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STS Speaker. Representations as Material Forms: Developing a Materialist Perspective on Digital Information

Paul Dourish, University of California, Irvine
Monday, October 2, 2017
4:00-5:30 PM
3222 Angell Hall Map
The dominant rhetoric of information technology is that of the virtual and immaterial. STS scholars might observe (and computer scientists admit) that these virtual worlds, virtual objects, and virtual experiences are built on a solidly material foundation, such as server farms, cable routes, power generators and air conditioning units. Notwithstanding the materiality of digital infrastructures, though, materialist accounts have generally had little purchase on the content of the digital. In this talk, I will show how we can build on STS and software studies to offer a materialist account of information representations, drawing attention to the constraints and consequences of representational strategies in databases, network protocols, and other digital forms.
Building: Angell Hall
Event Type: Lecture / Discussion
Tags: Information and Technology, Research, Technical Communications
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Science, Technology & Society