I212 Spring 07

I212. Information in Society
Instructor: Prof. Nancy Van House
Time: M 1-4
Location: 107 South Hall
CCN: 42775 (3 units)

This page last updated 4/12/07

If you don't already have it, you need to set up a library proxy to connect from off campus to some resources: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/Help/connecting_off_campus.html.

Readings:

Date	Readings	Notes
Jan. 22	Intro to the course
Jan. 29	Langdon Winner, Do A rtifacts Have Politics? Paul Dourish, Where the Action Is, ch. 3: Social Computing. Available in read-only version via UCB library at http://uclibs.org/PID/17642.%20	Winner's most-remembered example never happened: Woolgar, S. & Cooper, G. (1999). Do Artefacts Have Ambivalence?: Moses' Bridges, Winner's Bridges and Other Urban Legends in S&TS. Social Studies of Science, 29, 433-449. Joerges, B. (1999). Do Politics Have Artefacts? Social Studies of Science, 29, 411-431. Joerges, B. (1999). Scams Cannot Be Busted: Reply To Woolgar & Cooper. Social Studies of Science, 29, 450-457.
Feb. 5	This week we'll focus on understanding what SCOT is; this topic will continue into next week. Bijker, W. E. (2004) Technology, Social Construction of. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. (requires campus IP address or proxy) Pinch, T. J. & Bijker, W. E. (1987). The social construction of facts and artifacts: Or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. In W.E.Bijker, T. P. Hughes, & T. J. Pinch (Eds.), The social construction of technological systems : new directions in the sociology and history of technology (pp. 17-50). Cambridge: 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. Ronald Kline; Trevor Pinch. Users as Agents of Technological Change: The Social Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States Technology and Culture, Vol. 37, No. 4. (Oct., 1996), pp. 763-795. (requires campus IP address or proxy) Recommended: 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. (longest version of the bicycle story) Rosen, P. (1993). The social construction of mountain bikes: technology and postmodernity in the cycle industry. Social Studies of Science, 23, 479-513. (requires campus IP address or proxy) Trevor J. Pinch; Wiebe E. Bijker. The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other ; Social Studies of Science ,Vol. 14, No. 3 (Aug., 1984), pp. 399-441(longer version of the chapter of the same name, above)
Feb. 12	SCOT, Cont. Students will present their own SCOT analyses.
Feb. 19	Campus holiday
Feb. 26	Actor-Network Theory Law, J. (1992). Notes on the theory of the actor-network: Ordering, strategy, and heterogenity. http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/papers/law-notes-on-ant.pdf Latour, Bruno (Jim Johnson). (1995). Mixing humans and nonhumans together: The sociology of door-closer. In S.L.Star (Ed.), Ecologies of knowledge: work and politics in science and technology (pp. 257-277). SUNY Press. Online in Social Problems, Vol. 35, No. 3, Special Issue: The Sociology of Science and Technology, Jun., 1988 (Other articles in this issue are also valuable) Latour, Reassembling the Social: an Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford, 2005. "Introduction." (The rest of the book is highly recommended. Table of contents. Note the idiosyncratic punctuation of the term ANT.)	Law's Actor-Network Resources is useful but out of date -- last updated 2004.
Mar 5	ANT, cont.: Classic examples of ANT in action: 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. Law, J. (1992). On the Methods of Long-Distance Control: Vessels, Navigation, and the Portuguese Route to India. http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/papers/law-methods-of-long-distance-control.pdf
Mar 12	ANT presentations
Mar 19	Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (1999), Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences, MIT Press. Selections. Available in read-only version via UCB library at: http://cognet.mit.edu/library/books/book.tcl?isbn=0262024616 Bowker, G. C. Memory practices in the sciences. MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass, 2005. Introduction, Conclusion, and selections. Introduction is downloadable.	Useful for thinking about databases and ontologies, apart from any subject domain.
Mar 26	Spring Break
Apr 2	Design Suchman, L. Agencies in technology design: feminist reconfigurations. In Schiebinger L. (ed.). Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering. Stanford University Press: 2007. Suchman, L., Trigg, R. H., and Blomberg, J. Working artefacts: ethnomethods of the prototype. British Journal of Sociology 53, 2 (2002) 163-179. Online via campus. Suchman, L. A. Located accountabilities in technology production. Department of Sociology, Lancaster University.[link fixed 3/20]	The relationships between designers and social scientists, and among all the participants in the process, including users. Conceptions of the design process.
Apr 9	Activity Theory Kaptelinin, Victor, and Bonnie A. Nardi. Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design, MIT Press, Intro , chs. 1-4 (coutside my office).
Apr 16	Distributed Cognition Links fixed 3/12 4 pm 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. Kaptelinin, Victor, and Bonnie A. Nardi. Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design, MIT Press, ch. 9 (coutside my office).
Apr 23	Note: we'll start class at 2 pm due to an iSchool candidate talk 12:30-2.
Apr 30	CHI San Jose
May 7	Last Class
	Gender and Technology Wajcman, J. (2004). TechnoFeminism. Cambridge: Polity. Lohan, M. (2000). Constructive Tensions in Feminist Technology Studies. Social Studies of Science, 30, 895-916.
	Gaule, N. and Haraway, D. Gane, N. (2006). When we have never been human, what is to be done?: Interview with Donna Haraway. Theory, Culture & Society 23, 7-8 (2006) 135-158. Haraway, D. J. A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women : The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge: New York, 1991. Haraway, D. Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies 14, 3 (2003) 575-600.online via campus.	Probably best to read Gaule first. In interview Haraway references Bowker & Star, so read them first. Ditto Latour.

To get an idea of likely topics and readings, see the syllabus from the last offering, two years ago.

Likely additions/changes this year:

We will probably add Knorr-Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic cultures : How the sciences make knowledge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
We may add Geoffrey C. Bowker, Memory Practices in the Sciences, MIT Press, 2006; this is highly relevant to database design, regardless of the domain.
We may add something on Social Epistemology
We may add something about gender and technology
We may use Sismondo, Sergio. 2004. An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies. Oxford: Blackwell.
We may delete Activity Theory -- not because it's not relevant but because it's not STS. Alternatively, there's a new book out on AT which we may use: Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design, by Victor Kaptelinin, Bonnie A. Nardi.

Readings:

Date

Readings

Notes

Last Class