Information Technology in Sociocultural Context
This course provides an introduction to Information Studies, i.e. historical, sociological, qualitative, and critical approaches to computing. The central theme for this year's class is interpretation.
As anyone who has designed or used computer applications is aware, users' interpretations of what soft- and hardware are for and their meanings for them in their everyday lives can differ substantially from those of their designers. One goal of this class is to analyze these processes of interpretation in practice. How do users, designers, marketers, and other mediators develop their interpretations of who users are, what they will be doing with software, what activities are worth supporting and which are not, and what applications will mean in their everyday, ongoing use?
At the same time, as analysts of information technology (IT) - whether as builders or evaluators of designed systems, social scientists studying how people interact with and through computers, or as researchers analyzing the social and historical nature of IT practice - we, too, are engaging in processes of interpretation. In reflecting on interpretation, we are therefore also reflecting on our own practices: what sorts of interpretation do we consider to be reliable or useful and why? What relationships are we setting up between ourselves as researchers and the subjects of our research, and what implications does this have - epistemological, social, or political - for the kinds of knowledge we produce? What novel forms of interpretation might we wish to consider?
Course web site