The Problem Isn’t Just Facebook: It’s You Too.
Lately, news of the Facebook emotional contagion study and Facebook Messenger’s permissions, have flooded feeds and inboxes. The former was a paper published in the Proceedings of the National A…
Tag: Technology
Squeaky Dolphin
From an article about the anxieties of big data by Microsoft researcher Kate Crawford. 2014 is the year we learned about Squeaky Dolphin. That’s the Pynchon-worthy code name…
The moral economies of material things
The concept of moral economy is a natural fit to analyses of material culture. In this working paper, I show how the concept has applications to all three research projects…
Making! The Other Story: Robot#10, Twins Separated at Birth, and Hacker Mama
Silvia Lindtner Amelia Guimarin Editor’s Note: Silvia Lindtner (@yunnia) and Amelia Guimarin (@femhacktweets) round out the March-April theme on makers, hackers, and engineers with this post tha…
Engineering obsolescence
Marisa Cohn Editor’s Note: Marisa Leavitt Cohn writes to us from Stockholm, where she is a postdoctoral scholar studying the politics of software systems and computing work practices. In…
Ethnography as Diaspora
Lilly U. Nguyen Editor’s Note: Lilly U. Nguyen (@deuxlits) tells us how in her own work on the ethnography of software in Vietnam, she both studies and embodies “diaspora” –…
Measurements: The Qualitative Work of Quantitative Work
Katie Pine Max Liboiron Editor’s Note: Katie Pine and Max Liboiron continue this week’s theme of makers, hackers, and engineers with a post about the politics and performativity…
Falling in: how ethnography happened to me and what I’ve learned from it
Austin Toombs Editor’s Note: Austin Toombs (@altoombs) brings a background in computer science and a critical sensibility to his ethnographic research on maker cultures. He explores the formati…
Studying Up: The Ethnography of Technologists
Nick Seaver Editor’s Note: Nick Seaver (@npseaver) kicks off the March-April special edition of Ethnography Matters, which will feature a number of researchers at the Intel Science and Technolog…
March-April 2014: Studying Hackers, Makers, and Engineers
This month’s theme – ethnographies of hackers, makers, and engineers – is edited by Morgan G. Ames, who made the transition from being a hacker to studying them…
Tell Me More danah boyd: an interview with the author of “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens”
danah boyd (@zephoria) is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, a Research Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, and a Fellow at Harvard’s…
A shift in the business environment that ethnographers can’t ignore
Ken Anderson (@kxande2) manages the Cultural Transformations Lab at Intel. He is an iconoclast by nature and a symbolic anthropologist by training. Over the last 20 years, his…
eReader/Tablet Review: Barnes & Noble Nook HD 7"
Nook HD 7″ and a piece of toast, courtesy of barnesandnoble.com. I don’t know why. For the paperless academic on a budget Virtually every article about improving one’s…
Travels in the Congo: First Things First
So, I’ve been travelling and working in the Congo for about a month now and I already have an awful lot to write about – both the awesome…
Back to Anthropology
Product Reviews? Regular readers of this blog may have been wondering about my brief foray into eyeglass reviews, like what it had to do with anthropology or academia…
Reflections on Hurricane Sandy, media and disconnection
Last week, Hurricane Sandy pummeled the east coast of the US. Power outages due to extreme coastal flooding, high winds and fallen trees have caused food and gas…