CSCW 2024 Workshop

Envisioning New Futures of Positive Social Technology: Beyond Paradigms of Fixing, Protecting, and Preventing

Sunday, November 10th, 2024, 9am-5pm

Workshop Proposal

Overview

Social technology research today largely focuses on mitigating the negative impacts of technology and, therefore, often misses the potential of technology to enhance human connections and well-being. However, we see a potential to shift towards a holistic view of social technology's impact on human flourishing. We introduce Positech, a shift toward leveraging social technologies to support and augment human flourishing.

This workshop is organized around three themes to address this:
1) "Exploring Relevant and Adjacent Research" to define and widen the Positech scope with insights from related fields,
2) "Drawing the Landscape of PosiTech" for participants to outline the domain’s key aspects and
3) "Envisioning the Future of Positech," anchored around strategic planning towards a sustainable research community.

Ultimately, this workshop will serve as a platform to shift the narrative of social technology research towards a more positive, human-centric approach. It will foster research that goes beyond fixing technologies to protect humans from harm, to also pursue enriching human experiences and connections through technology.

Key Information

https://cscw.acm.org/2024/

Submission Deadline: August 20th, 2024
Notification of acceptance: September 24th, 2024
Workshop date: November 10th, 2024
Workshop location: In Person
Contact: positech.research@gmail.com

Call for Participation

Submit (by Aug. 20th) >

We will invite 25-30 individuals interested in the positive use of technology for human flourishing to participate in our in-person-format workshop. Submissions are welcomed in several forms:

Position papers or drafts (2-6 pages, ACM single-column format, excluding references) discussing themes of the workshop.
"Encore" submissions of relevant conference or journal papers.
Extended abstract for initial research ideas that include themes of the workshop (1-3 pages, ACM single-column format, excluding references).
Statements of research interest (up to 2 pages, ACM single-column format, excluding references).

Submissions are subject to a light review process for fit. While participants will get a brief chance to introduce themselves and their work, the majority of workshop time is spent on separate discussions and activities.

Workshop Agenda

Time	Activity and Description
9:00-10:00am	Welcome and Attendee Introduction:
10:00-10:20am	Coffee Break
10:20-11:20am	Panel: Positech Histories and Influences
11:20-12:00pm	*Discussion:* Positech Boundaries and Overlaps
12:00-1:30pm	Lunch Break
1:30-2:50pm	*Brainstorm, Share, Synthesize:* Positech Challenges and Promising Directions
2:50-3:10pm	Coffee Break
3:10-3:50pm	*Brainstorm, Share:* How to Support Positech Research
3:50-4:40pm	*Brainstorm, Share:* Positech Community Futures
4:40-5:00pm	Closing
6:30pm	(Optional) Dinner Social Event

We aim to come away from the workshop with two main takeaways:

Positech Syllabus: a collaboratively-constructed syllabus for a hypothetical course aimed at upper-level undergraduates or graduate students on Positech. This syllabus will outline the course's overview and motivation, feature 8-15 weekly themes covering various Positech aspects, include recommended weekly readings, and detail assignments such as projects and reading responses. We will share the result on our website as a resource for the wider community. (Developed during first two discussions, including insights from the panel.)
Positech Community Plan: a set of steps to develop and maintain a community of researchers engaged in the Positech vision. This will include ideas for maintaining communication between attendees, facilitating discovery for newcomers to the area, and ways to connect members with support within the community. (Developed during last two discussions.)