In a few days I’ll be heading off to the Research Institute for the Science of Socio-Technical Systems in Ann Arbor, MI. This is the inaugural institute, and from the looks of things it is going to be great. In preparing for the event, we’ve been asked to think about what socio-technical means to us. I’ve actually found this to be a challenging experience; not because I haven’t thought about socio-technical, but rather because it is simply built-in to my research paradigm.
When I arrived in the program at UNC’s School of Information and Library Science, I already knew that I would study a socio-technical interaction. Social software’s trajectory clearly pointed towards increased mediation, and the past few years have validated that bet. My long-term research goals now involve studying the social/informational aspects of this mediation; how are our informational processes changing as we offload elements of social management to the network?
The concept of a socio-technical system was developed decades ago, and largely used in industry where technology mediated work processes, management and organizational capacities. In fact, mediating technologies played a crucial role in the birth of the modern organization (see Standage, Ch. 6). As technology got smaller, as it proliferated, as we started hacking and repurposing it, as some technologies were successes and others failures, we sought to understand the construction of socio-technical systems.
I’ve often just accepted that uses of technology are socially constructed. Growing up on the web, and now studying it, how could one feel any other way? Taking a historical view (see Adas), one can see that it took a leap to understand that the uses of advanced machines could be subjective and socially constructed (Turkle, 1984 and 1996). Applying such thought to a different domain – say biotechnology or genetic sciences – is instructive. Perhaps in 20 or 50 years genetic manipulation will be common, but at this time it is hard to imagine normative relations to such science as anything other than objective.
Back to the social web. Rob Kling (1992, others), the father of social informatics, argued that socio-technical systems have trajectories, paths through which the uses and applications of technologies are contested and negotiated. This approach fits the spaces I study well; the networked publics (boyd, 2007) frequented by youth are hotly contested grounds, with parents, legislators and users attempting to shape use and practice.
Rather than focusing on explicit actors (legislation, interfaces), I attempt to explore the contestation of trajectory in terms of process. I’ve found both cultural and spatial studies particularly useful in my work. These “networks” are better understood as spaces of discourse, with unique processes of representation and production. This only becomes more evident as we move away from explicit, first-gen social networks, to spaces where identity is imagined.
Critical to socio-technical studies are the roles values play in the evolution of technologies. This is particularly important for social networks, and any other mediated space of discourse. What values are being inscribed into an increasingly global, but diffuse, network? We can also ask these question of Web 2.0: When Google sends its street-view cars through bad neighborhoods on Sunday mornings, what kind of representations are being created?
I look forward to exploring these issues in greater depth in Ann Arbor. As it looks like we’re going to have very busy days, blogging will probably be light, but I’ll attempt to update as the week progresses. In the meanwhile, if anyone has any don’t-miss recommendations for Ann Arbor, leave them in the comments!
Works Cited:
Adas, M. (1989). Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Boyd, D. (2007). Why Youth (heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life. In Buckingham, D. (Ed.), The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning (pp. 119-142). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kling, R. (1992). . In Cotterman, W. and Senn, J. (Eds.), Behind the Terminal: The Critical Role of Computing Infrastructure In Effective Information Systems’ Development and Use (pp. 153–201). John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Standage, T. (1998). The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s Online Pioneers. New York: Berkley Trade.
Turkle, S. (1984). The second self: computers and the human spirit. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on The Screen. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Fred Stutzman is a doctoral student, researcher and teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science. He studies how people use social media.
