Santa Clara University

Richard Arias

I’m still at RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), hoping to graduate at the end of this year. I’m Taking and continuing to write chapters of my dissertation. This is an overview:

Title:

Engineering the Information Society: Politics of Design and Engineering
Cultures in the Construction of IT projects in Colombia.

Overview:

My dissertation is an analysis of versions of the information society being built by different engineering cultures concerned with achieving social goals through technical means. In the Colombian case, this is attempted by computer-systems engineers through the design of IT projects. These different versions of the information society being built make evident the links between politics of design, social justice and engineering cultures. They also document the diversity of approaches, narratives, strategies, methodologies, interpretations, motivations, and types of artifacts being design by the computer-systems engineers from the different professional cultures studied. 

The fieldwork was done between 2006 and 2007 in Colombia, and included two NGO’s of computer-systems engineers, one philanthropic foundation that uses IT, and one governmental agency engaged in e-government. The empirical work relies on participant observations in these organizations, analyses of official documents and 45 in-depth interviews. The research methodology is based on situational analysis.

The analysis of the engineering cultures studied in this dissertation shows that the turn to info capitalism at the beginning of the XXIC in Colombia is renewing understandings of engineering professionalism and it is providing engineers with alternative scenarios for socio-technical innovation to those previously provided by the government and the private sector. These diverse scenarios provide narratives that evidence the current “interpretative flexibility” of the so-called information society. They also display the array of mechanisms that engineers use to interpret, build and contest visions of the information society, IT artifacts and the significance of their own roles in the process of using IT to improve Colombian society. A few of these versions show promising ways for integrating interpretations and agency from citizens in the design and construction of the information infrastructure that advances
the socio-technical efficiency of the systems being built.

From an STS theoretical perspective, this dissertation interprets the theory of politics of design from a cultural perspective and expands cultural studies of engineering through symbolic interactionism to explore issues of power and agency in the process of design.

Jericho Burg

I will defend my dissertation, entitled Fixing Famine: The Politics of Information in Famine Early Warning, in June 2008, so I will be finishing up my Ph.D. in Communication at UC San Diego.  I also have an article from my research in Ethiopia coming out in the journal Disasters sometime this year (I just sent back the proofs), entitled "Measuring Populations' Vulnerabilities for Famine and Food Security Interventions: The Case of Ethiopia's Chronic Vulnerability Index."  This journal is important for humanitarian practitioners as well as academics studying disasters, so I am particularly excited about the publication.    

Also, at the 2007 4S meeting in Montreal, I participated in a panel on anatomies of e-government organized by Anita Chan, and Richard Arias was a panelist as well, so it was a mini VID reunion.  My paper was “E-Famine: How Information Technologies and Humanitarian Action Transform Populations in Ethiopia.” I am planning to present something at the 2008 4S in Rotterdam, so I hope to see fellow VIDers there! I will be on the job market, so if you have any leads, pass them along...

Shay David

Shay recently finished his PhD at Cornell's Science and Technology Studies department and started Kaltura, a software startup company. Kaltura is a leader in open-source video creation, discovery, and collaboration. Kaltura’s goal is to create the world’s first and largest network of legally sharable and remixable rich media content.

Launched in September of 2007, and winner of both Techcrunch40 and Mashable’s Open Web People’s Choice Awards, Kaltura’s pioneering open-source platform enables web publishers to engage with their users by easily adding interactive video and rich-media functionality - including searching, uploading, importing, editing, remixing, and sharing.  Moreover, the platform that has been dubbed ‘Wiki meets YouTube’ includes unique collaboration functionalities that allow groups of users to create and consume rich media together.  This collaboration increases users’ engagement by adding a social element to the rich media experience.  The collaboration also transcends the boundaries of individual websites by aggregating content across the Kaltura Global Network, providing publishers of all sizes new syndication opportunities and enabling access to 3rd-party web services (such as DVD burning, or professional video editing).

Kaltura’s platform has recently been embraced by Wikipedia, the leader in online collaboration. Kaltura and the Wikimedia Foundation have launched a beta program aimed at reaching Wikipedia’s 200M viewers.

Check it all out at:
http://www.kaltura.com

Sample Mediawiki Integration
http://kaltura.com/devwiki/

Shay is also a post-doctoral fellow at Yale University's Information Society Project, where he contributes to research and policy on access-to-knowledge and digital remix culture. Please visit http://isp.law.yale.edu

Nathan Freier

Nathan Freier received his Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Washington's Information School and is currently an Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the department of Language, Literature, and Communication at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  His research lab is working a number of projects investigating the relationship between technology design and children's social and moral development.  He recently presented a paper at the CHI conference in Florence, Italy, and he is currently co-editing a special issue of the journal, Children, Youth, and Environments, which will be titled, Children in Technological Environments.  Amongst other activities, Nathan is also pursuing a research program to investigate the social responsibility of researchers in the field of human-robot interaction.

You can find a current photo of me at the following URL:
http://www.rpi.edu/~freien/images/IMG_6949_1.jpg.

Matthew Kam

I'm wrapping up my Ph.D. dissertation this summer and am currently on the job market. For more updates, please see my job search homepage:
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~mattkam/jobapp/

Title:

MILLEE: Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies 

Abstract:

Literacy levels in most poor countries remain shockingly low and formal education is making little progress. MILLEE improves literacy through language learning games on cellphones – the “Personal Computers of the developing world” – which are a perfect vehicle for new kinds of out-of-school language learning. Games bring children into rich, immersive environments where they can acquire and use language naturally, while encouraging them to transfer their language skills outside the game.

The MILLEE project focuses on developing scalable, localizable design principles and tools for language learning. The challenges are (i) to integrate sound learning principles, (ii) to provide concrete design patterns that integrate entertainment and learning, and (iii) to understand cultural and learning differences in children in developing regions. I will describe a framework called PACE which addresses these challenges and seven rounds of fieldwork that contributed to its development. I will also describe a tool to expedite audio-only learning (Pimsleur Generator), a very important niche for developing regions. I will discuss our most recent work which patterns learning games after local children’s traditional village games and the benefits this approach offers. Finally, I will discuss the complex adoption ecology in developing regions, and how MILLEE preserves learning principles while supporting rich localization and customization at multiple stages in the adoption hierarchy. 

The MILLEE project is currently in its 4th year, and has received major funding from the MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, National Science Foundation, Qualcomm and Verizon. It will be featured in a CNBC (Canadian public television) documentary appearing on April 3, 2008. 

Bio:

Matthew Kam is a Ph.D. candidate from the University of California, Berkeley in Computer Science with a minor in Education. He is affiliated with the Berkeley Institute of Design, and his research integrates his interests in economic development, education and information technology. He has previously explored how computing technologies can be designed in the contexts of education and microfinance, with an emphasis on low-income users in the United States and Uganda. Matthew holds a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from UC Berkeley.

Daniel Menchik
.
I am currently conducting fieldwork for my dissertation on the use of scientific evidence in medical practice, which I am working on in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. I have recently completed a paper that draws upon some of the literature I encountered at the VID workshop, entitled "Putting Social Context Into Text: The Semiotics of Email Interaction," and forthcoming in the American Journal of Sociology.  

Michael Zimmer
.
Michael Zimmer is the Microsoft Resident Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School for 2007-2008. He completed his PhD in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University under the guidance of Profs. Helen Nissenbaum, Alex Galloway, and Siva Vaidhyanathan. Zimmer's  dissertation, "The Quest  for the Perfect Search Engine: Values, Technical Design, and the Flow  of Personal Information in Spheres of Mobility," investigates of how  the quest for the “perfect search engine” empowers the widespread  capture of personal information flows across the Internet,  threatening the ability to engage in online social, cultural, and  intellectual activities free from answerability and oversight,  there by bearing on the values of privacy, autonomy, and liberty.

Beginning in fall 2008, Zimmer will be an assistant professor at the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Recent publications include:

* Web Searching: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2008. (Book co-edited with Amanda Spink)
* Critical Perspectives of Web 2.0, edited special issue of First Monday, 13(3), 2008.
* Privacy on Planet Google: Using the Theory of “Contextual Integrity” to expose the Privacy Threats of Google’s Quest for the Perfect Search Engine, Journal of Business & Technology Law, 3(2), 2008: 109-126.

Under review:

*Values and Pragmatic Action: The Challenges of Engagement with Technical Design Communities. Science, Technology & Human Values. (with Noëmi Manders-Huits)

NOTE: This journal article that I wrote with Noemi Manders- Huits (under review at ST&HV) was born directly from our experience at the 2005 VID workshop!

Works in progress include:

* Privacy and Surveillance in Web 2.0: A study in Contextual Integrity, and the Emergence of “Netaveillance.” Journal article manuscript
* Renvois of the Past, Present and Future: Hyperlinks, Discourse Networks, and the Structuring of Knowledge from the Encyclopedia to Web 2.0. Journal article manuscript