The University of California Transliteracies Project and UC Santa Barbara Social Computing Group announce the “Social Computing in 2020” Bluesky Innovation Competition. What will social computing technologies and practices be like in the year 2020?

• Eligible: Undergraduate or graduate students anywhere in the world.


• Awards: 1st prize, $3000 USD; 2nd prize, $1000, 3rd prize, $500.


• Submission Format: Description of an idea + Imaginative realization, embodiment, or illustration of the idea in a variety of possible formats (e.g., an essay, story, script, application sketch, fictional business plan, etc.).


• Deadline: January 30, 2009.


• Full Competition Announcement: Guidelines & Submission Details

Students from any discipline—humanities, arts, social sciences, computer science, engineering, etc.—are encouraged to apply. The competition emphasizes visionary, thoughtful, or critical concepts rather than technical knowledge as such.

For more information, see the full competition announcement. Inquiries may be directed by email to socialcomputing@lsmail.ucsb.edu

In 2008-2009, Transliteracies continues to pursue its turn in the direction of “social computing” issues by bringing its three research working groups (Social Computing, History of Reading, New Reading Interfaces) into conjunction around the topic of the collective dimensions of information, reading, and annotation. Research activities this year include:

• Planning and working meetings of the research working groups (including the graduate-student Bluesky Group associated with the Social Computing Group)
• The Bluesky Innovation Competition on “Social Computing in 2020”
• High-priority research reports on current humanities and other text-mining initiatives with an eye on suggesting additional social-computing functionality
• Development of a plan for a graduate research and training program in social computing
• A possible design workshop or charette related to the relation between expert knowledge (e.g., scholarly knowledge) and networked public knowledge (e.g., Wikipedia).
• Additional lectures and workshops.

• Possible collaboration with the Canadian Public Knowledge Project and or INKE.

  Current general-purpose planning documents include:

• Planning slides for Transliteracies activities in 2008-2009 (year-four-plan-short.pdf)
• Planning timeline for 2008-2009 (planning-timeline-2008-2009.doc)

• High-priority research report topics (high-priority-research-report-topics.doc)