How to Do Things With Words

From the Publisher: 
A Question of Identity 
Life on the Screen is a fascinating and wide-ranging investigation of the impact of computers and networking on society, peoples' perceptions of themselves, and the individual's relationship to machines. Sherry Turkle, a Professor of the Sociology of Science at MIT and a licensed psychologist, uses Internet MUDs (multi-user domains, or in older gaming parlance multi-user dungeons) as a launching pad for explorations of software design, user interfaces, simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, agents, "bots," virtual reality, and "the on-line way of life." 
Turkle's discussion of postmodernism is particularly enlightening. She shows how postmodern concepts in art, architecture, and ethics are related to concrete topics much closer to home, for example AI research (Minsky's "Society of Mind") and even MUDs (exemplified by students with X-window terminals who are doing homework in one window and simultaneously playing out several different roles in the same MUD in other windows). Those of you who have (like me) been turned off by the shallow, pretentious, meaningless paintings and sculptures that litter our museums of modern art may have a different perspective after hearing what Turkle has to say. 
This is a psychoanalytical book, not a technical one. However, software developers and engineers will find it highly accessible because of the depth of the author's technical understanding and credibility. Unlike most other authors in this genre, Turkle does not constantly jar the technically-literate reader with blatant errors or bogus assertions about how things work. Although I personally don't have time or patience for MUDs,view most of AI as snake-oil, and abhor postmodern architecture, I thought the time spent reading this book was an extremely good investment.

스크린 위의 삶 = Life on the screen : identity in the age of the internet

What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification -- the scaffolding of information infrastructures. In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis. The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.

https://www.reciis.icict.fiocruz.br/index.php/reciis/article/download/794/1436

Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

In the present paper a research has been done on the essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’ by’ Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’. It has been explained into much simpler language about what the author conveys for better understanding and further references. Also the criticism has been done by various critiques from various sources which is helpful from examination point of view. The paper has been divided into various contexts with an introduction and the conclusions. Also the references has been written that depicts the sources of criticism.

/pdf/can-the-subaltern-speak-559i22edvt.pdf

Can the Subaltern Speak

We analyze a large-scale custom software effort, the Worm Community System (WCS), a collaborative system designed for a geographically dispersed community of geneticists. There were complex challenges in creating this infrastructural tool, ranging from simple lack of resources to complex organizational and intellectual communication failures and tradeoffs. Despite high user satisfaction with the system and interface, and extensive user needs assessment, feedback, and analysis, many users experienced difficulties in signing on and use. The study was conducted during a time of unprecedented growth in the Internet and its utilities (1991–1994), and many respondents turned to the World Wide Web for their information exchange. Using Bateson's model of levels of learning, we analyze the levels of infrastructural complexity involved in system access and designer-user communication. We analyze the connection between systems development aimed at supporting specific forms of collaborative knowledge work, local orga...

/pdf/steps-toward-an-ecology-of-infrastructure-design-and-access-26zws8cs20.pdf

Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces

Highlights the issues in feminist theory, epistemology and methodology. Combining introductory overviews with reflections, this title focuses on analytical approaches to gendered power differential ...

Feminist Studies: A Guide to Intersectional Theory, Methodology and Writing

Animal performances : An exploration of intersections between feminist science studies and studies of human/animal relationships.

Animal Performances An Exploration of Intersections between Feminist Science Studies and Studies of Human/Animal Relationships

On the construction of feminist subjects of science and technology monsters, cyborgs, feminism and science women of colour and the monster metaphor moving beyond the metaphor in population and development dialogues feminism and the concept of home in cyberspace dialogues with dolphins and other extraterrestrials - displacement in gendered space the tale of the universe for others the salutary tale of the pre-embryo the decline of the one-size-fits-all paradigm postmodern visitations of the post-menopausal body between feminist critique and the threat of medicalization gynogenesis - a lesbian appropriation of reproductive technologies feminism, environmental ethics and objectivity on healing self/nature femininity, ecology, power does woman speak for nature?

Between monsters, goddesses, and cyborgs : feminist confrontations with science, medicine, and cyberspace

/pdf/intersektionalitet-ett-anvandbart-begrepp-for-bxco5po9q0.pdf

Intersektionalitet - ett användbart begrepp för genusforskningen

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Nina Lykke

Papers

Feminist Studies: A Guide to Intersectional Theory, Methodology and Writing

Animal Performances An Exploration of Intersections between Feminist Science Studies and Studies of Human/Animal Relationships

Between monsters, goddesses, and cyborgs : feminist confrontations with science, medicine, and cyberspace

Intersektionalitet - ett användbart begrepp för genusforskningen

Nya perspektiv på intersektionalitet. Problem och möjligheter