Will making the world better through ICT make the IS field better off?

W alsham (2012) proposes a new research agenda that is intended to unify and energize the field of IS, and motivate new entrants. This agenda is rooted in the vision of making a better world through ICT. Walsham devotes a considerable portion of his opinion piece to advocating for an extension of the ‘world’ that IS researchers consider legitimate; however, his emphasis on criticality, design science and ICT for economic and social development suggests that he has something much more profound in mind than merely expanding the field’s phenomenological, theoretical and methodological boundaries. In my reading, Walsham seeks to get the IS discipline to take responsibility for making a better world and to not be content with (mere) contributions to knowledge. While I applaud this agenda’s intent to make IS research more critical and ethical, I have two concerns with regard to implementing Walsham’s proposal. The first relates to our ability, as an academic field, to direct and control the uses and implications of our research (i.e., the ‘make’ part of the agenda). The second relates to our ability to unify behind a vision of what a more desirable world looks like (i.e., the ‘better’ part of the agenda). Can an academic discipline hold itself accountable for making the world a better place? A recent case of virological research on bird flu, specifically the H5N1 virus, illustrates the potential misalignment between knowledge production (describing ‘what is’) and making the world a better place (determining ‘what ought to be’). Researchers from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, USA, and Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, developed a strain of H5N1 that accelerated the spread of the bird flu virus among ferrets and submitted papers describing their findings. However, given that the virus is one of the deadliest for humans, the US government, in December 2011, asked the journals Nature and Science not to publish the complete details of the experiments that led to the engineered virus mutation. The government feared that the recipe could fall into the wrong hands and lead to the creation of a bioweapon. This attempt at censorship led to considerable debate. On the one hand, the researchers’ experiments were motivated by a desire to understand the virus better in order to develop vaccines ahead of the virus’ natural ability to mutate. Denying other researchers access to the details of the study would likely slow the development of such countermeasures, making the world worse off. On the other hand, the development of a bioweapon would most likely create an infinitely worse world. Thus, a moral dilemma was created. In IS research, a similar situation might arise with regard to the use of data mining and social network analysis. While these tools are used by the military to identify terrorist cells and identify potential terror suspects – thereby supposedly leading to a better world – the same tools may be used by terrorists to avoid detection or to make their attacks more effective. Similarly, insights about organizing using digital media can be used by freedom fighters, terrorists and oppressive governments alike, each with presumably significantly different implications for the world that is created. Walsham’s proposal thus raises several questions: Should the IS research agenda be limited to just phenomena that are unlikely to attract nefarious uses? While decisions about the expected value of a study are typically made at the level of the individual researchers, how should they be made at the community or field level? Who should decide, based on its potential impact on the world, whether a study is legitimately part of the IS field or not? And how should such decisions be made? My second concern is the following: Visions of what a better world looks like are just as likely to divide as unite a community. One need to only look at the political debates currently surrounding the 2012 elections for the Republican presidential candidate in the United States. Some social conservatives believe, based on their interpretation of the Bible, that an America without female contraception, legal abortion and gay marriage would constitute a better and more moral world. Needless to say, liberals of multiple religious convictions vehemently argue that such a world would make America worse off, both economically and socially. Applying this argument to the IS context, consider the issue of IT-enabled global outsourcing. It is evident that this practice creates winners and losers. While some corporations Journal of Information Technology (2012) 27, 108–109 & 2012 JIT Palgrave Macmillan All rights reserved 0268-3962/12