computer science and information technology
feminists have been split: meet as women together - then become "vanilla" social scientists/computer scientists. She would prefer it not to be a specialized interest or problem - "mainstreaming" is her preference.
Feminism has been a silent partner.
Landscapes
first questions: what are the things that can be automated, what cannot: "the commander Data period" of computers.
Key problems:
what do formal representations capture or miss? (cognition)in attempting to create formal, universal models, what is the role of local and situated knowledge? (is skin the right boundary -- no: distributed knowledges)
how is knowledge distributed outside the individual? What is a computational object? (mathematics/logic as language)
key politics:
whose definition of human will hold sway?what is the price of pseudo-universalism? (Diana Forsyth, an anthropologist studying folk making expert systems)
what are the links between a formalist, artificial intelligence view of the world and military dominance?
At the same time - a second landscape: what is the impact of computers on organizations and more generally on social order?
Problematics:
what are the patterns ofinnovation and dissemination for any artifact or system?will computers deskill work? create new skills /change organizations?
what overheads and processes of communication are involved in computerization?
Is computerization a rational evolution, a social movement, an economic necessity?
Politics:
will computers democratize decision making and knowledge? (probably not - reinforce the status quo: Kling et al.; Sproul and Kiesler - will computers erase status)who does and will have access to computers? (Kling et al, "pink collar work"; Iwa Ong's work on women assembling chips in Singapore)
how can we fight the hype of "the computer revolution"?
who bears the consequences for job loss with automation? for workplace quality? (Joan Greenbaum, _Windows on the Workplace_)
how can we protect individual freedom and privacy?
Third Landscape: Mid-80's: a turn to questions of design - How is information technology designed, and what are the social processes involved in linking design and use?
Problematics:
how can we transform the findings of empirical studies into systems requirements?how can we build bridges betweeen social and computer scientists?
how can we account for differing incentive structures between designers and users? (Judy Wiedmann, on Sequoia 2000 at Berkeley, a virtual laboratory: from the point of view of the earth scientists - to mess around with computer stuff would threaten your career as an earth scientist: for the computer scientists - if you build something actually useful...)
can we design for tacit and local knowledge?
Politics:
do artifacts have politics (knowledge, strategy, inherent values embedded)? (Langdon Winner)can we democratize design in the interest of improving life for users?
who carries the invisible work when there are workarounds and misfits between design and use? (solidly feminist: who's going to do the scut work when things don't fit - and they never fully fit? Often done by secretaries, wives, etc.)
Fourth landscape: By the late 1980's, building on CMC - birth of CSCW [computer supported cooperative work] (first conference in 1986)
How do networked computers mediate group, organizational or community processes?
problematics:
does anonymity make a difference?can we design for articulation work? (contingencies no one can plan for)
what process loss is there in managing group, mediated communication.
as tasks are distribute geographically, what local knowledge is lost?
how does the stuff scale? does it?
politics:
who will control the coordination - and where is the line betwen voluntaristic cooperation and top-down coercion?_cui bono_ from coordination applications?
what happens to arms' length relationships?
will CSCW feed undesirable aspects of globalization and contribute to social inequity (Swasti Middors' work on piece work in India)
(does mention male /female use of language)
Fifth landscape: Global information infrastructure - since about 1993/94.
--> What is the social nature of infrastructure?
There's really no overview; you can't stand back from this stuff - you can't even talk about "computerization," because so much is already computerized.
Not an absolute thing: not like railroad lines - you're always building it, always tinkering with it, intimately inveigeled with everyday work, even leisure life.
Development and growth of large-scale medical systems of categories and classificiation systems.
Things you don't want to know how they're made - law, sausage, and infrastructure
emerging problematics:
how can we understand (or track the politics of emergent networks and network externalities?what is data quality in the "open black box"?
how can we balance ambiguity and multiplicity with needs for standardization and interoperability?
how can we historically model something whose purpose it is to become invisible and transparent?
politics:
how can we mobilize the quiet politics of voice; how to resist embedded "master narratives" in databases and classification system?how do we resist overspecficiation and surveillance?
is a global information infrastructure inevitable?
should we maintain cutting edge development when there is an uneven installed base?
politics:
how can we move away from reified identity politics? is it possible to queer the formal?digital library project - what do freshman want? etc. - realized that we were reifying the sense of what it meant... (???)
In the face of these questions, she proposes to "queer the infrastructure" - giving first of all a definition:
to queer: to challenge the basis on which categories are constructed. (reverses the usual use of categories to enforce behavior)
The fine line between between scylla and charybdis:
identity politics/essentialism ----- political betrayal/false universalism
(only 6% women students in informatics at University of Oslo)
Is advanced information technology good for women?
is it good for any carbon-based life form?
how can we get more women into computer science?
why do we want to? is it safe?
what's a woman anyway? (she acknowledges that this is metaphysics / ontology)
appropriates Feenburg's last phrase on subversive rationalization
--> queering the infrastructure:
a) classification systems for collecting and transmitting data (e.g., the work that nurses do)b) any kind of category can be open to questions regarding whose category it is, who defines it
for feminism: nothing is eternally standard - but is like a treaty.
c) queering the formal:
queering - associated with specific constituencies, willingness to send something up (something she doesn't find much of the later in critical rationalism)
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