FodnessMemo11


 * Collins, Harry, and Trevor Pinch. The Golem at Large: What You Should Know about Technology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.**

1. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?

1: "A golem is a creature of Jewish mythology. It is a humanoid made by man from clay and water, with incantations and spells. It is powerful. It grows a little more powerful every day. It will follow orders, do your work, and protect you from the ever threatening enemy. But it is clumsy and dangerous. WIthout control a golem may destroy its masters with its flailing vigour; it is a lumbering fool who knows neither his own strength nor the extent of his clumsiness and ignorance." 4: "Both science and technology are skilful activitis and it cannot be guaranteed that a skill will always be executed with precision." 6: "It is only through understanding science and technology as golem-like - as failure-prone reachings out of expertise into new areas of application - that we will come to understand how to handle science and technology in a democratic society and resist the temptation to lurch from technocracy to populism."

2. What is the main argument of the text?

That technology is a force with a neutral valence, and results in good or bad outcomes through the actions and decisions of human beings.

3. Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported.

1) The Challenger disaster showed a logical progression of experiment and verification, which resulted in a decision to launch based on facts that demonstrated no evidence for failure of the seals, yet disaster occurred anyway. 2) Patriot missiles, due to the lack of technological capability for monitoring and recording, cannot be proven to be effective in their application, but were supported due to political reasons. 3) Patriot missiles were presented as technology which was capable of shooting other missiles out of the sky, but in reality, sometimes caused more damage than they prevented.

4. Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to.

Social constructionism / SSK / SCOT school of thought, contributes to design of technology and technology democracy discourse.

5. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports, challenges or otherwise relates to the argument or narrative that you imagine developing.

Shows how technology can be designed poorly and harm or exclude people, shows how a failure to account for certain outcomes can result in bad technology design.

6. List of at least three details or examples from the text that you can use to support the argument or narrative that you are developing.

1) The Patriot missile was not functioning as advertised, but publicly was said to be functioning just fine - much of the software that is said to be accessible is barely accessible, and could be done much better. 2) Model of the golem as unintentionally destructive / careless. 3) Demonstrating how technology production is a social process that involves human actors and results in unintended outcomes or overlooked areas of development.


 * Lessig, Lawrence. Code Version 2.0. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2006.**

1. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?

3: "The claim for cyberspace was not just that government would not regulate cyberspace - it was that government /could not/ regulate cyberspace. Cyberspace was, by nature, unavoidably free. Governments could treaten, but behavior could not be controlled; laws could be passed, but they would have no real effect." 5: "In real space, we recognize how laws regulate - through constitutions, statutes, and other legal codes. In cyberspace we must understand how a different "code" regulates - how the software and hardware (i.e., the "code" of cyberspace) that make cyberspace what it is also regulate cyberspace as it is. As William Mitchell puts it, this code is cyberspace's "law." "Lex Informatica," as Joel Reidenberg first put it, or better, "code is law."" 6: "We can build, or architect, or /code/ cyberspace to protect values that we believe are fundamental. Or we can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to allow those values to disappear. There is no middle ground. There is no choice that does not include some kind of building. Code is never found; it is only ever made, and only ever made by us. As Mark Stefik puts it, "Different versions of [cyberspace] support different kinds of dreams. We choose, wisely or not." Or again, code "determines which people can access which digital objects ... how such programming regulates human interactions ... depends on the choices made.""

2. What is the main argument of the text?

That the structure and experiences of cyberspace are constructed through code, which is an intentional choice made by human actors of varying authority.

3. Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported.

1) Laws are translated into code. For example, accessing online pornography requires individuals to click a box affirming that they are of legal age. 2) Laws are translated into code badly. For example, someone under the age of 18 can easily affirm that they are over 18, without any mechanism of checking the validity of their response. 3) Software designers have an extraordinary amount of power to create cyberspace and to define what is possible and what is not. Lessig uses the example of Second Life, where an entire virtual world is defined, with specific allowances and prohibitions on activity that are rigidly defined by code, in ways that are more rigid than in physical space (such as not being able to trespass on someone else's property).

4. Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to.

Technology studies and law, primarily. Contributes to literature surrounding design and structure of cyberspace / code.

5. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports, challenges or otherwise relates to the argument or narrative that you imagine developing.

It explicitly states that code structures cyberspace, and structures the experiences that people have there. My thesis concerns the ways in which cyberspace is constructed for the disabled through code, and where the value systems that should have been present in the code have failed to materialize properly through the decisions of human actors.

6. List of at least three details or examples from the text that you can use to support the argument or narrative that you are developing.

1) In Second Life, a value system was constructed around the right to be free from trespass, and enforced in the code. 2) The ADA regulates physical space architecture, the boulevards of Paris were widened to prevent insurrection, the architecture of streets in Washington DC was created to impede invasion - physical space is constructed through architecture, cyberspace is constructed through code. 3) Law / architecture / norms / market forces shape individual behavior - all four of these are present in cyberspace and are partially controlled through code, and help to structure the experience of cyberspace.


 * Norman, Donald A. The Design of Everyday Things. New York, NY: Currency Doubleday, 1990.**

1. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?

188: "Design should: - Make it easy to determine what actions are possible at any moment (make use of constraints). - Make things visible, including the conceptual model of the system, the alternative actions, and the results of actions. - Make it easy to evaluate the current state of the system. - Follow natural mappings between intentions and the required actions; between actions and the resulting effect; and between the information that is visible and the interpretation of the system state." v: "This book is intended to make you aware of the problems of design and interested in improving things. Many readers have told me that it has changed their lives, making them more sensitive to the problems of life and to the needs of people." vii: "In this book I urge designers to study people, to take their needs and interests into account. I also examine the failures of design and show why even the best-trained and best-motivated designers can go wrong when they listen to their instincts instead of testing their ideas on actual users."

2. What is the main argument of the text?

That the design of products and systems is not attuned enough to the actual users' needs, and that by mapping structure to functionality and making it intuitive better products will result.

3. Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported.

1) Designers don't pay enough attention to users when they design the product, so when the product gets into the hands of users, users will either use it in ways that it wasn't intended to be used, or will spend a lot of time and frustration learning the product. 2) Things that aren't designed intuitively will result in people not being able to use them easily - such as doors with a horizontal bar going the whole way across and no visual indication as to which side of the door should be pushed on to open it. 3) Computer systems use graphics to be flashy and cute, not to enhance the usability of the programs, even though the capabilities are there to use graphics in this way.

4. Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to.

Psychology and design studies. The book has been used to build user centered design literatures for IT / computer science, primarily.

5. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports, challenges or otherwise relates to the argument or narrative that you imagine developing.

The argument in the text is that software and devices in general can be better designed to accomodate the needs of actual users, of which the disabled form a significant minority. The disabled are generally not consulted when technology is created, and are generally the first group that is left out of being able to use software and IT devices.

6. List of at least three details or examples from the text that you can use to support the argument or narrative that you are developing.

1) Software designers generally don't consult users to see how they will use the programs, which results in poorly usable software. 2) Software designers that don't expect errors will end up creating software that fails to be usable when certain actions are taken. I will extend this analysis to say that software programs that are used to create code or other software do not take into account the impacts of their decisions down the line on accessibility. 3) Non-intuitive design and obscured system states lead to confused users. I will extend this to explain how system states and intuitive controls are primarily designed for fully able individuals, who can both see and hear, and that the same design concerns rarely appear in an alternate form (audio for blind, visual for deaf).