Rationale

ICT has reached a critical limit which is not intrinsic to ICT but to its users. Such limit is the human ability to absorb information, produce knowledge, and manage activities.

There seem to be little value in providing more information, and services to ICT users unless we make sure that those information and services are supplied in a manner that improves the quality of people life, supports efficiency in activities, allows meaningful access for the widest possible set of users, and for those with special needs in particular.

The next generation of ICT must be based on a deeper understanding of human limited cognitive capabilities, and of attention as the set of processes that manage the allocation of such limited resources. We must understand how physical, perceptual, motivational, emotional, social, and cultural factors influence such processes. It is on the basis of this knowledge that future ICTs can be accurately adapted to human users.

We believe that this networking session will give us the opportunity to reach a wide European audience in order to address these issues with a truly multidisciplinary and multicultural prospective. This session would also give us the opportunity to work towards the identification of those research domains and application areas that are either most promising (high impact results can be obtained with a limited effort) or most critical (innovative solutions must be found in order to solve hard-pressing problems).