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Todd Suomela

The Heroic Theory of Scientific Development « Apperceptual - 0 views

apperceptual.wordpress.com/...eory-of-scientific-development

sts science history discovery multiple

shared by Todd Suomela on 26 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Todd Suomela on 26 Jul 09
     
    Multiple Discovery is a very thorough study of independent simultaneous discovery in the history of science and technology. It seems that there is almost no instance of a great discovery or invention that was not discovered independently and simultaneously. In addition to a careful historical study, Lamb and Easton present a theory to explain multiple discovery, which they call evolutionary realism.
Todd Suomela

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) by John M. Carroll - Interaction-Design.org: HCI, Usab... - 0 views

www.interaction-design.org/..._computer_interaction_hci.html

hci history technology science computer sts

shared by Todd Suomela on 07 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The challenge of personal computing became manifest at an opportune time. The broad project of cognitive science, which incorporated cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, cognitive anthropology, and the philosophy of mind, had formed at the end of the 1970s. Part of the programme of cognitive science was to articulate systematic and scientifically-informed applications to be known as "cognitive engineering". Thus, at just the point when personal computing presented the practical need for HCI, cognitive science presented people, concepts, skills, and a vision for addressing such needs. HCI was one of the first examples of cognitive engineering. Other historically fortuitous developments contributed to establishment of HCI. Software engineering, mired in unmanageable software complexity in the 1970s, was starting to focus on nonfunctional requirements, including usability and maintainability, and on non-linear software development processes that relied heavily on testing. Computer graphics and information retrieval had emerged in the 1970s, and rapidly came to recognize that interactive systems were the key to progressing beyond early achievements. All these threads of development in computer science pointed to the same conclusion: The way forward for computing entailed understanding and better empowering users.
  • One of the most significant achievements of HCI is its evolving model of the integration of science and practice. Initially this model was articulated as a reciprocal relation between cognitive science and cognitive engineering. Later, it ambitiously incorporated a diverse science foundation, notably Activity Theory, distributed cognition, and ethnomethodology, and a culturally embedded conception of human activity, including the activities of design and technology development. Currently, the model is incorporating design practices and research across a broad spectrum. In these developments, HCI provides a blueprint for a mutual relation between science and practice that is unprecedented.
  • In the latter 1980s and early 1990s, HCI assimilated ideas from Activity Theory, distributed cognition, and ethnomethodology. This comprised a fundamental epistemological realignment. For example, the representational theory of mind, a cornerstone of cognitive science, is no longer axiomatic for HCI science. Information processing psychology and laboratory user studies, once the kernel of HCI research, became important, but niche areas. The most canonical theory-base in HCI now is socio-cultural, Activity Theory. Field studies became typical, and eventually dominant as an empirical paradigm. Collaborative interactions, that is, groups of people working together through and around computer systems (in contrast to the early 1980s user-at-PC situation) have become the default unit of analysis. It is remarkable that such fundamental realignments were so easily assimilated by the HCI community.
Todd Suomela

Falling for Science - The MIT Press - 4 views

mitpress.mit.edu/...default.asp

book science sts education experience learning children inspiration

shared by Todd Suomela on 31 Mar 09 - Cached
Bio Synthesis liked it
  • Todd Suomela on 31 Mar 09
     
    In this collection, distinguished scientists, engineers, and designers as well as twenty-five years of MIT students describe how objects encountered in childhood became part of the fabric of their scientific selves. In two major essays that frame the collection, Turkle tells a story of inspiration and connection through objects that is often neglected in standard science education and in our preoccupation with the virtual.
Todd Suomela

The Technium: Reasons to Diminish Technology - 0 views

www.kk.org/...reasons_to_dimi.php

technology sts philosophy

shared by Todd Suomela on 28 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Todd Suomela on 28 Mar 09
     
    Arguments against technology: contrary to nature, to humans, to technology itself (self-destruction), to God.
Todd Suomela

The Role of Intimacy in the Evolution of Technology - 0 views

jetpress.org/tomasi.htm

technology technology-effects intimacy evolution sts philosophy

shared by Todd Suomela on 31 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Todd Suomela on 31 Jul 09
     
    by Alessandro Tomasi In this article, Georges Bataille's notion of intimacy will be re-interpreted to show that it has a role to play in the evolution of technology. The specifically human form of intimacy can be experienced through the successful adoption of technological devices that have the qualities necessary to fit in and work out in our life context. If they manage to become part of our life, then we experience them as projections of our psychophysical personality, and, as such, they escape our positing, objectifying consciousness. Intimacy can be seen as the organizing principle that shapes the evolution of technology towards an ideal end that promises at least an approximation to the absolute intimacy that is unique to the gods.
Todd Suomela

Norms, "Ideology", and the Move against "Functionalist" Sociology « Ether Wav... - 1 views

etherwave.wordpress.com/...gainst-functionalist-sociology

sts science norms behavior sociology knowledge history philosophy functionalism explanation rhetoric

shared by Todd Suomela on 21 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • However, at the same time, another critique questioned the basic validity of that framework. This critique shared the SSK critique’s interest in describing actual scientific work, but, like Mertonian sociology, it focused on scientists’ and others’ sense of the essence of scientific culture without directly addressing knowledge-production processes. This critique held that, because “functionalist” ideal-type systems of scientific behavior could not actually be found in their pure form, such systems did not meaningfully exist. Legitimate sociology had to be obtained inductively from the empirical record, as studied by historians and ethnologists.
  • Todd Suomela on 21 Oct 11
     
    Very interesting summary of debates on SSK and Mertonian science studies during the mid-20c. Describes the move away from functional, ideal-type, descriptions a la Merton to more historically specific microhistories a la Daston.
Todd Suomela

Sociology and History: Shapin on the Merton Thesis « Ether Wave Propaganda - 1 views

etherwave.wordpress.com/...ry-shapin-on-the-merton-thesis

sts science norms behavior sociology knowledge history philosophy functionalism explanation rhetoric

shared by Todd Suomela on 21 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Shapin observed that the link Merton drew between Puritanism and seventeenth-century English science was a matter of happenstance rather than determinism. According to Merton, science requires certain “values” and “sentiments” allowing intellectual individualism, and fostering not only an interest in the transcendent, but also secular improvement. It so happened that these values and sentiments were to be found in Puritan asceticism and sense of social obligation, which thus provided a social context in which science could develop. Definitively, this was not to say that Puritanism provided a unique source of these values and sentiments, or that science did not have other roots. It was obviously possible for science to develop in Catholic contexts as well, despite the less hospitable value system of Catholicism. The confluence of values simply seemed to promise some insight into the growth of science in a particular time and place.
  • Robert K. Merton’s “functionalist” sociology viewed “science” as a kind of Weberian ideal type — a form of thought that is identifiable by its peculiar, philosophically-defined characteristics. Merton’s sociology of science held that this thought could also be identified with social behaviors, characterized by a set of “norms”, which made the thought possible. The Merton Thesis (which slightly predates Merton’s enumeration of science’s norms) holds that the rise of science in early-modern England could be linked to the social behaviors valued by the Puritanism of that milieu. This was the subject of Merton’s PhD thesis and his 1938 book Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England.
  • Pascal Bellanca-Penel on 07 Apr 13
     
    Great link. Thanks
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