Lets get it going

I expected to see some posts here, especially related to the last session, but found none. So lets start by recalling some of the discussion that has already taken place. The 'big' question is what is IS research? What characterizes it? How do we carry out worthwhile IS research? To answer these questions we need to debate and discuss what we see in the IS arena. As a first thought let me say that IS research is not much different from other research in its objective of understanding phenomena of interest. To me, for IS these include design and use of information systems and the interaction effects of IT and society. By interaction effects I mean/assume that IT affects organization and society by transforming and extending them and in the process suffering the same fate. That is to say that the appropriation of technology in effect transforms it and in a way redesigns it. And this bidirectional influence continues upwards as a double helix of evolution - of organization as well as IT. IS researchers have tried to contribute to and track this evolution by utilizing myriad theoretical lenses and employing a host of methodological approaches. What theories have been used, what new theories have evolved and what methods belong to the IS researcher's toolkit are some of the questions that need to be looked at for answering the 'big' question. Last but not least, we need to look at some of the topics, i.e phenomena that currently hold sway on researcher's imagination.