Introduction

This article aims at bringing to light the key role played by the information processing sciences, especially as regards their recent evolution, in the development of an interdisciplinary approach in scientific research. To this end I adopt a systemic view that encompasses the following points:

1. the places, moments and forms of interaction between humans and technical artefacts are increasing, leading to a reconsideration of the status conferred to technical systems, their users and their environments;
2. new objects of study, new research goals, emerge at the same time, challenging disciplinary boundaries;
3. multiple viewpoints are thus developed, which will gradually become part of the new trends of explanation, modeling and confrontation brought about by the information sciences;
4. lastly, new instruments of collective practices arise, which are capable of profoundly changing the approaches of interdisciplinary work.

Ever Increasing Interactions between Humans and Technical Artefacts

While the places, forms and moments of connection between technical artefacts and humans increase, new tensions arise that deeply question the status itself of technical systems, humans, their environment and their relationship.

New methods for recording information increasingly call on our sensory, perceptive and interpretive faculties; new methods for distributing information contribute to the weaving of social bonds around new, not purely utilitarian, values; and lastly, new methods of use lead to the development of hybrid realities that intertwine humans with technical artefacts. One thus slides from information technology towards knowledge technology; from the search for performance to the search for meaning; from the principle of intelligibility to the principle of integration, from the communicational paradigm towards the analysis of the mediations that are established within networks, and which participate in the emergence of new communities.

New tensions also arise. As the possibilities of observation and measurement expand, increasing the amount of information to manage, it becomes more and more difficult to determine the contexts of operation and use, and to construct the know-how and corpus of knowledge needed for its utilization. Even the legitimacy of certain forms of knowledge—more specifically, the principles of explanation and causality which form the basis of the conception of technical artefacts—is brought into question when confronted with a rationality that’s presented as both situated and multiple: the main trait of both immediate experience and the situation; a trait intertwined with the dimensions of subjectivity, intentionality, and the implicit; a spatio-temporal anchor of memory and knowledge. In short, the foundations of organization—i.e., norms and rules—and the foundations of production—i.e., principles of re-use and evaluation—are brought into question by the need to confront the compartmentalization of knowledge and guarantee the plurality of expression; by the need to confront change and assure responsiveness, to leave a place for incompleteness, considered as the driver of interaction; and the need to consider organization as implied by dynamic processes of regulation and learning.

In this context it seems necessary to revise the status ascribed to humans, non-humans and their environments, and more fundamentally to rethink the dynamics of their interrelations by considering the technical system, not in terms of a “simple” interface or “pure” tool of communication, but as a mediator of human activity in its biological, cognitive and social dimensions.

It is particularly worthwhile recalling the necessary anchoring of the technical in the human: as Laurent Gille [6] notes, “one cannot think of technological innovation without thinking of the human conditions for its appropriation and emergence.” In a dual perspective, one cannot think of the evolution of human knowledge either without thinking about the role of technical mediations in the principles of it appropriation and evolution.

It is thus worth developing an integrated view of the relationships between humans and technical artefacts, which leads us to consider the interdependent chains that link the biological, cognitive and social dimensions of humans, that link the material and informational dimensions of the conception and use of technical artefacts, and, lastly, that link human acts, technical acts and the construction of knowledge.

Making progress in understanding these issues means developing a strong interdisciplinarity. Such interdisciplinarity cannot be spelled out in terms of specifications from computer science models, nor in terms of a human/non-human comparison: it puts into play new objects of study, new scientific ends, which shift disciplinary spaces.

New Scientific Ends

The Department of Information and Communication Science and Technology at CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in France has created a new form of scientific networks: the “Thematic pluridisciplinary networks” (RTP) as a tool to investigate and monitor the new trends of research emerging in this field (the complete list of the RTP networks is available on the CNRS site). Some of these new trends are briefly evocated in what follows.

The development of virtual- or enhanced-reality interfaces and the appearance of so-called “immersive” environments require greater understanding of the sensorimotor bases of human cognition. Cognitive production itself is modified, as well as the modes of social interaction, and the questions of situated action, collective action and the construction of meaning present themselves in a new way. The possibilities of communication open up at the same time and become gestural and iconic. Understanding the phenomena of the construction of meaning and reference, of the effects of pragmatics, at the cognitive and social level becomes essential.

The digitalization of texts, images and sounds, their utilization and their technologies of production opens up new perspectives in terms of access to cultural and artistic works, and in terms of greater appreciation of the cultural heritage. The tools of knowledge engineering, of the knowledge domains’ terminology and linguistics, as well as intentional, collaborative and social models of information research, are increasingly being used. A new context opens up at the same time for the study of art and artistic activities. This is also a revolution of the technical infrastructure of the culture industries, a decisive element in economic development. The development of models, tools and infrastructures that help promote the spread and sharing of knowledge makes an essential contribution to the improvement of education and training programs and, more generally, to human learning.

Due to the increasing penetration of technology in all sectors of society and life, the questions of acceptability, ergonomics and use are given a central place. The inclusion of concerns over use in the process of the conception and development of information services and communication becomes crucial, and is tied with developing possibilities for cooperative, computer-aided work. Information and communication technologies play an important role in the economy and organization of work, and become a driving force for the evolution of organizations and greater economic competitiveness. This movement is accompanied by new modes of forming and regulating both human groups and the governance of these groups, which leads to new means of social control: questions of law, security, and the respect of freedoms must be considered with revived interest. Their formalization, their accessibility, the impact on the development of new forms of participation and decision-making and on the renewal of the democratic debate must be studied.

A Place for Learning Plurality

Just as the Internet induces us to think of information as a flow with a plurality of contexts, research on the network similarly forces us to think of science as a dynamic enterprise with a plurality of referents.

A pluralist view of the basic notions of information, cognition, action and interaction is part of this approach, which increases the dimensions and referents of its analysis.

Pluralist views are thus developed, which will gradually become fixed elements of the new trends of explanation and modeling brought about by the information processing sciences.

Practicing interdisciplinarity means taking advantage of this plurality; it means guaranteeing the diffusion of ideas and the mobility of concepts. This can’t mean assimilating the other to another like oneself, or relying upon an assumed correspondence of concepts and theories [3]; nor can it mean limiting the other to the “supposed” levels of discourse of their intervention, or refusing that they enter our own fields out of fear of the questions that necessarily arise. Instead, practicing interdisciplinarity implies “a desire for an alliance that leads to the explication of positions and models, and that promotes the recognition and development of multiple and complementary referents according to which the positions and models will in turn be clarified and critiqued in a new way: a desire for an alliance in which one uses the other to teach him or her about one’s subject in order to better understand the meaning of what one’s doing by recognizing the choice upon which one proceeds” [4].

At the center of this movement one finds those models that “have no meaning when considered in isolation, but only as part of the game of relationships within the quadruplet: {problematic, theory, model, phenomenal domain}” [1].

Interdisciplinary cooperation thus implies anchoring the necessary efforts of mutual explication within the dynamic caused by the interrelationships of these elements, as opposed to considering them in isolation, as disembodied.

In fact, according to Bruno Bachimont, “theoretic research cannot be interdisciplinary…The objects of study of one theoretic discipline are the objects constructed from an ideal and abstract viewpoint. This ideal and abstract viewpoint by definition abolishes the properties and traits of the reality that cannot be integrated as part of it in order to better isolate the relevant traits and theorize about them. Consequently, a discipline is constituted only by abolishing others…”.

Moreover, models play an essential role in the process of constructing and formalizing interdisciplinary objects, serving as a kind of pivot point between theoretic reflections and experimental practices: “modeling is a particularly relevant and fruitful method in this process…due to the demand for rigor that it brings…It also makes it possible to simulate alternatives, to explore larger scales of time, to legitimize conditions of use by specifying the valid domain of the results” [9].

The information processing sciences have an essential role to play here, “which contributes to the conception and creation of artificial systems that allow users to represent themselves, to understand and intervene upon a certain reality…” [5]. They offer, by way of engineering, a pragmatic view on the theories by making it possible to evaluate their range of application as well as their dimensions of re-utilization and generality [10].

Concepts produced this way are characterized by their operative character, and it’s the “object’s finality, its internal characteristics and the environment in which it’s placed” that are of interest [10]. Lastly, knowledge does not precede action here, “it is co-constructed in action by researchers interacting with other actors” [9].

Knowledge thus becomes “actionable”, legible by the domain’s actors, a source for understandable, appropriable, and shareable models [12]. This is the project of knowledge engineering, whose basic principles is an interventionist stance towards the practice of actors. This stance ultimately leads one to consider the organizational aspects of their activity, postulating that “the model to be constructed and the conception of the model are thrown into the organizational system and are an integral part of the organization” [12].

In this way encounters can be forged around projects being finalized, that are still open to experimentation, around “a kind of modeling that’s constructed and critiqued as an interpretation and representation of observed processes” [11], around models whose conception “postulates a certain form of indetermination and rejects all forms of reductionism, dogmatism and exclusive logic, models that reciprocally question one another in order to suggest new modeling efforts” [4].

Finally, we consider three levels on which interdisciplinary comparisons are made: the level of theories, models and experimental practice. The field in which they are carried out is made up by the pair: {end (or problematic), experimental domain}.

These entities are set in play in the very heart of a dynamic of complex interrelationships following the operative scientific practices, and their articulation within customary scientific practice already constitutes a challenge:

• because of the reductionism inherent to every scientific activity, whose effect is to broaden the gap between the hoped-for end and the actual result: this reductionism can be carried out in all stages of the analysis, from theoretic study to experimental implementation;
• because of the existence of implicit assumptions that are capable of introducing bias at all levels of the process;
• because of improper attributions of meaning (especially over-interpretation of experimental results) that cover up the reality of the work undertaken.

One frequently comes across a partial interdisciplinary approach, which restricts disciplines to certain areas or certain moments of intervention (providing problems, theories, data…). This most often leads to the development of “ancillary” or “instrumental” forms [8] of partnership, and gives rise to relationships of allegiance or dependence, restricting disciplines to a supposed domain of intervention or competence. It’s also worth developing its strong forms, that of “forging alliances in order to think jointly about technical artefacts, to think jointly about the architecture of networks that integrate humans and non-humans” [8].

It’s thus a matter of opposing an approach that seeks to use other disciplines for producing data, models or theories, and to limit the time and place of their intervention. Instead, the aim of real interdisciplinary cooperation is bringing together different skills. The driving force of such a dynamic is the search for real multidisciplinarity. But this isn’t decreed: it’s instead established on the basis of ruptures and perceived imbalances [7]. If the proposed schema of interdisciplinary interactions makes it possible to organize the modes of the interdisciplinary encounter, it does not replace the basis of this dynamic, which would be the construction of shared scientific questioning. This is not reducible to the announcement of answers or solutions; to the contrary, it’s more precisely translated as the search for ruptures and obstacles, as the awareness of a lack that in turn leads to the emergence of a common search. These ruptures, these obstacles, constitute the intermediate ends that cannot be established at the outset nor posited a priori, but which instead will be “discovered” and constructed during the process involving the actors and their interactions. A research field that’s completely apart can at this point be put into play: the one concerning “collective distributed practices” and their new instruments [13], and which constitutes the last anchoring point of the systemic view proposed.

The only question now is whether the information processing sciences, with these new tools, are able to join this search for interdisciplinarity.

Acknowledgments

I’m very grateful to Bruno Bachimont, Nicolas Balacheff, Henri Prade and Régine Teulier for having read earlier versions of this article and for having provided comments.

References

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