Computer scientists & their publics. On constructions of ‘participation’ and ‘publics’ in participatory design and research.

Since November 2014 my thesis is finished. It was a long project, after which I needed a few months not thinking about academia. Now I’m coming back to all of that. So for everyone who’s interested, here’s my thesis in full text:

Andrea Ida Malkah Klaura (2014): Computer scientists & their publics. On constructions of ‘participation’ and ‘publics’ in participatory design and research. MA Thesis. University of Vienna.

Update 2015-03-30: The work is also available through the University of Vienna’s library system: http://othes.univie.ac.at/34851

Abstract:
Technosciences, with their practices as well as their products, are shaping not only our future, but also our social life – whether at home, at the working place, in our social and intimate relationships or in our academic worlds. To address potential consequences of technoscientific research, public engagement seems to be a key ingredient for responsible research and innovation. At least there is a noticeable turn towards participation and public engagement in technosciences within the last two decades. Science policies increasingly demand that scientific projects think about their societal consequences. Large governance bodies, like the EU, are building frameworks of public engagement in the technosciences. They also maintain databases for tools of participation. Nevertheless, what we often find in practice, are forms of “participation” which could better be described as “tokensim” or “nonparticipation”.

Science and technology studies (STS) did put a lot of effort in analysing such relations. But while most of the deliberations on whether and how to use participation are tied to the area of policy discussions, nearly no effort has been made to analyse and think about public participation in concrete technoscientific practices. With this work I address this gap through providing some preliminary STS-framed insights into the field of Participatory Design (PD) – a technoscientific field which, since its early formation in the 1970ies, builds on the participation of diverse publics in its concrete technoscientific practices and projects.

As a means to generate these insights I am using a theoretically informed empirical approach, derived from the framework of Situational Analysis. As core linkage between theory and practice in my own approach as well as between questions of public participation in the technosciences and considerations about the legitimacy and responsibility of research, I draw on feminist theory and feminist technoscience studies, which have highlighted the ethico-onto-epistemological entanglements of every technoscientific research endeavour – including my own research as well as STS research in general.

Further research can build on these exploratory insights to highlight potential synergies between STS and PD. New approaches to fulfil the demands of responsible research and innovations could be forged through further research on this issue. Nothing less then our future is at stake.

Keywords:
participation, publics, STS, Participatory Design, feminist epistemologies, Responsible Research and Innovation

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Computer scientists & their publics. On constructions of ‘participation’ and ‘publics’ in participatory design and research.

Finally, some (preliminary) closure to my ‘scientific’ life?

Dear all,

it certainly did not only feel like a long-drawn-out Strudel to finish my master thesis – no, it really was that. Long, and winding itself over and over, a lot of resting of the ingredients and the interim results (or production stages). But finally, I have made it, and hopefully it tastes well. I didn’t dare to try it so far.

I already finished my thesis end of October 2014 and had my final exam end of November 2014. It was all a bit stressful, but also challenging and rewarding. I also had a talk at the Changing Worlds Conference as a sort of personal closing event for my academic life. Although, the talk did not so much focus on my master thesis but was a general reflection on our stances towards trans*disciplinarity. It was titled “Changing the world for whom? Some thoughts about trans*disciplinarity, feminist epistemologies and Participatory Design”.

Regarding my thesis, titled Computer scientists & their publics : on constructions of ‘participation’ and ‘publics’ in participatory design and research,the university library takes some time until they’ve put it online for download. Anyway, I’ll have to bring some update here in the next weeks, and I’ll put my thesis online somewhere until it is available from the library system itself.

So, well, maybe after all I am not really completely done with academia 🙂 Maybe I myself, as every good Strudel, just have to rest a little bit, to reflect on my tastes and servings towards and for the world.

I don’t promise, but I’ll try to write more next week.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Finally, some (preliminary) closure to my ‘scientific’ life?

not writing… the practical side of it … || … what I am up to

Dear potential readers of this blog,

it has been a long time (well, in fast-paced research and blog publishing terms at least) since I was actively working on my project. One of the last active posts here – funny enough – was a collection of some more theoretically inspired thoughts on procrastination and not-writing. After more then half a year later I here want to give just some insights on the practical side of my not-writing. So what happened meanwhile and why it isn’t going as smoothly as I would like it to be. To some extent this is also my own acknowledgement that the problem for me too is more serious than I realized before.

After my last conference summer/autumn my scientific work dropped rather soon for at least two reasons:

1.) I was not at all satisfied with my project and the circumstances which it was contextualized in. In some part this might have happened just because of my experiences at the different conferences. Especially the PDC 2012 gave me lot to (re)think about and questioned my own scientific positioning. Am I really an STS researcher, or is it actually the case that I am still a computer science person and could not decide to commit to that? Wouldn’t it be better to try to work within Participatory Design instead of always keeping some critical distance (although it also might just be out of uncertainty or insecurity) and ‘only’ doing meta-research? On the other side it is still important to me to introduce critical (queer-)feminist research practices in STS, and a part of that also might be to look into successful patterns of participatory research and make those attractive to STS researchers themselves. Well, yes, it’s fucking political! But what else did we expect – it’s science.

2.) The second reason was that we are not free to do as we like and that there isn’t money for nothing – at least for most of us, and so for me. Somehow my research project just seems to big to do it as a plain master thesis. On the other hand you rarely can make a payed job out of writing a master thesis. Well, at least I did not manage too. So I had to look for other incomes. And now I have too much other work going on. But even before I got my new jobs I could not really focus on working on my scientific project, because I somehow always had to worry about where to get money from. Also nothing new: precariousness seems not to be a good basis for doing critical research. But this is easy to recognize theoretically. It is still another thing to be in just this dilemma: either living on the edges always worrying what the next day will bring along in order to have ‘time’ for doing research; or doing some day job in order to have at least outside this job a free mind to do research. I tried the first approach for some time, it did not work out very well. Now I am trying the latter approach. Since beginning of this year I am working for 20 hours a week as a network and systems administrator at the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry at University of Vienna. Besides I have some web programming project going on. Additionally I am engaged in several activist projects: producing a brochure on antisexist practices and methods, organizing a kvir-feminist festival, establishing a sort of queerfeminist workspace at the Austrian-wide students union, and then some other minor things here and there. Ah, yeah, of course I still try to get some computer science students into critical engagement with their own discipline(s) through different events and activities at the computer science faculty here and in context of a local informatics grassroots group, the /bin – basisgruppe informatik. From November to February we also had some meetings of the Feminist And Queer Technoscience Studies group in Vienna – this was very interesting and motivating, but somehow this project has fallen a bit asleep. Oh, and I forgot that I am also participating in a year long programme to become a group trainer (group dynamics and process oriented group supervision/mediation/coaching and stuff). Ok wow, sometimes I just need to spell it out in order to see that it actually is too much.

But what to do with all of that? I could not let go of all political/activist projects, and I think this is not what queer-feminist research should be about: to have to abandon activist activities in order to be able to do research. Ok, the alternative would be to abandon the daily wage work activities, but well, then we’re back at approach #1, which seldom works out for long. Of course another option would be to get payed for doing actual research. This too seems a bit unrealistic granted the local circumstances and that it is ‘only’ a master thesis project. So my current strategy is to get rid of most projects until this summer (or more nicely put: to not start follow-up projects any more) in order to find more time for finishing my thesis. But in the end I still would like to combine all of that I am doing now. Because the day job as system administrator is actually fun and interesting too – and it somehow grounds me in ICT practices and research. It would be nice to combine that with STS research. Isn’t it all about interdisciplinarity these days?

Well, put a long story short: if everything works out at least approximately like I have planned it, you will be able to read more regularly from me again starting this late summer. And maybe I even find time in the next few days/weeks to put online a short report of this year’s IAS/STS Conference in Graz, where I co-chaired the “Queer perspectives on STS” panel with Birgit Hofstätter, who is part of the Queer STS Work Group in Graz. Also I realized that I still have not published my report from last year’s PDC, although it is already finished. Well, not very actual anymore, nevertheless perhaps to some interesting. So I’ll try to put that out too.

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Feminist & Queer Technoscience Studies – Kick-off meeting in Vienna on 18th Dec. 2012

After months of talking about it we finally managed to set up a first meeting in Vienna to enable more networking of feminist and queer technoscience researchers. So here’s the invitation, if you are in Vienna, join us. (We also made a quick invitation flyer, if you want to distribute it – below you also find the link to an A4 printout version)

While sciences & technologies are important places to negotiate our futures, they are strongly shaped by ‘male’ networks of privilege. This does not only become evident by looking on male-to-female ratios in natural sciences and engineering. Also scientific theories, knowledges and practices deeply inhibit incorporate gender (and other) biases.

Engaging with sciences & technologies from a critical perspective takes place in several academic and non-academic contexts. However, even there, feminist and queer perspectives are often underrepresented, neglected or not even thought about in the first place.

Therefore we aim to bring together people who want to take a critical, queer-feminist stance in sciences & technologies. We invite all interested people to our first meeting, which should act as a starting point for more networking, a working group, reading circles, publish/production collectives, or whatever else we come to think about.

Join us for our first meeting on:

Tuesday, 18th of December 2012, 7.00 pm

Where:

Seminarraum STS

Neues Institutsgebäude, Stiege II/6. Stock

Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Wien

(if you’re interested but can’t make it, leave a message at faqts (at) diebin (dot) at)

Looking forward to see you soon,

Daniela Schuh and Andrea*s Jackie Klaura [1]

Here is also a printout version of the flyer, if anyone needs that.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Feminist & Queer Technoscience Studies – Kick-off meeting in Vienna on 18th Dec. 2012

Participatory design and feminist interventions. Emancipatory potentials of public engagement.

Finally here is my talk, which I gave last week on Thursday at the 4S/EASST 2012 Conference. While I presented some insights into participatory design practices two months before at the Science in Public 2012 Conference in London (see my blogpost Some insights into participatory design and research in computer science), I focused more on the feminist aspects that are found in and entangled with Participatory Design (PD). The talk did not so much aim at providing rich empirical findings – which I just cannot gather on the condition of writing a master thesis and not having time to wait for and follow a PD project for several years  – but intended much more to inspire new perspectives and entanglements. I thought this conference is a perfect place to do so: a conference where all those STS people meet but where PD is represented rather well by prominent PD researchers, where even a keynote is inspired by PD, a conference situated within a regional context (Scandinavia) where the whole PD story began.

So, now that I have roughly set the context for my presentation, here is the transcript of my talk, including the references: Presentation 4S-EASST 2012 (PDF, 66kB).

And here are the accompanying slides (in this case the slides probably do not make so much sense for themselves and should better be read alongside the transcript): Presentation 4S-EASST 2012 – slides (PDF, 385kB).

Posted in General | Comments Off on Participatory design and feminist interventions. Emancipatory potentials of public engagement.

Back in Scandinavia again…

Long time no word … well dear readers, I struggled with my work, ever since I came back from the Participatory Design Conference (PDC) 2012 in mid of August in Roskilde. Now I am sitting in the library of the Copenhagen Business School, just some 30 kilometers away, while the 4S/EASST conference 2012 takes off. I thought this might be a good moment to take up my writing again. I don’t know yet where it will lead me to. We will have to see.

So this message is just for all those of you who wonder if my project has failed or if I am going on with it. Well, yes, it has failed, and yes, I’ll be going on … by reframing, reevaluating and reenacting my research interests and strategies. I think what put me so far away from my project in the last two months has also a lot to do with what I encountered at the PDC 2012. Once again I had to encounter feelings between disillusionment and being overwhelmed. I reacted to that by distancing myself. Now this feelings return – perhaps to some extent also due the fact that I still have to prepare my presentation for tomorrow; a presentation in which I want to talk about feminist epistemology’s theoretically formulated demands for a critically engaged scientific practice and Participatory Design’s aspirations and struggles to implement such demands in actual research practices. At the time I have the feeling that neither my empirical material is rich enough to satisfactorily tell such a story, nor that I will be telling anything new here in Copenhagen. And besides that the first keynote today by Laura Watts, Lucy Suchman and Pelle Ehn further adds to my own discomfort in delineating boundaries, similarities and synergies between STS and Participatory Design (PD). But on the other hand this might just be a logical consequence of what I am aiming for – to destabilize the boundaries between science and public, between the different disciplines and to bring to the fore the political implications of doing STS research. In terms of today’s first keynotes we could also say: because the future could be otherwise. I hope I can elaborate a bit more on that in my presentation tomorrow.

Now, If anything goes just tangentially as I have planned for, I will put at least my presentation online in the next few days. Starting with November I will have to rearrange all my habits anyway, because hopefully I will have a regular 20h+ job again – which means that I even have less time for my master thesis project and this blog. Paradoxically this might motivate me again to start writing more. After all, to have a materially relatively secure life again, including not to have to worry all the time about health insurance and other such materially necessary things, does indeed free a lot of my attention to direct it towards my own research again. As soon as I have figured out how to go on with everything I’ll give you an update here.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Back in Scandinavia again…

Writing about writer’s block – or about the politics of everyday procrastination

According to my planned schedule I should have posted already a week ago. But I didn’t. And before I do not post this week either, I thought I may at least write about why I am not posting. This might actually reveal something about how precarious work in academia goes on. At least I suppose there are others out there facing similar problems.

So, what did I do the last two weeks? After I came back from the PDC 2012 conference I first needed two days off for regeneration. Then I put another two into avoiding to get back to serious work until I thought I just need a good strategy for the next one-and-a-half months in order to write everything down and finish up my thesis. Well, then I thought, before going into that I should just write the report from the PDC 2012 – which I actually already started on the way home. So, I started to look back to what happened at the conference and wrote one or two paragraphs. After that I asked myself if this is right, if I am not misinterpreting what has happened there. I also asked myself what the value of my report is, especially when anyone can anyways watch all the presentations at the conference video archive. Then I thought, if everyone can watch everything, I have to be really accurate in my descriptions. Why, of course I would have to do so otherwise too. But the fact that my report can be scrutinized much more thoroughly (given that anybody reads it in the first place and then still has time to go through the different talks of the conference), made it nearly impossible to write any more – and because there are of course always other much more knowledgeable people who could give much better accounts of the core issues at the conference.

Here, some issues of scientific practice, politics of science and ethico-onto-epistemology are entangled, it seems. In the end it is just a personal report. So, why trying to be objective? What would it mean to do so anyway? Is not the objective-looking impersonal (or impartial) scientific report as much personal? Not necessarily, but it is in the same amount political. Suppose you write a report that highlights the major themes and the core issues (as they would be perceived by the people at the core of the discipline), a report in which you mostly leave out attempts to interpret what has happened, where you just present a selection of what was actually said and discussed, ideally in a well readable form, tied together in a way so that a golden thread leads the reader through the report. This surely would be a great report. It would present the dominant view of (or on – depending on your reference discipline) the field. But what is new in that then? In some sense this report conserves and perpetuates an established understanding, at best it makes it more explicit – pretty normal science as Thomas Kuhn has termed it exactly half a century ago, in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions (for a newer edition see: Kuhn 1996). By the way, in The Observer there is a nice article by John Naughton on the relevance of Kuhns work, in which concludes with the question: “isn’t it time for a paradigm shift?”

So, although I know that I do not want to do normal science and that this is perfectly fine in scientific terms, I cannot find this obviousness, naturalness or self-evidence with which good reports and, also, good scientific papers, seem to be written. Perhaps doing not normal science implies denying to use god-tricks as Donna Haraway has decribed the scientific view-from-nowhere, which supposes the negligibility of the researchers own positions (Haraway 1988; Haraway 1991, 189ff). So while acknowledging this should actually make writing more easy, because it is anyway clear that my report is of course situated in my specific position, I sometimes have the feeling that it actually becomes harder. Why? Because it is expected that I conform to established (objectified or objectifying) standards; because there is nor space or time to make explicit the contingencies of my own working (which I am in fact just doing in some sense with this posting); because I do not get paid for this; in short: because the structural conditions foster normal science.

Ok, back to what I was doing. So, my last two weeks mainly consisted of avoiding, procrastinating, unproductive reflection … ok, here we have another issue. Why is this constant reflecting, rethinking and not-making-a-point unproductive? What does it mean to be productive? Perhaps unproductive is the wrong term. Perhaps it is just pre-productive, a necessary work that is usually embedded in other (daily) routines or even in seemingly scientific idle times of reading or watching this or that, cooking some fancy food, cleaning up the house, playing music, knitting a scarf, or even programming some web tools for a project I am involved in – all those are things I did in the last two weeks. But it all felt so unproductive – except for the programming, which again reflects our societal valuations of different sorts of work that I cannot just strip off (in neither direction of the productive/undproductive-dichotomy). Besides, just as an additional, but socially accepted excuse: I actually also did some other work on articles for a monthly magazine and a brochure. Yes, real work that pays real money which brings in real food and other stuff needed for real living – meaning mostly the part ‘outside’ science/academia.

So, while these pre-productive activities sometimes seem necessary to gain new insights and to critically reflect ones own scientific work, they also might hinder in going forth with scientific production – which is already evident in the wording. This might be just best be explained by the phenomenon of procrastination. As I am no psychologist, and I certainly do not want to start procrastinating again by going into some studies on procrastination, I will stay on a general level here. But this is already the point then: is procrastination always “counterproductive”, “needless” and “delaying”? Would it really mean to procrastinate if I really did stroll off into several studies on this issue for the next few days, just to come back to finish this article later – an article that has (on first sight) not any significant role in context of my actual thesis work? Would it still be procrastination if later take this article up again and discuss it with people to make a real paper out of it? By the way, if you are interested in a collaboration on that, just shoot me an e-mail. Even if we then make a distinction between “pre-productive” activities and “procrastination”, this still doesn’t solve the issue of why not only procrastination but also pre-productive activities often make us feel so bad. I think procrastination as a concept might in some cases indeed help to address some serious blockades and to seek help by others. But research on procrastination seems to almost exclusively frame it as something that hinders us and should be overcome. When we take a step out of this normative frame we could just also focus on what it helps us to do, even if the structural conditions are neglecting its pre-productive status. (P)re-productive work in our society still is exploited work. Even if we go onto one of the major commercial social web platforms to procrastinate, what we are indeed doing without even our own recognition is productive work – although usually not for ourselves but for a company that thrives on this exploitative arrangement, as Christian Fuchs has recently elaborated (Fuchs 2010; Fuchs 2012).

So, while I am not so much into distinguishing procrastination from (other) forms of pre-productive activities, others might want to go into investigating this. If you have any papers or links on that please let me know.

What my point here is: there are a range of pre-productive activities which are devalued in our institutional and societal arrangements. But especially for conducting non-normal, paradigm-shifting science these activities might help a lot, because they give space to new associations and thoughts (sometimes by sheer chance). These spaces can function as apparatuses of diffraction, through which we interpose and juxtapose different kinds of situated knowledges, to come to new insights and valuable translations that are rooted in a world full of socio-material contingencies. Through such diffractions we then are able to come to more (socially) just and robust knowledges, whether in social science, humanities or technical and natural sciences. This is of course not just something I made up. These few lines are very condensed interpretations of Karen Barad’s framework of agential realism (Barad 2007) and Donna Haraway’s work on situated knowledges (Haraway 1991). Especially the concept of diffraction is brought up by both and unfolds its valuable theoretical and methodological implications in the interplay of these works.

But how to come to an end? This is a very practical question for me at the time. How to not go on with this article and rather come back to what I actually should be doing? How can I use those things that I do, when I am just not able to go on with my main work? And do I have to? I do not want at all to glorify procrastination. It actually is much more a burden to me, and I would rather like to find some neatly delimited and especially non-precarious institutional arrangement to work on modest STS, Participatory Design, or computer science projects – being aware that I would not have to wish for such an arrangement, if we finally managed to change how work is defined in our society and how society (including our technoscientific creations) supports for the well-being of its members. But sometimes I think it is ok to be sick of ones own Utopian aspirations, as long as we have others who pull us out of our moods of resignation to engage again in critical counterproductive reflections. So, if you want to join an association of (pre-)productive procrastinators, let me know.

And for all those who are actually interested in my main research: don’t worry! Eventually I will be tired enough of wandering around the fields of curiosity and find back on the busy road of productivity. At least my report on the PDC 2012 is indeed almost finished, and I will publish it as soon as I find the heart to just set aside my own objections to it.

In general I think I already have shifted to the idea of not publishing weekly here, but only every other week. Otherwise I would feel too distracted to go on with my thesis – as this is additional work and not just a 1-to-1 mapping or illustration.

Wow, what an article … at least for a major writer’s block. One day I’ll make a paper out of it, and if it is just for the sake of the neat title. But first lets wonder what brings tomorrow.

References:

Barad, Karen Michelle. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press.

Fuchs, Christian. 2010. ‘Labor in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet’. The Information Society 26 (3): 179–196. doi:10.1080/01972241003712215.

———. 2012. ‘With or Without Marx? With or Without Capitalism? A Rejoinder to Adam Arvidsson and Eleanor Colleoni.’ tripleC – Cognition, Communication, Co-operation 10 (2) (July 1): 633–645.

Haraway, Donna. 1988. ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspectives’. Feminist Studies 14 (3): 575–599.

———. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.

Kuhn, Thomas Samuel. 1996. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 1st Edition 1962.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Writing about writer’s block – or about the politics of everyday procrastination

Whose participation? On framing Publics and the Public Sphere.

In science studies we often speak about publics and public engagement. Just this year, the journal Public Understanding of Science celebrates its 20 year anniversary. The according research field (PUS) has since then changed and today there is also a lot more emphasis on Public Engagement in Science and Technology (PEST). This reflects critiques of a deficit model of public knowledge about science and technology. So, in STS, we find many studies on how publics engage with science and on how the sciences engage in these new entanglements with diverse publics. When we look specifically to the computer science and ICT sector, there is the field of Participatory Design (PD), were also a lot of research is going on regarding participation of publics. Only these publics are most often framed as users or stakeholders. The focus in this research field lies on the integration of those groups at concrete levels of design and implementation of technology.

Just at the time of writing, I am spending my last evening in Roskilde (Denmark), where I attended the PDC 2012, the Participatory Design Conference. Because the wireless connection at the hostel where I am staying is not the best and rather expensive, I did not manage to post my last entry until now – also because the conference did take in all my attention and I did not find time at Roskilde University to work on this. But now here it comes. Last week I finished my chapter on Publics and Public Spheres, which I want to present here. This then also should serve as a frame with which we can look onto participatory processes in PD and elsewhere. So here I will give you a brief intro what this chapter is about. If you find it interesting take a look at it, it is attached below. Comments and critique are very welcome and might lead to my adaptive reworking of this chapter or successive parts in the thesis. Next week then I will also provide a report on what was going on at the PDC 2012. There we can already apply this framing of publics and public spheres and look what (and who) is at stake in PD research.

Well, now, the chapter that is attached below tries to wander through different conceptions of the public as they where brought forth from the beginning of the 20th century until recently. It starts with the prominent ‘Lippmann-Dewey debate’ (which was not really a debate). From that it goes on through Hannah Arendt’s thoughts to Jürgen Habmeras’s concept of the public sphere, which was very influential in diverse contexts and debates of democratization and participatory approaches in politics as well as in the technosciences. But the main focus then lies on critiques of Habermas’s concept, especially those brought forth by Nancy Fraser and Chantal Mouffe. The main aim of the chapter then is to work out some key aspects to focus on when we investigate specific participatory endeavors. The whole point in it will be to sensitize our analyses to the issues of power and struggle that are inherent in all participatory encounters.

Now, here is the chapter on Publics and the Public Sphere.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Whose participation? On framing Publics and the Public Sphere.

Framing the Publics

A viking ship at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde

The last week I worked on writing down my framing of a concept of public(s) and public sphere(s). I wanted to upload this here until I flew off to Roskilde (acutally Copenhagen, and from there by train). Due to several delays that did not work out. But now I nearly have the document ready for upload. Only sufficient internet time slots I don’t have. The hostel where I am staying is really nice, and it is so beautiful right at the sea, just the internet policy is a bit crude. Around 2.50 EUR for one our of wireless access. Well, I had to use that for some other submissions, so I did not manage to put up the full document with a short intro here. But I will try to do so the next days when I am at the Roskilde University.

Beautiful sunset in Roskilde at the Viking Ship Museum, where my hostel is located

By the way, if you want to know something special from the Participatory Design Conference 2012 (PDC 2012), then contact me. I am here for the next 5 days. So, after the blog entry on publics and public spheres, the next one will probably bring some reflections on what is going on in the Participatory Design field at the time.

And just to provide you with some traveling teaser, here some more photos from where I am staying while attending the PDC 2012.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Framing the Publics

Free software and participatory design

One of the sub-chapters in my thesis is termed “Free Software culture as an illustrative case ”. In fact it is illustrative not only of participatory approaches to software development but also of exclusions and omissions. So far, I have only written this chapter to about one third of the intended scope. And so far I did not find many works that I could use to illustrate this context. But just recently a new issue of TECHNOSCIENZA: Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies came out, in it an article by Giacomo Poderi with the title: “Innovation Happens Elsewhere, but Where Does Design Happen? Considerations on Design and Participatory Processes in Emerging Information Technologies ” (Poderi 2012). I just now found time to go through it and I thought this might make an opportunity to put it to the blog, also because I think this is an important and still much too under-researched topic. I am glad for Poderi’s article, because it very much helps me to go on with the mentioned chapter in my own work. Continue reading

Posted in General | Comments Off on Free software and participatory design