Epistemographer

As the flood of new posts might indicate, I’m back in the blog saddle. No time to post much in the way of details right now, but an update will be forthcoming later tonight to catch you up on my past few months. In the meantime, I figured I’d post my notes (at least, the [...]

Session Organisers : SACK, Warren; JEREMIJENKO, Natalie; EGLASH, Ron
SACK, Warren :
Aesthetics of Information Visualization
- Previous work: conversation map, translation map, visualization of large, public open-source collaborations, streets stories
- motivation: how should we evaluate these systems? (Traditional mode: do they make a task faster?)
- information visualization initially an outgrowth of volumes of data of modern technoscientific [...]

GILLESPIE, Tarleton :
Imposing Law through Technological Design: A Consideration of the FCC “Broadcast Flag”
- What happens to technology when they are desined to function like law, constraining user actions?
- In this case, the technology must be built not only to constrain action, but to limit user innovation
- Broadcast Flag case…
- US gvmt gave away spectrum [...]

SILTALA, Juha; FREEMAN, Stephanie :
Freedom and Profit: How Hackers and Suits Are Working It Out on the Desktop
- OpenOffice (associated with Sun) vs. GNOME (associated with hacker community)
- What sort of contradictions emerge when a hybrid culture brings together two cultures with competing motives?
- Desktop Integration Bounty Hunt
– sponsored by [...]

BORG, Kevin :
Tightening the Screws on Tinkering: The Shifting Epistemology of Automobile Enthusiasts in an Environmental Age
- History of automobile mechanics in the 20th century
- Photo of “blys under the hood”
- contemporary enthusiasts call themselves “tuners”
- What’s the diff. b/w tuners and “hot-rodders”?
- Ralph Nader and others lead push toward pollution/safety conditions; opens up political [...]

SAARIKOSKI, Petri :
Meetings of pioneers and enthusiasts? Computer clubs in Finland in the 1970s and 1980s
- Telmac microcomputer kits first popular ones (1970’s)
- Company clubs – drew members from company employees and users
- club activities: assembly and use of ktit computers; program exchange, equipment supply
- almost all members of a given club came from same [...]

On the recent exodus of academic bloggers:

Something’s happening in the blogosphere, a shift, a reorientation, a great loss…In the past two or three days, several pillars of academic blogging have posted notice that they’re leaving not only the academic blogosphere, but academia, itself. This includes the stalwart Invisible Adjunct, the gentle Household Opera, [...]

I’m surprised by how much this post saddens me:
A few months ago, I made a vow to myself that this would be my last semester as an invisible adjunct. Since I’ve failed to secure a full-time position in my final attempt at the academic job market, what this means, of course, is that I made [...]

Via the Chronicle of Higher Ed:
Chronicle Careers: Assistant Professor, History of Science and Technology/Modern France (3/5/2004)
Mississippi State University’s Department of History invites applications for a tenure-track appointment at the assistant professor level in the History of Science and Technology. The successful candidate must also have a field in modern French history and be prepared to [...]

The abstract for a session I’m putting together with Jofish Kaye for the 2004 Society for Social Studies of Science meeting (in Paris):
Hackers and Tinkerers: Amateur ways of doing technology
From computer hackers to ham radio operators, from audio and videophiles to hot rodders, enthusiast cultures have often proved integral to the lives of technologies. Such [...]