Beyond the Hoax: A Response to Emily A. Schultz

I am grateful to the editors of Reviews in Anthropology for giving me the opportunity to respond to Emily Schultz’s review (2010) of my book Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture (2008). I shall begin by briefly correcting several of Schultz’s misrepresentations of my ideas. I shall then endeavor to address the intellectually interesting issues that she raises

Mixed Quotation

The central challenge posed by mixed quotation is that it exhibits both regular semantic use and metalinguistic reference, simultaneously. Semanticists disagree considerably on how to capture the interplay between these two meaning aspects. In this case study I present the various semantic approaches to mixed quotation and compare their predictions with respect to empirical phenomena like indexical shifting, projection, and non‐constituent mixed quotation

Considering agency and data granularity in the design of visualization tools

The Ecuadorian Government supports Gonzalo Gabriel Méndez through a SENESCYT scholarship.Previous research has identified trade-offs when it comes to designing visualization tools. While constructive “bottom-up” tools promote a hands-on, user-driven design process that enables a deep understanding and control of the visual mapping, automated tools are more efficient and allow people to rapidly explore complex alternative designs, often at the cost of transparency. We investigate how to design visualization tools that support a user-driven, transparent design process while enabling efficiency and automation, through a series of design workshops that looked at how both visualization experts and novices approach this problem. Participants produced a variety of solutions that range from example-based approaches expanding constructive visualization to solutions in which the visualization tool infers solutions on behalf of the designer, e.g., based on data attributes. On a higher level, these findings highlight agency and granularity as dimensions that can guide the design of visualization tools in this space.Postprin