How to attend to screens? : Technology, ontology and precarious enactments

In this paper, I explore the question of how to attend to screens. Starting from the puzzling observation that screens seem both ubiquitously present and conspicuously absent in everyday life, I find that existing studies tend to take the analytic status of screens for granted and juxtapose them with a human user to theorize the relationship between the two. In an attempt to avoid such dualisms, I turn to recent work in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and focus on how screens are being enacted in practice. However, exploring a strategy of enactment in the context of a recent ethnography of webbased patient feedback produces mixed results. Perhaps most importantly, the salience of objects is not given in enactment, but itself contingently accomplished - a process in which the role of the researcher is easily overlooked. The paper concludes that a call to attend to screens as ‘objects of interest’ may thus be better understood as an invitation to engage with people and things in situations in which the notion of ‘screens’ may (or may not) provide a useful heuristic for orienting inquiry

Organic search: How metaphors help cultivate the web

Tomatoes, apples and bread can be ‘organic.’ But search results? Anna Jobin and Malte Ziewitz wonder about the currency of agricultural metaphors in web search and show how they do different work for different users. This article is part of our blog series How metaphors shape the digital society

Bureaucracy as a Lens for Analyzing and Designing Algorithmic Systems

Scholarship on algorithms has drawn on the analogy between algorithmic systems and bureaucracies to diagnose shortcomings in algorithmic decision-making. We extend the analogy further by drawing on Michel Crozier’s theory of bureaucratic organizations to analyze the relationship between algorithmic and human decision-making power. We present algorithms as analogous to impartial bureaucratic rules for controlling action, and argue that discretionary decision-making power in algorithmic systems accumulates at locations where uncertainty about the operation of algorithms persists. This key point of our essay connects with Alkhatib and Bernstein’s theory of ’street-level algorithms’, and highlights that the role of human discretion in algorithmic systems is to accommodate uncertain situations which inflexible algorithms cannot handle. We conclude by discussing how the analysis and design of algorithmic systems could seek to identify and cultivate important sources of uncertainty, to enable the human discretionary work that enhances systemic resilience in the face of algorithmic errors.Peer reviewe

Modes of Governance in Digitally Networked Environments: A Workshop Report

Over the past decade, researchers have become increasingly interested in the theoretical and practical issue of governance as it relates to information and communication technologies. However, while the field has grown with the proliferation and use of such technologies, its scope and focus are far from clear: what counts as governance in settings, in which people increasingly interact through networked digital media? How can we think about interaction, coordination and control in these environments? What is the role of technologies in creating and maintaining regimes of governance? And what methodologies and methods are appropriate for understanding them? This paper draws on an interdisciplinary workshop held at Oxford University to have a closer look at some of these issues. It suggests that a key to understanding the heterogeneity of workshop contributions is to attend to the performativity of governance and governance research, the analytic status of ‘technology’ and the conceptual and methodological devices we use to researc

It’s Important to Go to the Laboratory: Malte Ziewitz Talks with Michael Lynch

Why would anyone still want to go to the laboratory in 2018? In this interview, Michael Lynch answers this and other questions, reflecting on his own journey in, through, and alongside the field of science and technology studies (STS). Starting from his days as a student of Harold Garfinkel’s at UCLA to more recent times as editor of Social Studies of Science, Lynch talks about the rise of origin stories in the field; the role of ethnomethodology in his thinking; the early days of laboratory studies; why “turns” and “waves” might better be called “spins”; what he learned from David Edge; why we should be skeptical of the presumption that STS enhances the democratization of science; and why it might be time to “blow up STS”––an appealing idea that Malte Ziewitz takes up in his reflection following the interview

Jefferson Rebuffed--The United States and the Future of Internet Governance

Over the last several years, many have called for an internationalization of Internet governance in general, and Internet naming and numbering in particular. The multi-year WSIS process that culminated in November 2005 was intended to create momentum in such direction. The United States has long resisted such internationalization, fearing in particular the growing influence of China and similar nations. In September 2005 the European Union put forward a proposal which would have offered a constitutional moment for Internet governance by suggesting internationalization based on fundamental values of the Internet community. The swift rejection of the proposal by the US was surprising, both from a tactical as well as – in light of its own constitutional history – a substantive viewpoint. In this article we describe the main features of the European proposal and what it might have created. We evaluate four possible arguments explaining US rejection: delegation of power, objective rights, public choice, and de-legitimization of international regimes.