The definition of “funny” in graduate school is quite sarcastic. However, if you do not seriously seek fun in graduate school, I am pretty positive that you will find graduate school very entertaining.

Personally, I think being in graduate school is a social experiment. Often time I enjoy watching graduate students “pursuing” their educated goals with different, but not really innovative though, approaches. For me instead of rigorously focusing on ‘the big goal,’ I, to escape mundane graduate student’s life, rather enjoy observing the environment surrounding me on day-by-day basis.

Most of courses provided in graduate school’s levels are discussion-based, so that students are supposedly allowed to scholarly express their ideas toward subject matter in classes. However, this could be also very entertaining since there are many students with diverse backgrounds discuss such the same topics with different interpretation. Sometimes, I feel like my follow graduate students are digressing, but, after listening to them for minutes, I just realized that we they are just making arguments on exactly the same topic with particular perspectives. So, I enjoy seeing myself drawing ideas generated by people whose background and perspectives are varied.

Besides fun in discussion-based courses, embarrassing guest speakers could be another harmless, but enjoyable, hobbies. Graduate students so benefit the learning the guest speakers, and basically students can learn more from the ill-prepared than from the well-prepared. For example, ill-prepares speakers could be buried with flooded questions left unanswered. This reminds me of how harsh the reality is and encourages me to prepare myself very well when I am going to give a talk.

All in all, graduate school fun is not necessary involving caffeine intoxication or suffocating sleepless suffocation; it does not have to be sarcastic or ironic. Instead, the fun is about indulging in learning mistake from the others and absorbing good academic and social culture for future use. However, most of time, watching people doing mistakes in graduate is academically, educationally funny.

How to flourish in graduate school? This is not a question, but it is such very huge agenda, and there many things to be sought for understanding before jumping right into this agenda.

There are a myriad of advice and suggestion about how to survive graduate school. I, however, personally, have never complete taken put my faith in those. For I believe that there are no inclusively complete recipe for living graduate student lives. So, what I usually handle myself in graduate school is to combine those available recipes with my own personality and my goals of life - to live happily.

There are only three objectives that I would like to achieve while living my graduate student life are (a) to stay healthy, (b) to enjoy my life, entertaining, and (c) to work in order to fulfill the graduate school’s requirement. However, the objectives (a) and (b) by far outweigh the (c). I strongly believe mental and physical health is very important; that is why (a) is the first priority. And I also believe that every life on earth deserves a very quality time of living happily, then it would be a very misinformed if we forego out happiness and enjoyment just because we serve our life with academic reason. Finally (c) working hard - this is a very collective term - is very rewarding in the long run.

I would like to compare studying in graduate school to working in real world environment. I don’t want to claim that one of them is tougher than the other since they are also tough in difference point of view. When working, we have to remind ourselves that we are working toward “something” that usually takes us up to 6 years of suffering. Short-term, intermediate-term, and long-term goals can be differently achieved with different requirements. It is acceptable to allow yourselves to get punished for the purpose of achieving goals, and, moreover, it is very important to reward yourselves when you conquer such intellectual quest.

All in all, don’t live life so seriously because you cannot quite it anyway.

It is said that humans are social creature - I definitely think so. However, there are also diverse preferences among them regarding socialization. Speaking of socialization, I used to attend the IST’s beer club ones, but it just turned out disappointing because I felt not very fitted in. Many of IST graduates students attending the beer club are white or American born, and they, except me, have lots vocabulary and common things to share, the American way of life. Therefore, I was looking for an alternative, and I finally found one: The international student club.

Located at Bucke building, the club initiates many international agendas, offering a variety of conversational topic to all the participants. Regularly, we have an official coffee hour session on Thursdays’ evening. Moreover, we also have international films hours. And these two events very encourage attendants to express and discuss their culture perspectives regarding the issues/agendas emerging from the films and the conversation.

Anyway, please don’t be offended, State College, last year, was voted for one of the most livable colleges. However, I feel State College’s atmosphere and livelihood are less welcoming to international students who speak with strong accents. Unfortunately, it seems to be the only way that allows international students to feel safe to mingle is to socialize at international events. I hope that State College could be a better to live. Hopelessly.

Steve Jobs, Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is the co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc and former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios. In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, created one of the first commercially successful personal computers. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven GUI (Graphical User Interface). After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher education and business markets. NeXT’s subsequent 1997 buyout by Apple Computer Inc. brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he has served as its CEO since then. Steve Jobs was listed as Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Businessman of 2007.

William Henry “Bill” Gates III (born October 28, 1955), is an American business magnate, philanthropist, the world’s third richest person (as of February 8, 2008), the second richest American (as of October 10, 2008), and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Although he is admired by many, a large number of industry insiders criticize his business tactics, which they consider anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

Bill Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January, 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect. In June, 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work at Microsoft and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates’s last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He remains at Microsoft as a part-time, non-executive chairman.

The two key fingures are not only the business men, but they are also ones of the greatest researchers in the history. They were orignally fascinated by computing technologies, and then they related their computing knowledge to computing market, generating very great fortune. Here, what I can reflect from their success is that, to be successful, we, as researchers, have to horizontally explore the landscape of the society. Just looking for research gaps by traversing through huge stacks of literature seems not to be helpful and successful in order to survive in the IT industries.

The journal that I very want to have my work published is the Information Policy and Information Society. Recently, I have strongly been developing my research interests toward information, communication, and technology (ICT). Ever since I was a co-author of the paper submitted to Decision Science in the summer 2007, “Toward Thailand’s Path to Knowledge Economy,” I have realized that knowledge is a fundamental commodity which greatly benefits a country. Moreover, knowledge becomes by far important as an economic and societal driver in lesser developing countries (LDCs). Information and technology of course have economic qualities themselves, and these qualities are forceful enough to country social welfare at large. With this regard, developing ICT policies means a lot to LDCs. Viable ICT policies could be regarded as a shortcut for those countries developing for technologically, economically, and societal heightening the country’s welfare at large. All in all, I consider Information Policy is a very practical research outlet suiting my interest toward conceiving ICT policies for developing countries. In addition, Information Society quite favors ICT policy in country level. What I plan to do this venue is to conduct a case study on Thailand’s ICT policies using Influence-Impact model developed by Dr. Eileen M. Trauth (2000).

Besides research venues about ICT policies, another publication venue that I have long been interested in is ACM SIGCPR/MIS. Every IT offshore outsourcing have gained popularity, there have been sprung of many labor concerns and issues. When IT offshore outsourcing seems to benefit the firms. However, it has also brought up many controversies in the Home Counties where the jobs are outsourced. Many IT professionals have already experienced psychological effects from a fear of losing their jobs. Even worse, some empirical studies show that IT professionals in home countries are reluctant to facilitate the jobs transferred to offshore sites. Some of them even creatively impede the process of job transfer and even knowledge transfers. And this could account for mysterious failure in job transferring phase.

It has already been almost 3 years that I have been around in IST even though I have less interactions with other students and faculty due to my personality. In IST, publishing papers seems to me the uttermost of the topmost priority of the faculties and the students. Acquiring funding resources seems to be the critical interest of the all the colleges since it is basically contributing to existence of those. The school needs to be funded, the faculties need to make their living and creating their professional identity, and the students desperately want to graduate and, thus, have a decent career after graduation. This phenomenon is so true not only in IST, Penn State, but also in all the schools over the US and, somewhat, in EU.

Funded graduate students sitting in air-conditioned office, looking for research gaps in the literature

Most of us, academic people, spend several hours a days, almost everyday in months reviewing literature just hopefully to find research gaps. Once those gaps are located, we are already on something which is economically, financially sexy. Of course, closing a research gap means a lot to us and to the community.

However, I doubt the value of the research that we all have been done so far. What are we actually doing good things to social world at large? At the time we spend our time to “re-discover” such gaps, the serious gaps have already been out there in the real world. Millions of people’s lives in the Africa are being devoured by hunger and by HIV/AID. Hundreds of millions of children in the less developed countries are unschooled, forced to be working more than 10 hours a day, have less access learning environment.

This is a hand of a young girl in Uganda.

The bird is standing by to eat this starving child. This picture was voted as the best the best journalistic photography many years ago. And the photographer later committed suicide because of his emotional breakdown attaching to his own work.

Child labors are ubiquitous seen in China, glorifying capitalism and supplying uncountably incredibly cheap goods to the Walton family, making them the richest family in world.

One of the reasons that I pursue Ph.D. program is to help changes the world to be “livable” place to continue humankind. I don’t just want to get a prestigious meal ticket to get an access to premium meal since I think it would not be necessary to further push myself for approximately 5 years to earn a little bit higher salary. Unfortunately, I at the moment am feeling my strong will has politically been rotten because of game of the education system over time. If we look at the topics of IST M.S. theses and IST Ph.D. dissertations, we would say that we have no doubt toward their academic values. But how about their contribution to the world’s most pressing needs and problem?

I would say that we are not a God (and I actually don’t believe in God); we have no power to change how the world works. But I feel like we, claiming that we are making scientific, technological advancement implanted into the world, should responsibly return something socially good to the world. And the end of the day, the very topic for all of us who are pursuing academic or professional careers would be: How we can do for making a livable world, not what it takes to get ourselves graduated.

The Decision Sciences Institute (DSI). DSI is a professional organization of academicians and practitioners interested in the application of quantitative and behavioral methods to the problems of society.

Asia Pacific Region of Decision Sciences Institute (APDSI) APDSI is a sub-vanue of the DSI. The main objective of thie community is quite the same. However, the difference lies the scope of the problems of society. That is, while DSI globally deals with research agendas in terms of the problems of society, APDSI is geographically specific in Asian region.

I belong to ACM SIGMIS community mainly because my research interest lies in job burnout in IT workforce. Often time IT professionals, according to the human factor view, are being eclipsed by their technological artifacts; moreover, they are also viewed as functional, utilizable units which are embedded into such technology. This illusion has impacts toward all the stakeholders. The distorted images of IT professionals can mislead the IT managers to treat them differently. Such modern telecommunication technology renders IT personnel exposed to overwork. Support engineers, for example, are expected to be on-call in order to respond to any request of service 24 hours a day, IT people feel overwhelmed by demands of support jobs. Since an organization increasingly employs technological equipments, the demands of supports of course grow in parallel manner.

DSI and APDSI is very attractive to me because these two venues just focus on the very pressing global agendas regarding ICT development. Information has price, and ICT has been regarded an active economic commodity, and this commodity could make a great effect in developing world. Therefore, it is very important for developing world the exercise the right ICT policies to economically, socially, and technologically improve them.

It has been almost three years that I know Louis-Marie Ngamassi Tchouakeu. We first meet in fall 2006 because we took the same class, IST501. And later we became officemates, the desk no.2 and no.3 in the room 307G. Amazingly, we later found that we are sharing the same research interest which is about constructing ICT policies for developing countries. Besides, he is also interested in NGO/UN work which is pretty disaster relief. With this regard, we quite have a lot of things in common, so to speak.

As Louis-Marie’s research interest lies in ICT policy and NGO relief, he has several conference papers which were internationally published such as Information and Internet Policy, 17th Biennial Conference of the International Telecommunications Society, International ISCRAM Conference, etc. Now, he endeavors to have his research papers which are about ICT for development and ICT in Africa published in African Journal for Information Systems.

As I mentioned above, we have a lot commons in terms of research interests. On top of that, Louis-Marie is very polite and mature in person. No only can we talk about work, but also life. I can talk with him with any topics; it is not necessary to professionally break the ice with him. And I feel very comfortable talking with him.

There two terminology that people usually use interchangeably: friend and colleague. Personally, I would consider Louis-Marie as friend more than colleague since he has never expected a productive relationship from anyone.

Dr. Trauth’s research interests heavily lie in IT polices, in IT workforce, computing and diversity, and lately critical agenda in gender and IT. Dr. Trauth has substantial publications in the world-class leagues journal; statistically, most of her publication papers appear in the journal of Information Technology and People. This is not a surprising fact anymore since Dr. Trauth very theorizes IT and P overtime. Besides having publications in top league journals, Dr. Trauth’s work heavily appears in top conferences; among those is the ACM SIGMIS Computer Personnel Research Conference that Dr. Trauth regularly has her proceedings published.

Apart from doing research, Dr. Trauth also internationally provides lectures in several countries in several continents. Speaking of her teaching role in IST, she has recently taught a couple classes. In undergraduate level, she teaches the topic in Diversity and IT. This subject comprises all the issues related to human diversity in IT profession, hence global diversification. And in the graduate level, she teaches Qualitative Research Method. Personally, I think she is the best fitted in this subject, regarding her research that she has done so far.

Ones of the great achievements in the past year are the Theory of Gender and IT and the Influence-Impact Model; they both have increasing been gaining recognition over time since they are practically applicable to I-research agendas.

Personally, Dr. Trauth loves reading and travelling. In the past six months, she was visiting a few countries in Africa and a couple of countries in Europe. And during a year, she often visits her sisters and her parents in OH. So far, travelling back and forth between PA and OH seems to be her routine. Although spending more time on traveling and working, she has a very lovely small family with her very own eternal soul mate, long life friend, and life partner, Kathy, who is now spending her retirement with Dr. Trauth at an off-campus house. So far, it has already been over thirty years that they both, Dr. Trauth and Kathy have been living together, and I am still looking forward to seeing them living together for the rest of their lives.

In stead of thinking of IST as flavor of a drink, I rather consider IST as a modern abstract painting which evokes many thoughts from a person who appreciate what the IST really is. Most of the time abstract painters have their hard time to make others understand what they try to convey. Likewise, IST is a very emerging discipline which is quit blending, if not mixing, the perspective of I, T, and P altogether. For abstract painters, it always takes some time to get recognized by their peers or by people since the concept of their paintings is very abstract. In the same way, it probably takes a great amount of time to gain visibility and importance from other disciplines. Nowadays, I still have heard some of IST students expressing their conceptualization about IST that “, IST is actually an innovative discipline; it is just a grouping of social sciences and hard sciences.” However, the above comment could be right. It is quite complicated to explicate what is the IST. Perhaps, the best way to get to know the IST is to see and understand its roadmap; let it continue and grow, for we may see the answer of the IST itself and the end of the journey.

Many of my friends ask me “, what is your department?” And when I get started to show what we are doing in the IST, I just have no idea where I should begin with. So far I still cannot find the answer for that. That point that I very want to make is the most important task for the IST itself is to gain recognition and visibility. Sometimes it is obscure to tell the people what we are doing. Maybe, one way to show the people what is IST is to show the structure of the IST. But we just can do so because we actually have not formulated research groups in IST into a more structured presentation. In my opinion, it very important to have departments formulated under the ITP umbrella. It will not only help other disciplines to understand what we are doing in IST, but also gain visibility and help them to visualize who we are.

If I am asked to identify myself under the IST umbrella, I would respond that I quite belong to the Center of Information Society (CIS). Why? My research interest is somewhat fitted very well in the CIS. My foci are about software offshore outsourcing, turnover and job burn-out in IT profession, and flaws in ICT policy in developing countries. Even though these research topics are quite diverse in nature, but they can relate to my uttermost cause: Social welfare. For the first one, I have to confess that I quite not appreciate the tagline of doing offshore outsourcing: Low cost, more productivity. As humans sharing the same world, we could not think only of profits we could possibly make. The offshore outsourcing companies should also more contribute back to local communities, not merely harvesting low-wage labors. Second, IT professionals are repeatedly reported as workers who are likely to be overloaded with their daily routines. Often, people view IT professionals as technological unites embedded with IT artifacts. It is in fact not. We cannot just assume that those IT professionals must be on-call 24/7. They are just humans, and they just need to gain realization that they need certain degree of freedom to balance their life and work. Lastly, it is an illusion that most of developing countries simply duplicate ICTpolicy from the “successful” countries. And host developing countries just simply expect a miracle from deploy such policy over their countries. What is wrong is that every country has unique characteristics, and these should be counted in order to implement an effective ICT policy.

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me,” said Isaac Newton.

Pursuing of meaning of science is abstractly difficult; establishing a new science and discovering its meaning are even by far arduous. Living in Penn State’s Information Sciences of Technology (IST) research community, I strongly believe, is not merely to just indulge in non pre-existing academic paradigm which is taking advantages of three perspectives: Information, technology, and people, but to strengthen the discipline, make I-School visible to all other traditional disciplines, and recruit more powerful participation to I-communities.

IST, hosting the first I-School conference, initiated the novelty paradigmatic program and still is continuing the pursuit for ten years. As Dr. Jim Tomas conveys that IST offer a Greenfield program which evolves from no pre-existing forms . Being non pre-existing, however, educationally creates far-reaching impacts and influences toward knowledge communities upon the definition and the identity of I-school.

As much as IST curriculum has been crafted to be interdisciplinary, the technology perspective seems to dominate scholars’ perception. Technology, whose descent line was from hard science school of computer science and engineering, inevitably philosophically coexists with positivism and, furthermore, a little bit dominate the ITP triangle. Positivism has long been escorted to facilitate a very large array of research, particularly in hard science, since hard scientists have developed a very strong assumption before put their assumption on test. However, the fruitfulness of positivistic finding may be less appreciable when we ponder upon ITP perspective because each perspective tends to prejudicially seeks for supports that make sense in their own disciplinary interpretation.

One of classic issues worth to be discussed in IST community is the case of digital media files: electronic books, music, movie, etc. While technology perspective regards a music file as a long stream of bits, information perspective considers the file as intellectual digital content which should be of protection by copyrights laws. And people perspective may further add that the file is in turn having a huge impact in societal levels, such a file should be well-studied before putting it into use. Seemingly, combining I, T, and P with using only positivistic adhesive may render IST’s interdisciplinary curriculum into a mere multidisciplinary one which highly proves to be problematic and undermine being interdisciplinary instilled by the I-School itself.

Nevertheless, it would greatly be a misconstruing if we totally reject positivism and, therefore, forgo one of the most attractively useful feature of positivism: Falsification. Falsification, especially sophisticated falsification, is one plausible way to make science firmly grown up. For instance, Aristotelian mechanics explained observations of everyday situations, were falsified by Galileo’s experiments, and finally were replaced by Newtonian mechanics. Falsification of course turns a wheel of the evolution of science, for only robust statements and theories would last until an incoming falsification next round. However, falsification will fully be in effect when there are enough clues or facts to be falsified, and, and top of that, it also requires us to absorb inherent metaphysics and axioms, the predefined basic statements non-falsifiable.

Apparently, falsification empirically and theoretically helps well-developed premises to root even deeper and stronger. But how I-School is possibly benefited from falsification is another story. IST, Dr. Jim Thomas asserted, a non pre-existing program, and how could we therefore put a never-existing-before on test on the faith of falsification? A true relief in response to this question is we have to procedurally make a small move and figure out how we can make the fullest use of such falsification. While being interdisciplinary of I-School is being concerned, there is a viable idea to fortify three roots of I-School themselves, I, T, and P, by putting them on “test.” Once theses elementary pieces are well-established, they will be able create a firm gravity for the “grounded one.”

In order to make science to move forward, especially a new science just like I-School interdisciplinary, we cannot traditionally adhere ourselves to only a single school of thought. I-School is practically an integral piece of three perspectives, so we have to not be open to all the criticism from broad knowledge communities, but also absorb the criticism seriously. Often times we find that I-School researches seem a lot like a non-proportionate mixture of I, T, and P. And it would be unfortunately precarious to totally reject those researches since, in order to advance in a new science, we have to relax it and let a new science grow. By this means, we are practicing normal science to cradle I-School.

To establish a lesser known I-School, we should let I-communities to create their space to practice the I-School offers. It is always chaotic for a young science in its beginning phase, and it always takes some time to have it well-established. Furthermore, living in I-School paradigm means that we have to have faith in what we are doing, too, since we have to detach ourselves from using one perspective (out of ITP) to interpret any issue, and it may be problematic in some occasion. So far we can still find that information-technology and people perspectives are competing each other, and many arguments arose from scholarly discourses. Theorizing socio-technical systems and socio-informatics illustrates an attempt to capture and reconcile the interplay between IT and P perspectives.

Socio-technical theory, for example, an approach to complex organizational work design that recognizes the interaction between people and technology in workplaces, is one of the most common theories being taught in I-School. As social scientists painstakingly studied the interplay between IT and P, they were encountering a very hard time to well balance between technical standpoint and social aspect. Ironically, the more they were deepening in the study, the more they were discovering they were by far heavily leaning toward sociology side.

In order to regain the gravity of the interplay between technical standpoint and social aspect, second round was arranged, and the birth was given to socio-informatics. Soon later, socio-informatics scientists found they were just walking down the same history path that socio-informatics scientists had been going through before. For this time, the disposition was toward technical side. Again, the history ran on the same path as did socio-technical theory.

Are the two rounds of an attempt to pursue the interplay between IT and P totally wasted? Absolutely not. All the consequences discovered tell us what we have mistakenly preceded so for. And we are therefore able to develop and deepen our understanding of how our mind could prejudicially be made of. It is quite beyond our perception that what the result of the new round of an attempt to study the interplay would have become. But at least what we can warrant is that we will have been learning a lot more. And this is the reason why we should indulge in our space and continue practicing normal science in I-School. However, we have to surrender to the fact we may inevitably leave alone certain unsolved anomalies, such as unfolding interplay between IT and P sides. I-School’s paradigm is not necessary to explain everything. But it is viable enough to resolve pressing need to approach certain phenomenon.

Under the paradigmatic umbrella of I-School, this does mean that it is suggested that I surrender to the anomalies, but to be living with this ambiguity as we are developing the identity of I-School. Recruiting more fellow to join research community is a way to gain I-School’s visibility over time. Community is profitable not only in making I-School visibly, but also shaping, validating, verifying, and purify I-School’s discipline. It might be possible that I-School is going to outgrowth into many paradigms redundant. Fortuitously, society will ultimately put them on test on the fact of the faith of each paradigm itself. Totally, accepting or rejecting a paradigm is not scientifically exclusive. Rather, it is a social process taking into account community’s consensus, choosing for the best one which could be fitted in and working out at the time.

As we have seen so far, practicing normal science in I-School expedites the growth of its own, for it lets I-communities to tolerate to the indescribable phenomenon, and at the same time nurtures I-School establishment. On the other hand, positivistic falsification helps strengthen firm-established science since falsification process will repeatedly test candidate theories. But falsification is, unfortunately, threatening to a new science because it tends to curtail growth of new science in its infancy.

As I-School is interdisciplinary and relatively new, we have to be open to all the criticisms, from broad research communities. However, digesting these criticisms might be not always helpful if they are potentially going to destabilize the pillar of I-School. The core of I-School should be protected since it is a very key mechanism that moves the science forward. If I-communities overly make a revision of the core according to the criticisms, they might have found they are about to be straying away for their goal, establishing I-School’s identity and to advance in I-School paradigm.

This cautious reminder signifies that we inescapably have to occasionally, deliberately pay less attention to criticisms upon certain anomalistic phenomenon and the core of I-School paradigm. I-School’s paradigm at the beginning might seem unable to provide satisfied facts and respond to the criticisms. But in the long it may prove promising and ultimately collectively clarify all the blind spots, supplying rational answers. As the core’s auxiliary facts are growing, we can these augmented facts to cope with the unanswerable phenomenon. The point, that I would like to point out so far, hereby is to relax our concerns about seeking for responses for critical questions against the core of the I-School.

Notwithstanding other traditional disciplines may challenge the idea against the advantages of protecting the core: How a true evolution of I-School could be developed, how we could say that we are practicing normal science in sage if I-School, and how we could be open-minded if we avoid criticizing the heart of I-School. This implies that we cannot merely practice normal science in I-School, collect all the anomalies appearing in our paradigm, wait until someone notices that the residue anomalies are too large enough to cause a crisis toward a paradigm, and finally realize that we have to seek for a paradigm shift to move forward practicing I-School. If we say so, the evolution of I-School may cost many generations of human life-time since the process of practicing normal science does cyclically take some time.

To free the limitation of practicing normal science in school for advancing in I-School’s discipline, we have to surrender the core of the I-School to be criticized, so the revolution of I-School could be more promising. By compromising the protection of I-School’s core, we can simultaneously adjust our discipline, and make it more open to reflections from research communities at large from relevant disciplines. For example, the case of failure to pursue the interplay between IT and P perspectives (socio-technological systems and socio-informatics) illustrates how we could benefits from openness to a criticism at I-School’s core.

If we prejudicially had rejected the hard criticism again socio-technological system and socio-informatics, we would have had no clues what went wrong with the two theories being pervasively taught in I-School. Another benefit from making I-School’s core open to criticisms is that we can take control over the discipline we created, not letting the discipline take control over us. Although tenacity is a very quality for I-communities to develop identity, it could deviously drive us to nowhere or to the way initially unintended.

To understand what we “should” practice in I-School, we also need to retrospectively consider the history of how the three perspectives emerge and contemplate upon the spirit of interdisciplinary research program. That is, we have to historically examine what is the objective of all the traditional components in our interdisciplinary program by drawing all the relevant premises from the thinkers in the past. Discourses from each discipline and dialogue between disciplines are actually important resources to incubate inter-discipline program in I-School. Utilizing and applying the traditions in new way of thinking can bring a new interpretation of the interaction between each element in the ITP triangle, and therefore we can gain new insight toward the interplay accordingly. Creatively and meaningfully interpreting of basic elementary disciplines gives us a freedom to be indulging in seeking what we can make use of those primers; let’s the tradition speak up for themselves. Freely interpreting the basic elementary disciplines brings about not only applications, but also questions, controversies, and debates that they are about to be bound over time through the filtering process which I-communities select for them.

All things considered, in order to move the I-School forward, I-community is the most important factor. The community must be very strong in order to survey all the challenges. This means we have to recruit superior participants who are able to work harder than those in other traditional disciplines. Participants, in this context, are faculty members, researchers, and students who must be very well-aware that they are about to create a reverberating impact upon a new history of science. They must seek for interpretation of the primers, digest all the criticisms and questions, and shape up I-School’s discipline over time. Moreover, the participants, in order to gain the identity, have to be fervently engaging academic communities to create the space for I-community and to push forward proliferation of what I-School can offer to academic and professional communities. Participants must show that any kind of investments in I-School is promising, and the return will be collectively profitable in long run.

In conclusion, in my opinion, if we really want to see I-School making a move, the first priority pursuit we have to thrive is to seriously adhere to the spirit of the discipline. The second priority is to proactively engage broader research communities at large. And finally, we have to make sure that we ourselves are walking on the right path, and ultimately all the issues regarding the I-School movement will be resolved by their own selves.

(Could we possibly get to know people as who they really?)

Everybody of course has to have a certain form of passion to continue their lives. Academically, hardship of the livers in the less developed countries just inspires me. Solving problems in the LDCs may seem too ambitious. However, I still hope that my the findings from my research could draw policy-makers and the people of the world to pay more attention to those countries and their people. Therefore, regarding the I-T-P triangle, it is obviously that I put more weight into the “P.”

(Life if full of surprises. Let’s pursue whatever you have dreamed.)

Personally, what truly drives me is my imagination which is incredibly wild. Imagination, dream, and hope are good for our lives since they keep us alive to continue our lives. And I have never compromised my imaginations, hopes, and dreams. People with no dreams, imagination, and hopes could live lifelessly and meaninglessly, and I’m absolutely not one of them. I quite absorb everything, especially all of art forms, that has come into my life. I often check my passion everyday, I often review the goals of my life, I always contemplate about my future, and most of the time I just question the meaning of life. It may sounds complicated, but it is just the way I see myself and, thus, the way I see the world.

(“Why am I here?” Have you ever had such a question?)

(Working as a faculty at Bangkok University, 1)

(Working as a faculty at Bangkok University, 2)

(Working as a management at Siam Commercial Bank)

Living in Thailand, one of the less developed countries in the world, I have continuously been being inspired by many problems (and opportunities) in my own countries. In the last 30 years, there have been dramatic changes in Thailand’s journey on economic development path. The majority of the changes are presumably derived from appearances of FDI-led multinational companies (MNCs). There fore, my research foci are on impacts of software offshore outsourcing in developing countries, the influence and impact of FDI-led technological spillovers toward host countries in less developed countries (LDCs), conceiving effective ICT policies in developing countries while my hobbies are Physics, Philosophy, and HCI. I intensively take on cultural and economic factors as tools in my research. There are many significant factors which negatively withhold LDCs from thriving in their social and economic development. Only looking at economic factors is similar to looking at the tip of an ice berg. With this regard, investigating in the cultural value situated is a very comprehensive means to discover the uncharted problems in LDCs.

(In IST521 class at Penn State)

(Walking on my own path)

“It’s just my life. I always invent my own way of living. I follow no one, and I never expect anyone to follow me. I, a free-spirit liver.”

“I can’t do anything halfway, for I believe that people should live life to the fullest and get what they deserve, no more, no less.”

“I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I don’t have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.”

(I sketch my own life)

Basically, I consider myself as an introvert, laconic, word-saving person. In the club, you may find me sitting by myself escorted with an empty seat overshadowed. Well, but I’m pleased to chat or share a conversion with anybody anyway. The reason why I tend not to speak may be because I believe that actions speak louder than words. So, I let my actions speak for myself.

(Intrinsically different me)

I am an INFP person (introverted, intuitive, feeling, and perceiving). Most of the time, I don’t speak but think and contemplate. I pretty much isolate myself from the world. In fact, I have developed my own world ever since I was very young, taking into account I am the only child in my family. However, my world is very intricate, and my imagination is very wild.

I am not traditional. I am not conventional. When I was in college, I was not a big fan of classrooms. When I was working, I was not able to continue doing jobs I didn’t like. Now, I am in a graduate school; however, I cannot write up a research paper when I feel I am not really into it and I cannot complete assignment when I feel I am not really in the mood.

People have different goals in their lives. Often time, I have seen many Ph.D. students study all day all night just to finish Ph.D. program. Frankly, I just cannot do so. For me, health always comes first, experiencing the beauty of life comes second, and studying comes last. Some people criticize my lifestyle; I just don’t care.

I have no apologies and I have no regrets for everything that I have done in the past. I never recall my mistakes in the past to just undermine my future. And, when I come to discuss something, I would like to discuss in idea level: small-minded person discusses people, the medium-minded person discusses issues, and the big-minded person discusses ideas. And I don’t judge people based on their appearances, but on their ideas basis.

(The person that I love the most in the world: Mom)