260 research outputs found

    Feminist geographies of digital work

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    Feminist thought challenges essentialist and normative categorizations of ‘work’. Therefore, feminism provides a critical lens on ‘working space’ as a theoretical and empirical focus for digital geographies. Digital technologies extend and intensify working activity, rendering the boundaries of the workplace emergent. Such emergence heightens the ambivalence of working experience: the possibilities for affirmation and/or negation through work. A digital geography is put forward through feminist theorizations of the ambivalence of intimacy. The emergent properties of working with digital technologies create space through the intimacies of postwork places where bodies and machines feel the possibilities of being ‘at’ work

    Feminist geographies of digital work

    Get PDF
    Feminist thought challenges essentialist and normative categorizations of ‘work’. Therefore, feminism provides a critical lens on ‘working space’ as a theoretical and empirical focus for digital geographies. Digital technologies extend and intensify working activity, rendering the boundaries of the workplace emergent. Such emergence heightens the ambivalence of working experience: the possibilities for affirmation and/or negation through work. A digital geography is put forward through feminist theorizations of the ambivalence of intimacy. The emergent properties of working with digital technologies create space through the intimacies of postwork places where bodies and machines feel the possibilities of being ‘at’ work

    Impact of Instant Connectivity on Business Productivity: A Study Using the Community Embodiment Model (CEM)

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    The last decade has seen a significant growth in mobile technologies. Predominantly this technology has been relegated to the realm of personal use, but as this work will suggest, cost related effects of such technologies also need to be considered. For most organizations maximizing operational efficiency is the main reason why new technologies are acquired. However, apart from basic costs, such as total cost of ownership of mobile technologies, other costs (business process reengineering, and employee morale) need to be measured in order to ascertain if an organization can withstand a change to a next-generation system. This study attempts to evaluate ideas put forth by the Community Embodiment Model (CEM) as possible quantifiable variables which may assist an organization in coming to a conclusion about introducing a new product and process. The quantified variables are used in the development of a formula which alongside a simulation program and an Excel sheet gives a detailed picture of benefits gained, costs incurred, and the future picture of the initial investment. Through sensitive analysis the findings of the study will indicate the importance of factors such as employee morale on the success of a particular mobile device (Personal Digital Assistant) implementation at an organization level

    Association of Architecture Schools in Australasia

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    "Techniques and Technologies: Transfer and Transformation", proceedings of the 2007 AASA Conference held September 27-29, 2007, at the School of Architecture, UTS

    Designing for the Cooperative Use of Multi-user, Multi-device Museum Exhibits.

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    This work explores software-based museum exhibits that allow groups of visitors to employ their own personal mobile devices as impromptu user interfaces to the exhibits. Personal devices commandeered into service in this fashion are dubbed Opportunistic User Interfaces (O-UIs). Because visitors usually prefer to engage in shared learning experiences, emphasis is placed on how to design software interfaces to support collaborative learning. To study the issue, a Design-Based Research approach was taken to construct an externally valid exemplar of this type of exhibit, while also conducting more traditional experiments on specific features of the O-UI design. Three analyses, of – (1) museums as a context, (2) existing computer-based museum exhibits, and (3) computer support of collaborative processes in both work and classroom contexts – produced guidelines that informed the design of the software-based exhibit created as a testbed for O-UI design. The exhibit was refined via extensive formative testing on a museum floor. The experimental phase of this work examined the impact of O-UI design on (1) the visual attention and (2) collaborative learning behaviors of visitors. Specifically, an O-UI design that did not display any graphical output (the “simple” condition) was contrasted against an O-UI design that displayed multi-element, dynamically animated graphics (the “complex” condition). The “complex” O-UIs promoted poor visual attention management, an effect known as the heads-down phenomenon, wherein visitors get so enmeshed with their O-UIs that they miss out on the shared context, to the detriment of group outcomes. Despite this shortcoming, the “complex” O-UIs better promoted goal awareness, on-task interactions between visitors, and equity in participation and performance. The tight output coupling (visitors see only one shared display) of the “simple” O-UI condition promoted emergent competition, and it encouraged some visitors (especially males) to become more engaged than others. Two design recommendations emerge: (1) incorporating devices with private displays (O-UIs with output) as interfaces to a single large display better promotes collaboration (especially equity), and (2) O-UIs with “complex” displays may be used in museum exhibits, but visitors would benefit from mechanisms to encourage them to direct their attention to the shared display periodically.Ph.D.Computer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61771/1/ltoth_1.pd

    Read my QR: Quilla Constance and the conceptualist promise of intelligibility

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    This essay contributes to the ongoing questioning of the definitions and boundaries of conceptualism from intersectional feminist psychoanalytic perspectives, and specifically through the practice of Quilla Constance, aka QC or #QC, the post-punk, neo-glam, gender-questioning performance persona of Jennifer Allen. A songwriter and musician, painter and visual performer in costumes designed and made by Jennifer Allen, #QC’s performance practice occasionally incorporates fragments of musical performances on cello and always includes some crypto-linguistic vocal improvisation, a verbal automatism that references trance states and ‘speaking in tongues’ as well as scat singing in jazz

    Conceptualism - intersectional readings, international framings: situating 'Black Artists & Modernism' in Europe

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    ‘Conceptualism: Intersectional Readings, International Framings’ was an international conference presented by the AHRC research project, Black Artists and Modernism, in collaboration with Van Abbemuseum. The conference was organised and co-convened by susan pui san lok, Sophie Orlando and Nick Aikens. The edited conference proceedings were published as an ebook by Van Abbemuseum in December 2019

    Convivial Making: Power in Public Library Creative Places

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    In 2011, public libraries began to provide access to collaborative creative places, frequently called “makerspaces.” The professional literature portrays these as beneficial for communities and individuals through their support of creativity, innovation, learning, and access to high-tech tools such as 3D printers. As in longstanding “library faith” narratives, which pin the library’s existence to widely held values, makerspace rhetoric describes access to tools and skills as instrumental for a stronger economy or democracy, social justice, and/or individual happiness. The rhetoric generally frames these places as empowering. Yet the concept of power has been neither well-theorized within the library makerspace literature nor explored in previous studies. This study fills the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of power, as described by the stakeholders, including staff, trustees, and users of the library. Potentially, library creative places could be what Ivan Illich calls convivial tools: tools that manifest social relations involving equitable distributions of power and decision-making. A convivial tool ensures that users may decide to which end they would like to apply the tool, and thus are constitutive of human capabilities and social justice. However, the characterization of library makerspaces in the literature evokes a technologically deterministic entrepreneurialism that marginalizes many types of making, and reduces the power of individuals to choose the ends to which they put this tool. This multi-site ethnographic study seeks to unravel the currents of power within three public library creative places. Through participant observation, document analysis, and interviews, the study traces the mechanisms and processes by which power is distributed, as enacted by institutional practices—the spaces, policies, tools, and programs—or through individual practices. The study finds seven key tensions that coalesce around the concept of conviviality, and also reveals seven capabilities of convivial tools that the users and providers of these spaces identify as crucial to their successful and satisfying implementation. As a user-centered exploration of the interactions of power in a public institution, this study can benefit a range of organizations that aim to further inclusion, equity, and social justice
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