Kristo Ivanov (born 1937-10-20) is a Swedish-Brazilian information scientist and systems scientist of ethnic Bulgarian origin. He is professor emeritus at the Department of

informatics Informatics is the study of computational systems, especially those for data storage and retrieval. According to ACM ''Europe and'' '' Informatics Europe'', informatics is synonymous with computer science and computing as a profession, in which t ...

Umeå University Umeå University ( sv, Umeå universitet; Ume Sami: ) is a public research university located in Umeå, in the mid-northern region of Sweden. The university was founded in 1965 and is the fifth oldest within Sweden's present borders. As of ...

in Sweden.

Biography

Ivanov was born in

Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; names in other languages) is the capital and largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. Nearly 1,166,763 mi ...

in the

Kingdom of Yugoslavia The Kingdom of Yugoslavia ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Kraljevina Jugoslavija, Краљевина Југославија; sl, Kraljevina Jugoslavija) was a state in Southeast and Central Europe that existed from 1918 until 1941. From 191 ...

, but grew up and was educated in Italy and Brazil. In 1961 he moved to Sweden, where he worked as an electronic engineer in the telecommunications and computer industries, with assignments in France and the USA. In 1972 he obtained a PhD degree in informatics at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences of the

Royal Institute of Technology The KTH Royal Institute of Technology ( sv, Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, lit=Royal Institute of Technology), abbreviated KTH, is a public research university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH conducts research and education in engineering and technolog ...

and

Stockholm University Stockholm University ( sv, Stockholms universitet) is a public research university in Stockholm, Sweden, founded as a college in 1878, with university status since 1960. With over 33,000 students at four different faculties: law, humanities, ...

. He has conducted further studies in political economy, business administration, and statistics, and obtained a degree in psychology at

Lund University , motto = Ad utrumque , mottoeng = Prepared for both , established = , type = Public research university , budget = SEK 9 billion His study led to positions at

and

Linköping University Linköping University (, LiU) is a public research university based in Linköping, Sweden. Originally established in 1969, it was granted full university status in 1975 and is one of Sweden's largest academic institutions. The university has fou ...

. In 1984 he was appointed to a chair as full professor of informatics at

. He is professor emeritus since 2002. From 1991 to 2004 he was a scientific advisor to the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen). In 1997 he was "president-elect" of ISSS, the

International Society for the Systems Sciences The International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) is a worldwide organization for systems sciences. The overall purpose of the ISSS is: :"to promote the development of conceptual frameworks based on general system theory, as well as their ...

, a position which he later had to relinquish because of other demanding duties.

Work

In his research and teaching, Ivanov focused initially on the application of systems theory to information systems and especially on practical problems of quality-control of information in industrial databases. More specifically, his early work concentrated on the issue of accuracy and precision of databases as they are related to system development and maintenance, where the systems approach is done in terms of socially framed technical systems, conceived as a further development of the "Berkeley school" in the tradition of professor C. West Churchman. The following are some notable ideas in Ivanov's work which eventually lead to ethical and theological organizational issues with consequences for practical applications. In order to clarify these ideas, they will be illustrated with references to Ivanov's own work and to literature upon which it relies.

Quality-control of information

This was the subject of the doctoral dissertation. It resulted in widened definitions of information accuracy and precision, that are grounded in the philosophy of science, especially theory of measurement or

metrology Metrology is the scientific study of measurement. It establishes a common understanding of units, crucial in linking human activities. Modern metrology has its roots in the French Revolution's political motivation to standardise units in Fran ...

, and its elusive but extremely important concept of error, in order to make them applicable to technical systems which are framed in a social context. Quality of data is then seen as the degree of agreement between judgments of data obtained after periodical monitored negotiations in the context of maximum possible disagreement. For this purpose, the definition of data itself, i.e. data elements and data structures in a systems context, was widened to conceive data as information and knowledge. This part of Ivanov's work parallels, and can be seen as a theoretical contribution to ''

groupthink Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness ...

'', to the ''

wisdom of crowds ''The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations'', published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups ...

'' and the Wiki-idea itself. It required, however, some reservations for problems of social psychology as implied by ''the study of popular mind''. Its conclusions appear to be relevant also for general

data quality Data quality refers to the state of qualitative or quantitative pieces of information. There are many definitions of data quality, but data is generally considered high quality if it is "fit for tsintended uses in operations, decision making and ...

information quality Information quality (IQ) is the quality of the content of information systems. It is often pragmatically defined as: "The fitness for use of the information provided". IQ frameworks also provides a tangible approach to assess and measure DQ/IQ in ...

accuracy and precision Accuracy and precision are two measures of ''observational error''. ''Accuracy'' is how close a given set of measurements ( observations or readings) are to their '' true value'', while ''precision'' is how close the measurements are to each ot ...

, and ''control of control'', the theoretical framework for democratic security and auditing of

audit An audit is an "independent examination of financial information of any entity, whether profit oriented or not, irrespective of its size or legal form when such an examination is conducted with a view to express an opinion thereon.” Auditing ...

whose importance become obvious in times of financial and political crisis when systemic concepts of effectiveness and progress are put into question. In particular, the concept of quality-control of information contributed to the theoretical base of the so-called Scandinavian school of

participatory design Participatory design (originally co-operative design, now often co-design) is an approach to design attempting to actively involve all stakeholders (e.g. employees, partners, customers, citizens, end users) in the design process to help ensure t ...

as related to

computer-supported cooperative work Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is the study of how people utilize technology collaboratively, often towards a shared goal. CSCW addresses how computer systems can support collaborative activity and coordination. More specifically, the ...

by anchoring the politically and ideologically motivated action research which flourished in the seventies to a secure scientific conception of information and systems. The concept emphasizes the fundamental role of

disagreement A disagreement is the absence of consensus or consent Consent occurs when one person voluntarily agrees to the proposal or desires of another. It is a term of common speech, with specific definitions as used in such fields as the law, med ...

and of what in statistics is known as

outliers In statistics, an outlier is a data point that differs significantly from other observations. An outlier may be due to a variability in the measurement, an indication of novel data, or it may be the result of experimental error; the latter are ...

. In doing so it accounts for the sociopsychological and political personalistic conflict between the

individual An individual is that which exists as a distinct entity. Individuality (or self-hood) is the state or quality of being an individual; particularly (in the case of humans) of being a person unique from other people and possessing one's own need ...

and the

collective A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an ...

. This early work was supposed to be completed with a comprehensive research program on ''the essence of computers'' seen as a capital-intensive industrial embodiment of the formal sciences of logic, mathematics, and geometry. The purpose was to grasp the why and the whither of the formalization of society which is hidden under an aestheticist mask of audiovisual and tactile graphical interfaces and smart human-computer interaction. One main question was whether you should care about what is presupposed and what happens when you press the button, the keyboard's tangent, or touch the screen, while innocently assuming that you are just

communicating Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...

or interacting. Or is it a matter of naively understood trust? The research program could not be realized except for the production and survey of an extensive bibliography which was made available to the research community.

Hypersystems

This was a further development of the concept of social systems of the Berkeley school mentioned above, with the intent to prevent that its applications in systems design be reductively transformed into other approaches such as

communicative action In sociology, communicative action is cooperative action undertaken by individuals based upon mutual deliberation and argumentation. The term was developed by German philosopher- sociologist Jürgen Habermas in his work '' The Theory of Communica ...

in the Kantian tradition,

co-design Participatory design (originally co-operative design, now often co-design) is an approach to design attempting to actively involve all stakeholders (e.g. employees, partners, customers, citizens, end users) in the design process to help ensure t ...

in the liberal tradition, conflict in the Marxian tradition or, lately, phenomenological and post-phenomenological postmodernism (and

perspectivism Perspectivism (german: Perspektivismus; also called perspectivalism) is the epistemological principle that perception of and knowledge of something are always bound to the interpretive perspectives of those observing it. While perspectivism reg ...

, as in

postmodern philosophy Brian Duignan writes on the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' that Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical movement that arose in the second half of the 20th century as a critical response to assumptions allegedly present in modernist philosophical ...

social networks A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for a ...

, actor-network theory (and its "non-modernism"), and

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design' ...

aestheticism.

Security

Ivanov views the problem of political power as related to privacy or personal integrity,

freedom of speech Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recogni ...

rule of law The rule of law is the political philosophy that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. The rule of law is defined in the ''Encyclopedia Britannic ...

, and ethics, where the clash between privacy and security, supposedly mediated by participatory practices, portrays in terms of political science a fruitless and hopeless clash between socialist and liberal ideologies which lack a "vertical" spiritual dimension.

Cultural criticism

In later years the emphasis switched to the furthering of systems thinking in face of the perceived cultural decline of society, with emphasis on universities and research. This is a cultural criticism of inadequate uses of the system concept as well as criticism of some modern and postmodern trends in research and development of computer applications, under labels such as critical theory, phenomenology, design, or sheer eclectic ''ad hoc'' theoretical frameworks. Ivanov perceives that they are often misused to downplay not only economic and political realities but also, and mainly, ethical concerns. His criticism follows from his summarizing statement about the future of the systems approach and its limitations when technology and science lead to philosophy, and further to ethics and theology.
Abstract and orders.
http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/Chu-SysAppDes.html Original research report.] Therefore, as emeritus, Ivanov pursues research on current trends of informatics and science to be explained or countered by an understanding of the interface between information, philosophy of technology, and theology. In this respect, and except for his adduction of theology which he shares with West Churchman, Ivanov may be seen as working along a stream of earlier criticism of the ideology of computer culture. Ivanov is convinced of the necessity of an explicit relation between theology and ethics in systems philosophy and practice, in order to avoid that technology remains an "excuse for questionable ethics" in the computer-supported

edutainment Educational entertainment (also referred to as edutainment) is media designed to educate through entertainment. The term was used as early as 1954 by Walt Disney. Most often it includes content intended to teach but has incidental entertainmen ...

and financial games of affluent societies.The quoted expression is from the title of Ivanov's colleague, Mowshowitz: An overview of Ivanov's latest and ongoing research i
available on the Internet.
/ref>

Publications

Ivanov published numerous articles and a few books, a selection: * 1972

The University of Stockholm and The Royal Institute of Technology. Doctoral dissertation. * 1989. "Computer applications and organizational disease". In C. W. Churchman (Ed.), ''The well-being of organizations'' (pp. 283–312). Salinas, Calif.: Intersystems. * 1991. "Critical systems thinking and information technology". In: ''Journal of Applied Systems Analysis'', 18, 39–55

* 1992. ''Proceedings of the 14th IRIS: Rev. papers of the 14th information systems research seminar in Scandinavia.'' Umeå-Lövånger, 11–14 August 1991. Umeå: Umeå University – Inst. of Information Processing. (ISSN 0282-0579.) * 1993.

. In C. M. Reigeluth, B. H. Banathy, & J. R. Olson (Eds.), ''Comprehensive systems design: A new educational technology'' (pp. 381–407). New York: Springer-Verlag. (NATO ASI Series F: Computer and Systems Sciences, Vol 95.) * 1995.

. In B. Dahlbom (Ed.), ''The infological equation: Essays in honor of Börje Langefors'' (pp. 287–301). Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, Dept. of Informatics (ISSN 1101-7422). * 1996.

. In: ''Management and Information Technologies'', renamed ''Information & Organization'', 5, 99–114. * 1996. "Future foundations of inquiring systems: Reformed pragmatism or spirituality?" In J. M. Carey (Ed.), ''Proc. of the AIS Americas Conference on Information Systems'', August 16–18, 1996, Phoenix, Arizona, USA (pp. 829–831). Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Katz Graduate School of Business, Pittsburgh, PA * Ivanov, K., & Ciborra, C. U. (1998). East and West of IS. In W. R. J. Baets (Ed.), ''Proc. of the Sixth European Conference on Information Systems ECIS'98'', University of Aix-Marseille III, Aix-en-Provence, June 4–6, 1998. Vol. IV (pp. 1740–1748). Granada & Aix-en-Provence: Euro-Arab Management School & Institut d'Administration des Enterprises IAE. (ISBN for complete proceedings: 84-923833-0-5.

* 2000.

In: ''Proc. of ISTAS 2000, IEEE Int. Symposium on Technology and Society, 6–8 September 2000, Rome, Italy'' (pp. 163-168). * 2001.

. In: '' Information Systems Frontiers'', 3(1), 7-18. * 2006.

In:

Janis Bubenko Janis Askolds Bubenko junior ( lv, Jānis Askolds Bubenko jaunākais; born 3 February 1935 in Riga, Latvia; died 15 January 2022 in Lund, Sweden) was a Swedish computer scientist and Professor Emeritus at the Department of Computer and Systems Scie ...

, et al. (Eds.), ''ICT for people: 40 years of academic development in Stockholm''. pp. 125–134.

Notes

External links

Kristo Ivanov – Institutional Website.

Kristo Ivanov – Internet Archive

Kristo Ivanov – Umeå University's Research Archive

International Society for the Systems Sciences – profile of C. West Churchman
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ivanov, Kristo 1937 births Living people Systems scientists Privacy activists Linköping University faculty Umeå University faculty