Michael Tyworth: June 2008 Archives

First Call for Papers and Participation:

4th Annual Social Informatics Research Symposium (SIG SI) People, information and technology: The social analysis of computing

Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Saturday, October 25, 2008, 8:30-12:30 PM Hyatt Regency Columbus, Ohio

The purpose of this ASIST preconference research symposium is to disseminate current research and research in progress that investigates the social aspects of information and communications technologies (ICT) across all areas of ASIST.  The symposium includes members of many SIGs and defines "social" broadly to include critical and historical approaches and well as contemporary social analysis. It defines "technology" broadly to include traditional technologies (i.e., paper) as well as state of the art computer systems. This year's theme is "People, information and technology: The social analysis of computing."

I'll be teaching IST 331 this upcoming fall semester, an opportunity I'm very excited about for a a couple of reasons.  One, it gives me the opportunity to stretch out my teaching experience into a domain in which is not my usual area.  I feel confident that I have the requisite knowledge to introduce IST undergraduates to HCI even though it is not my area of research.

A second reason I look forward to the opportunity to teach IST 331 is that it will allow me to introduce social informatics thinking into a domain (HCI) that too often focuses on the individual or the artifact to the exclusion of the the broader social context within which socio-technical systems are engaged.  This does not mean that I see little value in the cognitive approach to design that dominates the HCI field, or in the building of novel systems; quite the contrary.  Rather it's as Phillp Agre, Lucy Suchman, and others argued in the case for cognition as situated rather than internally symbolic, that the situation matters too.

To get things off to an interesting start I plan on having the students read a chapter from Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things and Charles Perrow's chapter on the Three Mile Island accident in Normal Accidents.  Perrow strays a bit too far into the dystopian view of technology for my liking, but the chapter is informative regarding the consequences of bad design.

Speaking of the context of design, the Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting on some University of Maryland researchers who have built a piece of hardware that looks like a book and mimics the actions of a book.  An interesting proof-of-concept, but I'm not sure I see the broader utility of such a device.  Some questions that come to mind are:  Can it include the greasy thumbprint from lunch on specific pages?  How do you dogear your place?

I have decided to change the format of this website.  I will now be posting updates, links, commentary on issues related to my research, social informatics, and the social analysis of computing in this space.

To the right are quick links to my CV, research and teaching statements, and other professional information.  I have also chosen to use that space to link to sources on the web relevant to this website.