Abstract
This chapter reflects upon Information and Communication Technologies (ICT, including informatics) research and education in the light of current technology trends. My key messages are that (1) ICT has become ubiquitous and therefore runs a risk of becoming understated and worse, underappreciated. (2) because of its widespread use ICT is evolving to be more involved in interdisciplinary research. I argue that interdisciplinarity itself is inherently a team effort, requiring an individual to consider team-work in a fundamentally different way. The conclusion which emerges from the previous statements is that researchers and engineers in ICT should be better prepared for working in interdisciplinary teams and understand that continuous, deliberate effort is required for successful team building.
In this chapter, robotics is given as an example of interdisciplinary research area, heavily relying on ICT expertise but also progressively on far interdisciplinarity (e.g. with biology, social sciences, law, etc.). Using the metaphor of T-shaped competences, a possible profile of an expert in this field is described and as a case-study, the development of Centre for Biorobotics, is analysed. I conclude with some personal experiences from working in and building interdisciplinary teams.
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Kruusmaa, M. (2017). On Informatics, Diamonds and T. In: Werthner, H., van Harmelen, F. (eds) Informatics in the Future. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55735-9_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55735-9_3
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