• Corpus ID: 28918777

The New Informatics

@article{Dahlbom1996TheNI,
  title={The New Informatics},
  author={Bo Dahlbom},
  journal={Scand. J. Inf. Syst.},
  year={1996},
  volume={8},
  pages={3}
}

• Bo Dahlbom
• Published 1 November 1996
• Education
• Scand. J. Inf. Syst.

The discipline that used to be called “information systems” is changing its identity. In Sweden, we have emphasized this reorientation by changing our name from “administrative data processing” to “informatics.” I will attempt to characterize this new informatics, describing it as a theory and design oriented study of information technology use, an artificial science with the intertwined complex of people and information technology as its subject matter. I will end by giving some suggestions for how to think of a new curriculum. Looking around in Scandinavia in the Spring of 1997, it is obvious that research on information systems—informatics we now say in Sweden—is beginning to settle down into a rather rich variety of different approaches. Even if they are constantly changing, even if they are overlapping, merging and separating in a somewhat confusing manner, I still think it would be rather easy to characterize the different approaches in a way that most members of the community would accept. Furthermore, I think that such an attempt to define the different research approaches would further their development and encourage debate between them. Such a reflection on current research orientations is important, I think, in view of the fact that our discipline has recently The New Informatics