As We May Remember

摘要

By now, many retrospectives have been offered on Rob Kling. Some have focused on personal and professional reflections about what motivated his intellectual pursuit and shaped his socio-technical perspective. Others have looked carefully at the whole 'package' of Rob's work as a legacy of scholarly publications and a community of connected researchers who care about informatics and social worlds. His own characterization of his lifelong project was as an institution builder devoted to illuminating analytically understandings of the complex relationships between the design and use of advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the character of social life in settings where people use them. Many remembrances note that Rob was an idealist. His achievements, impressive and laudable as they were, have not yet produced a discipline as inclusive and socially realistic, nor an ICT-infused world that is as socially equitable, as Rob would have wished for. Our purpose in this short paper is to remember Rob as we knew him - warts and all - in our personal and professional lives. We have drawn together a series of historical links to events and influences that we know about to explain his approach, motivations, personal style and intellectual biases.