Updated 4/2004
T
Topics:
This course is a seminar on social/cultural approaches to information and information systems. We will study selected social science approaches to knowledge and knowledge communities, emphasizing the collaborative nature of knowledge; computer-mediated knowledge work; and information technology.
I teach it as a seminar with changing topics. Topics will depend on who attends and what people are interested in. We will not plan out the entire semester in advance, but will make choices among an array of topics based on what the class is interested in. The specific topics will be determined when we see who’s in the class and what we are interested in, but the topics this year are likely to be similar to last year's.
My own current research is on personal photos, camera phones, blogs, and issues of trust and credibility on the internet, so we'll read some in these areas. The emphasis will be on how social science research approaches, concepts, and methods illuminate these topics.
Grades will be based on (1) your keeping up on the readings and participating in class discussion, and (2) a final paper reflecting on and synthesizing some of the readings from the course, preferably applied to a topic relevant to your own interests.
Recommended for MIMS students, and for graduate students in other departments with an interest in social issues in knowledge work and information technology. Last year the class was extremely varied, with maybe half the students from SIMS, and others from computer science, education, and off-campus. Students with specific interests that you would like to see addressed in the class are encouraged to email me.
Prerequisites:
IS 204 or consent of instructor. Non-SIMS students require permission of instructor
(which is generally readily given, except to undergrads).
Assigned readings
Feb 2 - mobile communication
Ito, M. &
Okabe, D. (2003). Technosocial Situations: Emergent Structurings of Mobile Email
Use. http://www.itofisher.com/PEOPLE/mito/mobileemail.pdf
Ito, M. & Okabe, D. (2003). Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth, and the Re-Placement
of Social Contact. http://www.itofisher.com/PEOPLE/mito/mobileyouth.pdf
Dourish, P. (2001).
Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. Cambridge:
MIT Press. ch. 3. Handed out in class.
About the book: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/embodied/
I have library copy; pls do not recall!
Feb. 9 - SCOT
Pinch, Trevor J. and Wiebe E.Bijker. 1987. "The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other," in Bijker, Wiebe, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor E. Pinch, eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1989) , pp. 17-50.
Bijker, W. E. (1995). King of the road: the social construction of the safety bicycle. In Of bicycles, bakelites, and bulbs: Toward a theory of sociotechnical change (pp. 19-100). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Pinch, T. (1996). The social construction of technology: a review. In R.Fox (Ed.), Technological change (pp. 17-35). Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Recommended: Paul
Rosen, The
Social Construction of Mountain Bikes: Technology and Postmodernity in the
Cycle Industry
Social Studies of Science, Vol. 23, No. 3. (Aug., 1993), pp. 479-513 (Available
from campus IP addresses only)
Feb. 18, 3-5:30 (special day and time) - Users
Chapters from
Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch (Eds.) (2003) How Users Matter: The Co-Construction
of Users and Technology. MIT Press.
Oudshoorn, Nelly and Pinch, Trevor. Introduction: How Users and Non-Users Matter.
Kline,Ronald. Resisting Consumer Technology in Rural America: The Telephone
and Electrification
Wyatt,Sally. Non-users also matter: The construction of users and non-users
of the internet
Anne Sofie Lægran, Escape Vehicles? The Internet and the Automobile in
a Local-Global Intersection
Feb 23, Activity Theory - Reprised March 1
CSCW references
are available only from campus IP addresses.
Nardi, B. (1996). Activity theory and human-computer interaction(pp. 7-16);
and Kuutti, K. (1996).Activity theory as a potential framework for human-computer
interaction (pp. 17-44). Both In B.Nardi (Ed.), Context and consciousness:
activity theory and human-computer interaction . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Engeström,Yrjo.
Expansive Visibilization of Work: An Activity-Theoretical Perspective. Computer
Supported Cooperative Work 8: 63–93, 1999.
Patricia Collins, Shilpa Shukla, David Redmiles.Activity
Theory and System Design: A View from the Trenches. Computer Supported Cooperative
Work 11: 55-80, 1999.
Christine A. Halverson (2002). Activity
Theory and Distributed Cognition: Or What Does CSCW Need to DO with Theories?
Computer Supported Cooperative Work 11: 243-267.
Added resources on Activity theory:
Kaptelinin, Victor, and Nard, Bonnie A. Activity
Theory: Basic Concepts and Applications. CHI 97 workshop.
Liam Bannon, Activity
Theory , 1997
March 8: Continue
with activity theory; Read Distributed Cognition and the papers comparing them
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.
Nardi, Studying Context: a Comparison of Activity, Theory, Situated Action Models,
and Distributed Cognition. In Nardi, ed., Context and Consciousness, p. 69-102.
Star, S. L. (1996). Working together: Symbolic interactionism, activity theory,
and information systems. In D.Middleton & Y. Engeström (Eds.), Cognition
and communication at work (pp. 296-318). Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University.
March 15: texts and artifacts
Latour, B. (1999). Pandora's hope : Essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chapter 2: Circulation Reference: Sampling the Soil in the Amazon Forest.
Latour (1986) Bruno Latour, ‘Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands’, Knowledge and Society 6: 1-40.
March 29: Actor-Network Theory
Law, J. (1992). Notes on the theory of the actor-network: Ordering, strategy, and heterogenity. http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/papers/law-notes-on-ant.pdf
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/papers/law-methods-of-long-distance-control.pdf
Callon, M. Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay. In Law J. (ed.). Power, Action, and Belief: a New Sociology of Knowledge? Routledge and Kegan Paul: London, 1986. (will be made available)
Her abstract:Practice-based
design of products, services and organizational practices
Since I began working at the nexus of technology design and ethnographic studies
nearly 20 years ago, computational technologies have come to play an increasingly
significant role in the lives of people and organizations. At the same time
there has been a shift in focus, away from individual technologies, to the infrastructures
required to enable the delivery of a wide range of services. In this lectureI
will trace the trajectory of my thinking about the possibilities for what I
have termed a practice-based design approach as it has been influenced by my
early work with industrial designers and human factors engineers, by my long
history at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, by my tenure as Director of
Experience Modeling research at Sapient Corporation, and by my current position
in the Human Systems group at IBM Research. Although many of the original question
remain about the relation between studies of practice and design, a significant
body of research and practical experience now informs their answers and points
to the possibilities and potential for practice-based design.
Jeanette Blomberg bio:
Jeanette is a research scientist at IBM's Almaden Research Center in the newly
established Human Systems research group. Her research is focused on the interplay
between people, technology and organizational practices. Jeanette is also an
industry affiliated Professor of Human Work Science at the Blekinge Institute
of Technology in Sweden. Prior to assuming her current position at IBM, Jeanette
was Director of Experience Modeling Research at Sapient Corporation where she
helped establish the Experience Modeling practice and managed Sapient's San
Francisco Experience Modeling group. While at Sapient she directed and participated
in research projects for global technology, energy, automotive, transportation,
consumer products, and financial services companies. Jeanette was also a founding
member of the pioneering Work Practice and Technology group at the Xerox Palo
Alto Research Center (PARC). Over the years her research has explored issues
in social aspects of technology production and use, ethnographically-informed
design, participatory design, human-centered design, case-based prototyping,
and workplace studies. She has published on these topics, given numerous invited
talks, and offered workshops in the U.S and Europe on the topic of aligning
ethnography and design. Jeanette recently completed a book chapter titled, “An
ethnographic approach to design,” which appears in the Handbook of Human-Computer
Interaction in Interactive Systems, edited by Jacko and Sears. Jeanette received
her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Davis where she
taught courses in cultural anthropology and sociolinguistics.
Readings:
Suchman, L. A., Blomberg, J.; Orr, J.E.; Trigg, R. Reconstructing technologies as social practice. American Behavioral Scientist 43, 3 (1999) 392-408. Available online from campus addresses. Go to http://sunsite2.berkeley.edu:8000/ and search on the journal title.
Blomberg, J., Burrell, M., Guest, G. An ethnographic approach to design. In Jacko J. A., Sears A. (eds.). The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.: Mahwah, New Jersey, 2003.
Suchman, L., Trigg, R. H., and Blomberg, J. Working artefacts: ethnomethods of the prototype. British Journal of Sociology 53, 2 (2002) 163-179. Available online from campus addresses.
Another version: Paper presented at the 1998 American Sociological Association in the session Ethnomethodology: Hybrid Studies of the Workplace and Technology, August 22, 1998, San Francisco, CA.
April 13 - "Applied" Actor-Network Theory
Bowker, G. C. & Star, S. L. (1996). How things (actor-net)work: Classification, magic and the ubiquity of standards.
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.
Law, J. (1986). The heterogeneity of texts. In M.Callon, J. Law, & A. Rip
(Eds.), Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology: Sociology of Science
in the Real World (pp. 67-83). London: Macmillan Press.
Rip, A. (1986). Mobilizing Resources through Texts. In M.Callon, J. Law, &
A. Rip (Eds.), Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology: Sociology
of Science in the Real World (pp. 84-99). London: Macmillan Press.
Star, S. L. & Griesmer, J. R. (1989). 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.
Dourish, P. What we talk about when we talk about context. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 8, 1 (2004) 19-30.
From Chris:
Anind K. Dey and Gregory D. Abowd. Towards a Better Understanding of Context and Context-Awareness. In the Workshop on The What, Who, Where, When, and How of Context-Awareness, as part of the 2000 Conference on Human Factors inComputing Systems (CHI 2000), The Hague, The Netherlands, April 3, 2000. ftp://ftp.cc.gatech.edu/pub/gvu/tr/1999/99-22.pdf Focused on representation from an actionable/computational perspective (rather than a descriptive or analytical one).
Abowd and Mynatt. "Charting Past, Present and Future Research in Ubiquitous Computing" TOCHI 7(1), 2000. pp. 29-58. http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fce/pubs/tochi-millenium.pdf Chris says: This is a fairly decent outline of the ubiquitous computing agenda.
April 27 - Critical Technical Practice
Agre, P. (1997).
Toward a critical technical practice: Lessons learned in trying to reform AI.
In G.C.Bowker, S. L. Star, W. Turner, & L. Gasser (Eds.), Social science,
technical systems, and cooperative work (pp. 131-158). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Inc. online
version
Wardrip-Fruin, M. & Moss, B. (2002). The impermance agent: Project and context. PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 70, 52-83. Read pp. 69-71 on CTP. pdf
See a page listing people associated with CTP
Read as examples of CTP:
Philip E. Agre, Writing and Representation. From Michael Mateas and Phoebe Sengers, eds, Narrative Intelligence, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2002. online version
Philip E. Agre. Cyberspace
as American Culture Science as Culture 11(2), 2002, pages 171-189. pdf
version.
Possible readings
and topics- some from last year, some not
Social
scientists look at technologies
Mimi Ito:
an anthropologist looks at mobile tech in Japan; ethnography
http://www.itofisher.com/mito/
Ito, M. & Okabe, D. (2003). Technosocial Situations: Emergent Structurings
of Mobile Email Use. http://www.itofisher.com/PEOPLE/mito/mobileemail.pdf
hIto, M. & Okabe, D. (2003). Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth, and the Re-Placement
of Social Contact. http://www.itofisher.com/PEOPLE/mito/mobileyouth.pdf
Lucy Suchman
: the link between technology and social theory (from an anthropologist)
http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/lsuchman.html
including
Lucy Suchman (2000), Located
Accountabilities in Technology Production
Lucy Suchman (2000), http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/soc040ls.html
Lucy Suchman (1987). Plans and situated actions : The problem of human-machine
communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bowker
and Star:
classification; ethnography; symbolic interactionism
Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (1999), Sorting Things Out: Classification
and its Consequences, MIT Press. Available from campus machines at: http://cognet.mit.edu/library/books/book.tcl?isbn=0262024616
STAR, S.L. (1999): The ethnography of infrastructure. American Behavioral Scientist,
43, 3, 377-91
Star, S. L. (1996). Working together: Symbolic interactionism, activity theory,
and information systems. In D.Middleton & Y. Engeström (Eds.), Cognition
and communication at work (pp. 296-318). Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Technologists look
at social science
Paul
Dourish: embodied cognition; the link between technology and social theory (from
a technologist); ethnography and HCI; CSCW
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/
various including
Dourish, P. (2004). What
we talk about when we talk about context. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing,
8.
Dourish, P. (2001). Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction.
Cambridge: MIT Press. http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/embodied/
I have library copy; pls do not recall!
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/
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.
Yvonne Rogers,
Knowledge transfer in a rapidly changing field: what can new theoretical approaches
offer HCI?
Yvonne Rogers, A Brief Introduction to Distributed Cognition
Theories of technology
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.
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
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.htmlFor another piece that draws on ANT, see Nancy A. Van House, Digital Libraries and Collaborative Knowledge Construction In Ann P. Bishop, Barbara P. Buttenfield, and Nancy A. Van House, eds, Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation, MIT Press, 2003. You may find useful the summary of ANT in this chapter.
Latour, B. &
Woolgar, S. (1979). Laboratory life: The social construction of scientific facts.
Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Latour, B. (1987). Science in action : How to follow scientists and engineers
through society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (1999). Pandora's hope : Essays on the reality of science studies.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Social Construction of Technology (SCOT): technosocial networks
Bijker, W. E. (1995). King of the road: the social construction of the safety
bicycle. In Of bicycles, bakelites, and bulbs: Toward a theory of sociotechnical
change (pp. 19-100). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Pinch, T. (1996). The social construction of technology: a review. In R.Fox
(Ed.), Technological change (pp. 17-35). Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Context (as in context-aware
technology; what is context?)
Dourish,
P. (2004). What
we talk about when we talk about context. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing,
8.
Other papers from this same issue.
Other readings...
Situated learning, situated action
Suchman (above)
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.
Lave, J. &
Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral particiption. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press.
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).
Activity
Theory
Engeström,
Y. (2000). Activity theory as a framework for analyzing and redesigning work.
Ergonomics, 43, 960-974.
Engeström, Y., Miettinen, R., & Punamaki-Gitai, R. L. (1999). Perspectives
on activity theory. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gregory, J. (2000). Activity theory in a "trading zone" for design
research and practice. In Doctoral Education in Design: Foundations for the
Future.
Gregory, J. & Bratteteig, T. (1999). Human action in context: A discussion
of theories for understanding use of IT. In T. Käkölä (Ed.),
Proceedings of the 22nd Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia
(IRIS 22): Enterprise Architectures for Virtual Organisations Jyväskylä:
U. of Jyväskylä, Computer Science and Information Systems Reports,
Technical Report TR-21.
Nardi, B. (1996). Activity theory and human-computer interaction. In B.Nardi
(Ed.), Context and consciousness: activity theory and human-computer interaction
(pp. 7-16). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Star, S. L. (1996). Working together: Symbolic interactionism, activity theory,
and information systems. In D.Middleton & Y. Engeström (Eds.), Cognition
and communication at work (pp. 296-318). Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Epistemic Cultures
Knorr Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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
Denis Wood, The
Power of Maps
Goodwin, Charles. Professional
vision. American Anthropologist 96[3], 606-634. 1994. (Link works from campus
IP addresses only.)
Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (1999), Sorting Things Out: Classification
and its Consequences, MIT Press. Available from campus machines at: http://cognet.mit.edu/library/books/book.tcl?isbn=0262024616