IS 212 Spring 2003

Prof. Nancy Van House

vanhouse@sims.berkeley.edu

Updated 5/1/03

Final papers due: Friday, 5/16/03. Early papers strongly encouraged.

This course meets Mondays, 3:30-6:00, in Room 107 South Hall.

The purpose of this seminar is to look at some topics, resources, methods, and concepts useful in understanding information systems as socio-technical systems, that is, understanding the interaction among IT, information, and the social. We will be particularly interested in:

-Knowledge communities: how groups define what they know

-Knowledge work practices: the actual day-to-day activities of knowledge work, including information/knowledge production and use

-Information artifacts: the tools that people create and use in creating and communicating knowledge.

-Social, contingent, approaches to information and knowledge.

 

Course Requirements

The major product will be a paper that is EITHER:
(1) a reflection and synthesis of multiple topics from the course, OR
(2) an in-depth examination of one (or more) topics from the course.

I want your major effort to be on the weekly readings, so I am not assigning a paper that will require that you do added research. Option (1) is intended to get you to reflect on and synthesize the course contents. Some of you have a particular interest in a topic related to the course; option (2) allows you to explore this topic further within the context of the course.

You will be expected to keep up with the readings and participate fully in the discussion each week. This will be a seminar, which means that it will be interactive. I *don't* plan to have the readings entirely mapped out before we begin; in courses like this, I find it useful to be flexible, to allow room for students' interests, and to allow us as a group some scheduling flexibility as we find that we wish to spend more time on some topics.

READINGS

Classification

For 2/3/03

Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (1999), Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences, MIT Press. chs 1, 2, and 3; ch 10 recommended. Available from campus machines at: http://cognet.mit.edu/library/books/book.tcl?isbn=0262024616

Also look at the following. Don't pay too much attention to his examples; focus on his major points.
Kling, R. What is social informatics and why does it matter? D-Lib Magazine 5[1]. 1999.

2/10/03

Ethnography

STAR, S.L. (1999): The ethnography of infrastructure. American Behavioral Scientist, 43, 3, 377-91

2/20 (tentative re-schedule due to Monday 2/17 holiday):

Paul Dourish & Graham Button (1998). On “Technomethodology”:Foundational Relationships between Ethnomethodology and System Design
Human-Computer Interaction 13: 395-432. Slightly different version: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/

2/24/03

2 papers by Lucy Suchman http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/lsuchman.html

Located Accountabilities in Technology Production
Human/Machine Reconsidered

For those who wish:

Haraway, Donna (1988). Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspectives. Feminist studies 14:3 pp. 5575-599. Available electronically via Melvyl electronic journals from campus addresses.

3/3/03 will be available outside my office Tues 2/25 p.m.

Actor-Network Theory

J. Johnson [Bruno Latour] (1995): “Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer” in Susan Leigh Star (ed.): Ecologies of Knowledge: Work and Politics in Science and Technology. pp. 257-277.

3/10/03

Actor-Network Theory, cont.

Latour, B. (1986). Visualization and cognition: Thinking with eyes and hands. Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present, 6, 1-40.

Law, J. (1992). Notes on the theory of the actor-network: Ordering, strategy, and heterogenity. http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/soc054jl.html

We'll focus on the 2 pieces above in our discussion.

For an example of ANT in action: Law, J. (1992). On the Methods of Long-Distance Control: Vessels, Navigation, and the Portuguese Route to India. http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/soc077jl.html

You might also be interested in Actor Network Resource: An Annotated Bibliography, Version 2.2 http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/antres.html

For another piece that draws on ANT, see Nancy A. Van House, Digital Libraries and Collaborative Knowledge Construction
To appear in: Ann P. Bishop, Barbara P. Buttenfield, and Nancy A. Van House, eds, Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation, MIT Press, Fall, 2003.
http://sims.berkeley.edu/~vanhouse/van_house_book_chapter.htm. You may find useful the summary of ANT in this chapter.

For 3/17

Distributed Cognition

James Hollan, Edwin Hutchins, and David Kirsh
Distributed cognition: toward a new foundation for human-computer interaction research
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Volume 7 , Issue 2 (June 2000)
(ACM Dig Lib - accessible from UC IP addresses)

Hutchins, E & Klausen, T. (1996) Distributed cognition in an airline cockpit. In Y. Engeström and
D. Middleton (Eds.) Cognition and communication at work. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Also useful:

Yvonne Rogers, Knowledge transfer in a rapidly changing field: what can new theoretical approaches offer HCI?

Yvonne Rogers, A Brief Introduction to Distributed Cognition©

3/24 Spring Break

3/31 Trust

Shapin, S. (1994). A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 1. Recommended: "The Argument Summarized;" and Chapter 9.

Look at: www.webcredibility.org
Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility
http://www.webcredibility.org/guidelines/index.html

and

B.J. Fogg and others, How Do People Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility? Results from a Large Study
http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/news/report3_credibilityresearch/stanfordPTL_abstract.htm

4/7 Epistemic cultures

Knorr Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. chs. 1, 7, 8.

4/14 postponed to 4/21 Communities of practice, situated learning

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral particiption. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Foreword, Chs. 1, 5

Lave, J. (1991). Situating learning in communities of practice. In L.B.Resnick, S. D. easley, & L. B. Resnick (Eds.), Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition (pp. 63-82). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

for background: Resnick, L. B. (1991). Shared Cognition: Thinking as Social Practice. In Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition (pp. 1-20).

4/28 Representation and Information Artifacts

Denis Wood, The Power of Maps, chs. 1 & 4 (the rest of the book is recommended;ch 3 is included in handouts)

Goodwin, Charles. Professional vision. American Anthropologist 96[3], 606-634. 1994. (Link works from campus IP addresses only.)

5/5 Last regular class - Overview and Synthesis

For today, each person will prepare the following in writing. Please send out to the class email list (is212@sims.berkeley.edu) by Sunday night, so that the rest of us will have a chance to review one another's work. (Earlier than Sunday night is better, of course, since that gives us more time.)

1. Each student will take a reading from the course and prepare a summary of three noteworthy points from the reading. They may not be the author's main points; they may be what you found most interesting, useful, controversial, unbelievable, whatever.

2. In addition, each will summarize three key points from your own paper for this course, and relate them to the readings/concepts that we have treated in this course.

These three points can be a sentence each; or a paragraph --this doesn't have to be long.

Possible topics and some sample readings:

Note that this is NOT the reading list, but possible topics and readings to give you a sense of what we might do.

SOCIAL INFORMATICS

Kling, R. What is social informatics and why does it matter? D-Lib Magazine 5[1]. 1999.

WHAT IS INFORMATION? WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?

Social approaches to knowledge; knowledge as social activity; social epistemology

GROUPS KNOWLEDGE, AND KNOWLEDGE WORK

Epistemic communities

Knorr Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Distributed Cognition

James Hollan, Edwin Hutchins, and David Kirsh
Distributed cognition: toward a new foundation for human-computer interaction research
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Volume 7 , Issue 2 (June 2000)
(ACM Dig Lib - accessible from UC IP addresses)

Hutchins, E & Klausen, T. (1996) Distributed cognition in an airline cockpit. In Y. Engeström and
D. Middleton (Eds.) Cognition and communication at work. New York: Cambridge University Press.
pp. 15-34.

Knowledge Spaces

David Turnbull, Masons, Tricksters, and Cartographers. Gordon and Breach Publishing Group, 2000

Knowledge Artifacts

Denis Wood, The Power of Maps

Lynch, Michael and Woolgar, Steve. Representation in Scientific Practice. Lynch, Michael and Woolgar, Steve. 1990. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press

Classification as a Social Activity

Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (1999), Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences, MIT Press.

CSCW

Trust and Credibility in Information and IT Systems

Nancy A. Van House (2002) Trust and Epistemic Communities In Biodiversity Data Sharing, ACM Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, Portland, OR, July 2002, Proceedings, pp. 231-9

Fogg, B. J. and others. What makes web sites credible? areport on a large quantitative study, in CHI 2001 (Seattle, WA, 2001), ACM, 61-68.

Goldberg, Ken. The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet. Goldberg, Ken. 2000. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press

Information Systems as Boundary Objects

Star, Susan Leigh and Griesmer, James R. Institutional Ecology, "Translations," and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39. Social Studies of Science 19, 387-420. 1989.

Social Capital

Uslaner, Eric M. Trust, Civic Engagement, and the Internet. 2000.

Social Navigation.

Munro, A. J., Höök, K., & Benyon, D. eds. (1999). Social navigation of information space). London ; New York: Springer.
Munro, A. J., Höök, K., & Benyon, D. (2000). Social navigation: techniques for building more usable systems. Interactions, 36-45.

SYSTEM DESIGN

The Interaction of System Designers and Social Scientists

Lucy Suchman

Located Accountabilities in Technology Production

Anthropology as ‘Brand’: Reflections on corporate anthropology

Narrative and Information Systems Design

WORK PRACTICE

Work Practice and IT Design

Suchman, L., Blomberg, J., Orr, J. E., and Trigg, R. Reconstructing technologies as social practice. American Behavioral Scientist 43[3], 392-408. 1999.

Goodwin, Charles. Professional vision. American Anthropologist 96[3], 606-634. 1994.

THE INTERNET

Internet Studies

Miller and Slater, The Internet: an Ethnographic Approach

Pew Internet and American Life Project

OUTSIDERS?

Gender and technology

Wajcman, J. Reflections on gender and technology studies: In what state is the art? Social Studies of Science 30[3], 447-464. 2000.

Digital Divide