Last changed 10 Jan 1998 ............... Length about 900 words (6000 bytes).
This is a WWW document by Steve Draper, installed at http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/talks/whyfund.html. You may copy it. How to refer to it.

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Why should taxpayers fund HCI research?

Announcement of a GIST debate

There will be a GIST debate on Thur 18 Dec. 1997, 4pm, conference room, 17 Lilybank Gardens. (How to get there.) Afterwards we are invited for drinks and snacks at Chris Johnson's home. The result is shown here.

The debate is on "Why should taxpayers fund HCI research?", and will be attended by anyone who wants, including Nigel Birch from EPSRC (he chaired a panel on this at HCI'97), and Anne Anderson who is director of the ESRC cognitive engineering research programme. (They have both indicated they plan to attend.)

It's important because we are being asked to justify funding, and so far I think we are all rubbish at it. I think we can justify it, but we haven't had the practice and need to work at it. If we don't do it, why should anyone else? If there is no justification, why should we get any money?

Provisional debate plan

Bring along rebuttals of negative arguments, and brand new reasons to fund HCI.

Web documents on this

Steve Draper