By: Otthein Herzog
Edna Pasher, and how she introduced Sociology into “hard” Computer Science projects
Some years ago, together with some colleagues I was preparing an EU proposal for an big Integrated Project on Wearable Computing and its applications in work processes. So we invited a lot of research groups and interested enterprises to put together a consortium (which eventually turned out to grow to 42 partners). Most of them were associated to Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, and some application areas, but one basically stuck out: it was Edna’s group that finally convinced us – I admit after some initial hesitation on the technologists’ side – that even the best technology could not be successfully introduced to its users without taking inter-human relationships into account. Needless to say: the project became a huge success with such a holistic look at the technology and its applications – thanks to Edna and her Associates!
Otthein Herzog
Bremen and Shanghai