SOCIALLY AWARE COMPUTING

Abstract

Initiatives towards the definition of grandresearch challenges have been undertaken for severalscientific domains in countries with long scientific tradition,such as the USA and Great Britain. The Brazilian ComputerSociety organized a first workshop on Grand Challenges inComputer Science Research in Brazil, for the years 2006-2016. One of the five resulted Challenges is Participativeand Universal Access to Knowledge for the BrazilianCitizen. This challenge brings to attention Ed Lee’sstatement from the 34th IEEE Computer SocietyInternational Conference: “Neither a computer nor theteaching of computer science has any value or meaningoutside of its impact on people”. The goal of this Challengeis to break barriers that hamper access to technology andinteraction possibilities, especially in developing countries.This paper sheds light to the various dimensions of thisChallenge, illustrated by underway Projects and discussesimplications for the Computer Science and Engineeringcurricula.

Index Terms - computer science research challenges,design for all, socio-technical systems.