:STS and Information Technologies

Mostly we’ll read from a variety of sources. However, the following will be useful. None are in the bookstore; they’re easy to order online.

Please BUY: Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  University Press Books on Bancroft may have a couple of copies in stock. You won’t need it immediately, but soon.

If you aren’t familiar with STS the following is useful — I’m not requiring that you buy it but you’ll find it worthwhile: Sismondo, S. (2010). An introduction to science and technology studies (2nd ed.). Chichester, West Sussex, U.K. ; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. (Be sure you get 2nd ed.)

Finally, if you’re serious about STS, you’ll want to have this: Hackett, E. J., & Society for Social Studies of Science. (2008). The handbook of science and technology studies (3rd ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press : Published in cooperation with the Society for the Social Studies of Science.  It can be bought as an e-book from the MIT Press site. Again, be sure you get the latest edition.

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Read here.

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If you have registered for this course,  you should be added to the class email list automatically, soon. (Just checked and that hasn’t happened yet.)

If you haven’t registered, but want to be on the list, or if you want to add yourself  manually to be sure you’re added ASAP:

I-school students know how to do this on the Internet.

Other students: send e-mail to majordomo@ischool.berkeley.edu with the message “subscribe i212.”

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We may use the current UK riots as a recurring case study this semester.  They raise several topics relevant to this course, and give us a concrete, real-world case to interpret through our more theoretical readings.

• These riots are surfacing sociotechnical networks — what are we seeing?  How does an event like this make apparent what’s otherwise invisible?
• What’s the role of technology?  Twitter, Facebook, and especially Blackberries?  Why is Blackberry suddenly at the center of these discussions:  Blackberries and the Blackberry Messenger service.
• The UK government is talking about cutting off Twitter and Blackberry Messenger as a way of preventing riots.  Technological determinism run amuck, or a wise crowd control strategy?
• Everyone is debating why these riots are happening. For our purposes, a key question is how the rioters have come to the shared understanding to take action, including by not exclusively via social networking.  If enough people are doing the same thing at the same time, they can overwhelm the police.  But how does this shared understanding come about?

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The list of pages/topics down the side of this website is long and growing.  We are not going to address all these topics — this list is mostly potential topics.  Whether some make it into the final syllabus will depend on who’s in the class.  The other value of this list is to show you what kinds of topics have been and can be addressed within an STS framework — you may be surprised to find something of interest to you, or related to your primary interests; or one of these may suggest to you something you want to address.

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Evolving syllabus is this page.  I’ll be updating this continually.  Check back often if you want to know what we’ll be doing.

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We will be reading from a variety of sources.  Many are available online. Those not otherwise available will be scanned and posted.

If you plan to work further in STS, the following are worth buying:

Hackett, E. J., & Society for Social Studies of Science. (2008). The handbook of science and technology studies (3rd ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press : Published in cooperation with the Society for the Social Studies of Science.

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  (About a lot more than the title implies.)

<more to come>

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The course changes with each offering, depending on what’s current in the field and the interests of the students enrolled, which tend to be an eclectic group.  The previous offering closest to what we’ll be doing is here.

The current, evoloving syllabus is here.

No pre-reqs, but not appropriate for undergrads (unless you can convince me otherwise).

TTh 2:00-3:30  in South Hall

Science and Technology Studies (STS) is an interdisciplinary field concerned with two areas of interest to us: the interaction between technology and the social; and knowledge communities.    Recent years have seen increased interaction between STS and human-computer interaction (HCI), information and communication technologies for development (ICTD), and new media.

This class will be a seminar emphasizing close reading and discussion of some classic STS works, along with more current research, emphasizing that which is relevant to information and computing technologies, and knowledge communities. Our concern will be with how these can help us understand the relationships among information technology and new media, especially design; knowledge communities; and the social.

Topics will depend in part on who’s in the class and people’s interests. Past years’ topics include Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), Actor-Network Theory (ANT), Activity Theory, configuring users, epistemic cultures, situated action, reflective/critical HCI, and distributed cognition. Some of these topics are introduced in I203 but, of necessity, not in the depth.  In I212, we address how these topics are useful for understanding the relationships among information technology, design, and the social.  This course won’t help you get a job, but it may help you better understand what you are doing and why.

This class is open to any interested graduate student.  It is particularly appropriate for I-School PhD students; I-School master’s students interested in conceptual issues underlying some of their more applied coursework; and graduate students doing a new media emphasis, and from related departments.   Past students have been from departments as varied as architecture, mechanical engineering, and education.

Prof. Nancy Van House

vanhouse@ischool.berkeley.edu

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