The Center for Information, Technology & Society  

CITS

The CyberTrail our Center travels is one that helps mankind make the best of life in ways that economic market forces neglect.  So our focus is on furthering K-12 education, fostering innovation, and furthering human values which cannot (or are not) monetized.

Begun as the Program on Information, Technology & Society at MIT, CITS has been a charitable nonprofit since 1986 -- dedicated to improving human communications.  In 2003, the program returned to MIT via a formal affiliation with the MIT Media Comparative Studies Program.  (Please see http://web.mit.edu/priest/www/ )

To become a member of the Cyberspace Society please click Here, register with "Topica" and  join Cyberspace Society (you will receive no spam from Topica).  The discussion list includes about 100 people talking about things that matter to the future of cyberspace

Recently we have invented a way to link K-12 learners with mentors via the web.  Visit the Mentor-Matcher Slide Show and  for our recent paper presented at the AACE (Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education) International conference in Montreal, click on Building Worldwide Mentoring Tools: Content Analysis of Visited Web Page and Matching. (requires an Acrobat reader)

In prior work we created the first database-driven web support system for Community Volunteerism.  To learn more and take the "tour" please click Here. (sorry, currently inactive as we change sites).  If you have an NT Server you can simply download the software.  Or, if you wish us to sponsor your community, please click Here and enter "Sponsor our Community" in the subject line (if you wish to acquire both the HTML and the NT4/NT5 compliant Active Server Page plug-in -- Virtuflex -- please e-mail us.)

Dr. Priest has long awaited the arrival of the Internet which he anticipated in his 1972 doctoral dissertation, The Need and Value of Restructuring Human Communications Systems.  In 1996, Newsweek described Dr. Priest as a CyberEducator and as one of fifty people who mattered most on the Internet.

CITS is a member of LINCT, Learning and Information for Community - via Technology.  LINCT provides home computers through "learn and earn" programs.  LINCT will provide any community with the tools needed to promote:

• Forums and Chat (drop-in tools for your own community web site)

• Access to eLearningSpace (see below) to facilitate learning amongst K-12 students

• NewDeal School Suite for donated PCs that includes wordprocessing, web browsing, and other Microsoft "Works-like" tools (at no cost to LINCT members)    

• Webbed-TimeDollar Administration (currently not available due to site transition, described above) in combination with a Time Dollar Auction site where learners can redeem learning credits for surplus merchandise

• Welfare to Work programs that really work, providing low income people with the opportunity to learn and earn computers and, as a result, become gainfully employed

• Cross-Age Peer Mentoring (developed in cooperation with the Time Dollar  Institute)

• The ability to create "student learning portfolios" which aids teachers and parents in assessing a student's progress

CITS works closely with EPIE (Educational Products Information Exchange) on K-12 education.  See, for example, Creating Learning Communities -- a report on the use of technology in schools (and homes) which whole states have adopted as part of their technology plans.  CITS and EPIE have developed a web database of over 20,000 K-12 educational software references for member states such as Utah and Massachusetts.  Available, also via CD please e-mail EPIE for a modest cost. 

Another activity of CITS and EPIE is the creation of eLearningSpace.  While under major construction, eLearningSpace provides a place for students or teachers to evaluate learning resources, links to many math and science learning web pages,  a visit to  the "Invention Factory" and e-Mentoring.  We have developed web-Tracker - Mentor/Matcher  (to see the paper, click on the Mentor-Matcher link; for the slides, click on 'Slide Show').  Web tracker follows what a learner finds on the Internet, gives him or her the opportunity to comment about how useful it was, and the learner earns credits for learning on the Web which can be exchanged in a Time Dollar Store Auction Site.  Mentor-Matcher extends Web-Tracker by connecting the learner with an online mentor whose skills match the contents of the web page the learner is currently viewing.  By starting with AOL's Instant Messenger and using advanced text matching software, the inventory of mentors is consulted by Web-Tracker and the mentor and learner are put into a chat session within seconds.  If both parties have a high speed connection, they can use NetMeeting for whiteboard, the sharing of learning materials, audio, and video.  (The child safety of such content-directed communications is an issue.  We have several solutions.)

Our current interests include the discipline by which to define and build "learning objects."  On November 3, 2004, Ken Komoski and I presented a paper at AACE (Association for the Advancement of Computing in Technology -- Advancing Knowledge & Learning with Information Technology Worldwide).  See this seminal paper on architectural issues, A Condensation and Review of Various "Learning Object" Activities and Efforts.  For further drafts see the Object-One Blog.

To view earlier articles and reports by CITS please click Here.  Specifically, we get good feedback on The Character of Information which we wrote in support of Intellectual Property Rights in an Age of Electronics and Information (U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment).

Dr. Priest also pioneered in what is now called peer-to-peer knowledge networking systems.  As President of Humanic Systems he developed an early working prototype in 1987 where knowledge from one person's (e-mail) folder is put into another's folder via telecommunications.  The details of the design are described in a patent awarded in 1989.

In our interest in furthering technological innovation (see our co-authored book, Technological Innovation for a Dynamic Economy), Dr. Priest is Coordinator of Advanced Innovative Projects at the Charles River Museum of Industry.  Formed as a museum for artifacts from the Waltham Watch Factory, the Museum houses the American Innovation Institute.  Interested in how live video access to museum artifacts can serve innovation, see www.muse-cam.org.

To find articles about our concerns about the mounting national debt and the economy please click Here to find over 60 CITS DEBT WATCH newsletters and comments from our readers.

More recent issues are more often found Here

To find other articles related to communication and the media, and the politics of cyberspace click Here.  (to further limit the search to a subject of interest, please add a topic in the search box in the upper left on the page that appears, separated by the "and."  For example, "and media."

And about our sister organization, Humanic Systems click 

The Director of CITS is Dr. W. Curtiss Priest (e-mail)