Download or read book Acting with Technology written by Victor Kaptelinin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-08-07 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A systematic presentation of activity theory, its application to interaction design, and an argument for the development of activity theory as a basis for understanding how people interact with technology. Activity theory holds that the human mind is the product of our interaction with people and artifacts in the context of everyday activity. Acting with Technology makes the case for activity theory as a basis for understanding our relationship with technology. Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie Nardi describe activity theory's principles, history, relationship to other theoretical approaches, and application to the analysis and design of technologies. The book provides the first systematic entry-level introduction to the major principles of activity theory. It describes the accumulating body of work in interaction design informed by activity theory, drawing on work from an international community of scholars and designers. Kaptelinin and Nardi examine the notion of the object of activity, describe its use in an empirical study, and discuss key debates in the development of activity theory. Finally, they outline current and future issues in activity theory, providing a comparative analysis of the theory and its leading theoretical competitors within interaction design: distributed cognition, actor-network theory, and phenomenologically inspired approaches.

Download or read book Acting in an Uncertain World written by Michel Callon and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-01-21 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A call for a new form of democracy in which “hybrid forums” composed of experts and laypeople address such sociotechnical controversies as hazardous waste, genetically modified organisms, and nanotechnology. Controversies over such issues as nuclear waste, genetically modified organisms, asbestos, tobacco, gene therapy, avian flu, and cell phone towers arise almost daily as rapid scientific and technological advances create uncertainty and bring about unforeseen concerns. The authors of Acting in an Uncertain World argue that political institutions must be expanded and improved to manage these controversies, to transform them into productive conversations, and to bring about “technical democracy.” They show how “hybrid forums”—in which experts, non-experts, ordinary citizens, and politicians come together—reveal the limits of traditional delegative democracies, in which decisions are made by quasi-professional politicians and techno-scientific information is the domain of specialists in laboratories. The division between professionals and laypeople, the authors claim, is simply outmoded. The authors argue that laboratory research should be complemented by everyday experimentation pursued in the real world, and they describe various modes of cooperation between the two. They explore a range of concrete examples of hybrid forums that have dealt with sociotechnical controversies including nuclear waste disposal in France, industrial waste and birth defects in Japan, a childhood leukemia cluster in Woburn, Massachusetts, and mad cow disease in the United Kingdom. The authors discuss the implications for political decision making in general and describe a “dialogic” democracy that enriches traditional representative democracy. To invent new procedures for consultation and representation, they suggest, is to contribute to an endless process that is necessary for the ongoing democratization of democracy.

Download or read book Acting with Technology written by Victor Kaptelinin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-08-07 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A systematic presentation of activity theory, its application to interaction design, and an argument for the development of activity theory as a basis for understanding how people interact with technology. Activity theory holds that the human mind is the product of our interaction with people and artifacts in the context of everyday activity. Acting with Technology makes the case for activity theory as a basis for understanding our relationship with technology. Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie Nardi describe activity theory's principles, history, relationship to other theoretical approaches, and application to the analysis and design of technologies. The book provides the first systematic entry-level introduction to the major principles of activity theory. It describes the accumulating body of work in interaction design informed by activity theory, drawing on work from an international community of scholars and designers. Kaptelinin and Nardi examine the notion of the object of activity, describe its use in an empirical study, and discuss key debates in the development of activity theory. Finally, they outline current and future issues in activity theory, providing a comparative analysis of the theory and its leading theoretical competitors within interaction design: distributed cognition, actor-network theory, and phenomenologically inspired approaches.

Download or read book Acting with technology written by and published by . This book was released on with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Turn That Thing Off written by Rose Burnett Bonczek and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As personal technology becomes ever-present in the classroom and rehearsal studio, its use and ubiquity is affecting the collaborative behaviors that should underpin actor training. How is the collaborative impulse being distracted and what kind of solutions can re-establish its connections? The daily work of a theater practitioner thrives on an ability to connect, empathize, and participate with other artists. This is true at every level, from performing arts students to established professionals. As smartphones, social media, and other forms of digital connectedness become more and more embedded in daily life, they can inhibit these collaborative, creative skills. Turn That Thing Off! Collaboration and Technology in 21st-Century Actor Training explores ways to foster these essential abilities, paving the way for emerging performers to be more present, available, and generous in their work.

Download or read book Heteromation and Other Stories of Computing and Capitalism written by Hamid R. Ekbia and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-05-04 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of a new division of labor between machines and humans, in which people provide value to the economy with little or no compensation. The computerization of the economy—and everyday life—has transformed the division of labor between humans and machines, shifting many people into work that is hidden, poorly compensated, or accepted as part of being a “user” of digital technology. Through our clicks and swipes, logins and profiles, emails and posts, we are, more or less willingly, participating in digital activities that yield economic value to others but little or no return to us. Hamid Ekbia and Bonnie Nardi call this kind of participation—the extraction of economic value from low-cost or free labor in computer-mediated networks—“heteromation.” In this book, they explore the social and technological processes through which economic value is extracted from digitally mediated work, the nature of the value created, and what prompts people to participate in the process. Arguing that heteromation is a new logic of capital accumulation, Ekbia and Nardi consider different kinds of heteromated labor: communicative labor, seen in user-generated content on social media; cognitive labor, including microwork and self-service; creative labor, from gaming environments to literary productions; emotional labor, often hidden within paid jobs; and organizing labor, made up of collaborative groups such as citizen scientists. Ekbia and Nardi then offer a utopian vision: heteromation refigured to bring end users more fully into the prosperity of capitalism.

Download or read book Invisible Users written by Jenna Burrell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-05-04 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of how young people in Ghana's capital city adopt and adapt digital technology in the margins of the global economy. The urban youth frequenting the Internet cafés of Accra, Ghana, who are decidedly not members of their country's elite, use the Internet largely as a way to orchestrate encounters across distance and amass foreign ties—activities once limited to the wealthy, university-educated classes. The Internet, accessed on second-hand computers (castoffs from the United States and Europe), has become for these youths a means of enacting a more cosmopolitan self. In Invisible Users, Jenna Burrell offers a richly observed account of how these Internet enthusiasts have adopted, and adapted to their own priorities, a technological system that was not designed with them in mind. Burrell describes the material space of the urban Internet café and the virtual space of push and pull between young Ghanaians and the foreigners they encounter online; the region's famous 419 scam strategies and the rumors of “big gains” that fuel them; the influential role of churches and theories about how the supernatural operates through the network; and development rhetoric about digital technologies and the future viability of African Internet cafés in the region. Burrell, integrating concepts from science and technology studies and African studies with empirical findings from her own field work in Ghana, captures the interpretive flexibility of technology by users in the margins but also highlights how their invisibility puts limits on their full inclusion into a global network society.

Download or read book Coding Places written by Yuri Takhteyev and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-09-21 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of software practice in Brazil that reveals both the globalization and the localization of software development. Software development would seem to be a quintessential example of today's Internet-enabled “knowledge work”—a global profession not bound by the constraints of geography. In Coding Places, Yuri Takhteyev looks at the work of software developers who inhabit two contexts: a geographical area—in this case, greater Rio de Janeiro—and a “world of practice,” a global system of activities linked by shared meanings and joint practice. The work of the Brazilian developers, Takhteyev discovers, reveals a paradox of the world of software: it is both diffuse and sharply centralized. The world of software revolves around a handful of places—in particular, the San Francisco Bay area—that exercise substantial control over both the material and cultural elements of software production. Takhteyev shows how in this context Brazilian software developers work to find their place in the world of software and to bring its benefits to their city. Takhteyev's study closely examines Lua, an open source programming language developed in Rio but used in such internationally popular products as World of Warcraft and Angry Birds. He shows that Lua had to be separated from its local origins on the periphery in order to achieve success abroad. The developers, Portuguese speakers, used English in much of their work on Lua. By bringing to light the work that peripheral practitioners must do to give software its seeming universality, Takhteyev offers a revealing perspective on the not-so-flat world of globalization.

Download or read book A Small Matter of Programming written by Bonnie A. Nardi and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes cognitive, social and technical issues of end user programming. Drawing on empirical research on existing end user systems, this text examines the importance of task-specific programming languages, visual application frameworks and collaborative work practices for end user computing.

Download or read book Acting Bodies and Social Networks written by Bianca Maria Pirani and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the complex interactions of body, mind and microelectronic technologies. Internationally renowned scholars look into the nature of the mind - a combination of thought, perception, emotion, will and imagination - as well as the ever-increasing impact and complexity of microelectronic technologies.

Download or read book Interchangeable Parts written by Victor Holtcamp and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book See Sooner Act Faster written by George S. Day and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How organizations can anticipate threats, spot opportunities, and act faster when the time is right; with rich examples including Adobe, MasterCard, and Amazon. When turbulence is the new normal, an organization's survival depends on vigilant leadership that can anticipate threats, spot opportunities, and act quickly when the time is right. In See Sooner, Act Faster, strategy experts George Day and Paul Schoemaker offer tools for thriving when digital advances intensify turbulence. Vigilant firms have greater foresight than their rivals, while vulnerable firms often miss early signals of external threats and organizational challenges. Charles Schwab, for example, was early to see and act on the promise of “robo-advisors”; Honeywell, on the other hand, stumbled when Nest Labs came out first with a “smart” thermostat. Day and Schoemaker show leaders how to assess their vigilance capabilities and cultivate insight and foresight throughout their organizations. They draw on a range of cases, including Adobe and Intuit's move to the cloud, Shell's investment in clean energy, and MasterCard's early recognition of digital challenges. Day and Schoemaker describe how to allocate the scarce resource of attention, how to detect weak signals and separate them from background noise, and how to respond strategically before competitors do. The challenge is not just to act faster but to act wisely, and the authors suggest ways to create dynamic portfolios of options. Finally, they offer an action agenda, with tips for fostering vigilance and agility throughout an organization. The rewards are stronger market positions, higher profits and growth, more motivated employees, and organization longevity.

Download or read book Venture Labor written by Gina Neff and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-04-06 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why employees of pioneering Internet companies chose to invest their time, energy, hopes, and human capital in start-up ventures. In the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, employees of Internet startups took risks—left well-paying jobs for the chance of striking it rich through stock options (only to end up unemployed a year later), relocated to areas that were epicenters of a booming industry (that shortly went bust), chose the opportunity to be creative over the stability of a set schedule. In Venture Labor, Gina Neff investigates choices like these made by high-tech workers in New York City's “Silicon Alley” in the 1990s. Why did these workers exhibit entrepreneurial behavior in their jobs—investing time, energy, and other personal resources that Neff terms “venture labor”—when they themselves were employees and not entrepreneurs? Neff argues that this behavior was part of a broader shift in society in which economic risk shifted away from collective responsibility toward individual responsibility. In the new economy, risk and reward took the place of job loyalty, and the dot-com boom helped glorify risks. Company flexibility was gained at the expense of employee security. Through extensive interviews, Neff finds not the triumph of the entrepreneurial spirit but a mixture of motivations and strategies, informed variously by bravado, naïveté, and cold calculation. She connects these individual choices with larger social and economic structures, making it clear that understanding venture labor is of paramount importance for encouraging innovation and, even more important, for creating sustainable work environments that support workers.

Download or read book Left to Our Own Devices written by Margaret E. Morris and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-12-25 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unexpected ways that individuals adapt technology to reclaim what matters to them, from working through conflict with smart lights to celebrating gender transition with selfies. We have been warned about the psychological perils of technology: distraction, difficulty empathizing, and loss of the ability (or desire) to carry on a conversation. But our devices and data are woven into our lives. We can't simply reject them. Instead, Margaret Morris argues, we need to adapt technology creatively to our needs and values. In Left to Our Own Devices, Morris offers examples of individuals applying technologies in unexpected ways—uses that go beyond those intended by developers and designers. Morris examines these kinds of personalized life hacks, chronicling the ways that people have adapted technology to strengthen social connection, enhance well-being, and affirm identity. Morris, a clinical psychologist and app creator, shows how people really use technology, drawing on interviews she has conducted as well as computer science and psychology research. She describes how a couple used smart lights to work through conflict; how a woman persuaded herself to eat healthier foods when her photographs of salads garnered “likes” on social media; how a trans woman celebrated her transition with selfies; and how, through augmented reality, a woman changed the way she saw her cancer and herself. These and the many other “off-label” adaptations described by Morris cast technology not just as a temptation that we struggle to resist but as a potential ally as we try to take care of ourselves and others. The stories Morris tells invite us to be more intentional and creative when left to our own devices.

Download or read book Technological Advancements and the Impact of Actor Network Theory written by Tatnall, Arthur and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2014-06-30 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has existed as a topic of interest among social theorists for decades. Due to the prevalence of technology in modern society, discussions over the influence of actor-network theory on the changing scope of technology can assist in facilitating further research and scientific thought. Technological Advancements and the Impact of Actor-Network Theory focuses on cross-disciplinary research as well as examples of the use of actor-network theory in a variety of fields, including medicine, education, business, engineering, environmental science, computer science, and social science. This timely publication is well-suited for reference use by academicians, researchers, upper-level students, and theorists.

Download or read book Acting Auditioning for the 21st Century written by Stephanie Barton-Farcas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acting & Auditioning for the 21st Century covers acting and auditioning in relation to new media, blue and green screen technology, motion capture, web series, audiobook work, evolving livestreamed web series, and international acting and audio work. Readers are given a methodology for changing artistic technology and the global acting market, with chapters covering auditions of all kinds, contracts, the impact of new technology and issues relating to disabled actors, actors of colour and actors that are part of the LGBTQIA community.

Download or read book Context and Consciousness written by Bonnie A. Nardi and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work brings together a collection of 13 contributions that apply activity theory - a psychological theory with a naturalistic emphasis - to problems of human-computer interaction. It presents activity theory as a means of structuring and guiding field studies of human-computer interaction.