I have realized for a while (ever since my Bachelor's in Electronics and Communication Engineering), that research was a logical extension to my goals. At that time, my interest was "Processor Micro architecture". However, on starting my Master's in Electrical Engineering at Penn State, I was unhappy to find that no research group on this area existed. While, this period was one of unhappiness as I was unable to work on what I had thought would be an awesome career in designing super fast microprocessors, I was fortunate to come in contact with Dr. Mitra. My interactions with him made me realize that other research areas such as "Semantic Web", "Digital Libraries" and "Search Engines" were fields that I could contribute to. While, it can be argued that I could do the same research in Computer Science, I have over the course of my past research realized that computer scientists pay little attention to the true user when designing systems. Part of this learning can be attributed to my being present within the IST building during my Master's years, surrounded by I-School converts, interactions with whom effectively constituted towards my baptism to the IST school of thought. To pursue a PhD in IST at Penn State was thus the next logical evolution step.
I would like to point out that my stay at Penn State has been a great experience and it was during this stay that I experienced the shift of Web1.0 to Web 2.0. Further, from a system perspective, I have seen hard drive densities grow from Gigabytes to Terabytes and beyond, i.e., I have understood the shift towards the information age. It is this information explosion paradigm that we, at I-schools, are attempting to conquer. The problem is beyond the scope of a reductionist approach where we divide a problem into a simpler problem (most commonly by removing the subjective that causes chaos in the traditional computer science system). Information, Technology and People are cumulatively a single continuum that must be included together when solving the problem, a goal common among I-schools. This requires a interdisciplinary approach integrating the lessons learned across various departments and schools. For example, as an electrical engineer (an applied scientist believing in a positivist world), I never understood the implications of technology. However, the inclusion of people, for example, into the mix helped me understand technology better. My recent foray into policy design for ICT infrastructure for developing countries such as India, helped me clearly visualize the implications technology has on social change, gender inequality and the economy and required an inclusion of social science into the critical thought process. In my view, I-schools will help create the next generation of scholars ready to tackle new problems that will be identified as we transition to a completely network-centric world.
AJ points out the perfect stereotype of computer scientists. While I'm sure that there are many computer scientists who don't fit this mold, there are many who subscribe to the "build it, and they will come" mentality.
For about 2 years, I worked in a company with software engineers. I worked in the sales end of the business and had more contact with our customers than a lot of our developers did. The arguments back and forth between development and product management and sales about "how to do it" or what the "best way" was were rampant. The developers (engineers and computer scientists) often had no idea what the customer NEEDED and WANTED and was willing to PAY FOR.
I'm glad to see that AJ and others "get it". We all need to understand the user and his/her needs before "building it". Otherwise, we'll be sadly disappointed when they don't come.