the centre

Ambient Intelligence Scenarios ftp//ftp.cordis.lu
/pub/ist/docs/istagscenarios2010.pdf
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Ambient Intelligence _at_work

• Bringing the users, people, to the
  foreground.... to the centre of our
  attention
• building trustful technologies for the background
  
• making technology adapt to people needs
• Moving to an era where ..Our surrounding is
  the interface to IST applications services
• Exploring beyond the PC, screens keyboard
  interfaces...
• Enabling multi-sensorial dialogues ..
• supported by computing networking
• everywhere, embedded in everyday objects

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Putting people in the centre - the challenges
for ambient intelligence

• Barrier-free surroundings
• media rich, multimodal, sensory perception
• context sensitive, identities, preferences, care,
  safety
• mobility, manipulation, navigation
• multiple roles, work, citizen, social/leisure
  communities
• design for all
• Empowering the users
• communication and collaboration, shared
  workspaces, social interaction, smart homes
• knowledge access, transfer, accumulation
• skills,value creation, innovation

Full participation in the Knowledge Society
To create a New Living and Working
Environment when and where the individual wishes
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Technologies to tame for barrier-free
surroundings

• Advanced and adaptive interfaces
• Assistive technologies
• Enhanced interaction
• Context-sensitive technologies
• Ubiquitous, mobile wireless communications

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Technologies to tame for empowering the users

• Collaborative technologies
• Knowledge and cognitive technologies
• Smart systems
• Grid-services infrastructure

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New Work Environments Mission

• The unit New working environments manages
  effectively and professionally high level IST RTD
  and contributes to policy developments in new
  working environments designs and organisation of
  work in the networked knowledge-based economy,
  incorporating innovative ICT to facilitate
  creativity and collaboration, to resource-use
  efficiency, value-creation and extended work
  opportunities for all in various settings.
• 36 staff members, strong technical research focus
• Strong heritage from FP5, new approach to
  collaboration

Linking Technology and Application Innovation
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New Work Environments Activities

• The unit focuses on the areas of eProfessions and
  individually driven working, new work space
  designs, knowledge management in information
  dense and integrated, often media-rich working
  environments, including mobility and
  multimodality, collaborative work and
  organisations, ambient organisations, communities
  of practise and new organisation of work.

Technology as Critical Driver and Enabler
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All welcome to join in!

• Website
• Publications
• Contact us

www.cordis.lu/ist/
www.amiatwork.com
Directorate F leaflet and Unit brochures
paul.hearn_at_cec.eu.int