The different perspectives to look at information and their confluence towards making the consumption of information in various forms more "effective" is what characterizes I-Schools and help distinguish this movement from different classical departments of thoughts such as computer science, social science, library science etc. I began with the interest in technological/computational perspective towards information and grew up in this diverse, but with the same conceptual motive, facility of practices to appreciate their contribution. My initial curiosity was driven by basically two related factors: 1) my background in computer science 2) the fact that the technological advancements made this information age to happen and bestow its opportunities upon us.
So, now that you've been here for a while - what do you think of IST? How do you think that you'll fit into this interesting domain?
It seems that Dr. Mitra is a bridge between the domains of Social Science and Security/Technology - publishing with both of these subgroups in IST. I'd be interested to hear what that means for you in terms of projects in the future. Sounds really cool!
In my opinion, Kuhn's "normal science" is what has been practised in IST so far. However, to witness a "paradigm shift", the normal science has to be mature enough to make scientists wander the course of shift and this is what IST is all about.