Location: SIO/Surfside

Online access for the quarter: Some non-electronic articles are posted on class electronic reserves available to those at UCSD as Baker/Information Studies course SIO100: http://reserves.ucsd.edu/eres/default.aspx

• 18 Nov 2004, 6-8pm
  -Jane Fountain, 2001. Build the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change [chapters 1 (p3-17), 2 (p.18-30), 7(p.107-128), 11(p193-206) + footnotes]
  
  Two factors of immediate interest: the distinction between objective technology and enacted technology as well as the collection of interesting case studies. Although the focus is on organizations (projects with goals/products) within institutional cultures (govenments with processes/rules), the organization-institution distinction becomes less distinct in university settings where the project can be the organization within the university institution while simultaneouly the university can be the organiation within the NSF institution. Pertinent to those working with national computational centers, there is a lack of application of the objective-enacted distinction at the time of software development. Because the author tended to lump technical with objective and social with enacted, we were prompted into a lively discussion of how the technical was relevant in the enacted phase and the social in the objective phase.
  
  
• 09 Dec 2004, 6-8pm
  -Atkins Report, 2003. Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure. NSF Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure (http://www.communitytechnology.org/nsf_ci_report).
  -Foster, Kesselman, Tuecke: The Anatomy of the Grid, 2001 (http://www.globus.org/research/papers/anatomy.pdf)
  -Internet Computing and the Emerging Grid, 2000 (http://www.nature.com/nature/webmatters/grid/grid.html)
  
  The Atkins report three chapters total just over 100 pages and is not particularly dense. To direct our efforts read Appendix A and C but skip/skim the other appendices.] So what is this new beast "cyberinfrastructure"? It's related to the grid-eScience for which we have two overview papers for background.
  
  
• 13 Jan 2005, 6-8pm
  -M.Callon and B.Latour, 1981. Unscrewing the Big Leviathan: how actors macrostructure reality and how sociologists help them to do so. Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies. K.Knorr-Cetina and A.V.Cicourel. Boston, Mass, Routledge
  -S.S. Strum and B. Latour, 1987. Redefining the social link: from baboons to humans. Social Science Information 26(4):783-802
  -B. Latour,1992. Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts. In Shaping Technology, Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. edited by Weibe E. Bijker and John Law, 225-258. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
  
  Moving from grand theories of society (structure) and the ethnomethodological highlight of everyday work of construction and negotiations to actor network theory with the origins and manifestations of power emerging from a blend of structure and process, the Latour readings bring focus to 'the experts' and to extending our language resources to include social (meaning to associate), macroactors, leaky black boxes, translation, negotiation, technomorphism, and obligatory passage points (OPP). These papers present Latour's sociotechnical ponderings on the concept of macro-actors, performative/negotiated social arenas, and prescriptive elements. So do we understand what part such perspectives, roles, and the 'distribution of competence' play in social science in general and in our work in particular? And can we see where technology (or technological artifacts) contribute to the shaping of society as the process of simplificiation occurs, the taking of the complex to the complicated in order to make it durable?
  
  
• 10 Feb 2005, 6-8pm
  -Star, Power, technology and the phenomenology of conventions: On being alergic to onions, in A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination
  -Star, 1989, Institutional Ecology, "Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39
  -Abbate, J. (1999). Inventing the Internet. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press Introduction (6p) and Chp5: The Internet in the International Standards Arena (34p)
  
  Other/support readings:
  -Star, 1990, The Structure of Ill-Structured Solutions: Boundary Objects and Heterogeneous Distributed Problem Solving, in Distributed Artifical Intelligence, vol2, Morgan Kaufman Publishers, Inc
  -Star and Bowker, 2002, How to Infrastructure, in Handbook of New Media, LA Lievrouw and S Livingstone (eds), London, Sage Publications
  -Star and Strauss, 1999, Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work, Computer Supported Cooperative Work 8:9-30
  -Abbate, Inventing the Internet
  Chp1: White Heat and Cold War: The Origins and Meanings of Packet Switching
  Chp2: Building the ARPANET: Challenges and Strategies
  Chp3: The Most Neglected Element: Users Transform the ARPANET
  Chp4: From ARPANET to Internet
  Chp5: The Internet in the International Standards Arena
  Chp6: Propularizing the Internet
  
  
• 10 Mar 2005, 6-8pm
  -TAFinholt, 2004. Collaboratories (pdf)
  Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. E B. Cronin (ed)
  -GM Olson and JS Olson, 2000. Distance Matters (pdf)
  Human-Computer Interaction 15:137-178
  -Hale et al, 2003, Managing Troubled Data (pdf)
  SS Hale, AHMiglarese, MP Bradley, TJBelton, LDCooper, MTFrames, CAFriel, LMHarwell, REKing, WKMichener, DTNicolson, BGPeterjohn, 2003; Coastal Data Parnerships Smooth Data Integration Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Kluwer Academic Publishers 81: 133-148
  
  
• 14 April 2005, 6-8pm
  -Susan Sim, S. Easterbrook and R. Holt, 2003. Using Benchmarking to Advance Research: A Challenge to Software Engineering in Proceedings, 25th International Conference on Software Engineering, Portland, Oregon, May, 2003 (pdf)
  -J. O'Connell, 1993. Metrology: The Creation of Universality by the Circulation of Particulars Social Studies of Science 23(1): 129-173. (pdf)
  Author Susan Sim will join us for a phone conference discussion.
  
  
• 19 May 2005, 6-8pm
  -KEWeick, KMSutcliffe and DObstfeld, in press. Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking
  -Projects and Routines: Toward A More Concrete Specification of the Exploration-Exploitation Perspective. in preparation. Author David Obstfeld will join us for a phone conference discussion.
  
  
• 28 June 2005, 6-8pm
  -Amit P. Sheth, Changing Focus on Interoperability in Information Systems: from System, Syntax, Structure to Semantics in Interoperating Geographic Information Systems. Goodchild, Egenhofer, Fegeas, Kottman (1999)