ThreeLiteratures30annotations_LP

Three literatures: Information infrastructure studies Software/critical code studies Studies of scientific logic/epistemology (with an emphasis on the history of AI) Language theories
 * ==Artificial Knowing: Gender and the Thinking Machine==
 * ~ Type || Book ||
 * ~ Author || Alison Adam ||
 * ~ Place || London ; New York ||
 * ~ Publisher || Routledge ||
 * ~ ISBN || 978-0-415-12963-3 ||
 * ~ Date || February 20, 1998 ||

Notes:

 * Adam traces the history of knowledge representation in AI, honing in on Cyc and Soar, and offers a critique of the codified knowledge through the lens of feminist epistemology.

> ||~ Book Author || Geoffrey Bowker || > ||~ Book Author || Susan Leigh Star || > ||~ Book Author || Les Gasser || > ||~ Book Author || William Turner || > ||~ Author || Philip Agre || > ||~ Publisher || Psychology Press || > ||~ Pages || 131-157 || > ||~ ISBN || 978-1-317-77876-9 || > ||~ Date || 1997 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Editor || James Clifford || > ||~ Editor || George E. Marcus || > ||~ Author || Talal Asad || > ||~ Publisher || University of California Press || > ||~ Pages || 141-164 || > ||~ ISBN || 978-0-520-05729-6 || > ||~ Date || 1986 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Gregory Bateson || > ||~ Publisher || University of Chicago Press || > ||~ ISBN || 978-0-226-03905-3 || > ||~ Date || 1972 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== >> > ||~ Author || Geoffrey C. Bowker || > ||~ URL || [] || > ||~ Volume || 30 || > ||~ Issue || 5 || > ||~ Pages || 643-683 || > ||~ Publication || Social Studies of Science || > ||~ ISSN || 0306-3127, 1460-3659 || > ||~ Date || 10/01/2000 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Geoffrey C. Bowker || > ||~ Author || Susan Leigh Star || > ||~ Editor || Toru Ishida || > ||~ URL || [] || > ||~ Rights || ©1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg || > ||~ Series || Lecture Notes in Computer Science || > ||~ Publisher || Springer Berlin Heidelberg || > ||~ Pages || 231-248 || > ||~ ISBN || 978-3-540-65475-9 978-3-540-49247-4 || > ||~ Date || 1998/01/01 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Wendy Hui Kyong Chun || > ||~ Edition || Reprint edition || > ||~ Place || Place of publication not identified || > ||~ Publisher || The MIT Press || > ||~ ISBN || 978-0-262-51851-2 || > ||~ Date || January 11, 2013 || > ||~ || || > ===Notes: This week's reading.=== > === === > ||~ Author || Paul Cilliers || > ||~ Edition || 1 edition || > ||~ Place || London ; New York || > ||~ Publisher || Routledge || > ||~ ISBN || 978-0-415-15287-7 || > ||~ Date || March 11, 1998 || > ||~ || || > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Drucilla Cornell || > ||~ Publisher || Routledge, Chapman & Hall, Incorporated || > ||~ ISBN || 978-0-415-90238-0 || > ||~ Date || 1992 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Teresa de Lauretis || > ||~ Publisher || Indiana University Press || > ||~ ISBN || 0-253-20316-3 || > ||~ Date || 1984-01-01 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Editor || Richard Macksey || > ||~ Editor || Eugenio Donato || > ||~ Author || Jacques Derrida || > ||~ Publisher || Johns Hopkins University Press || > ||~ Pages || 247-265 || > ||~ Date || 1970 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Paul N. Edwards || > ||~ Publisher || MIT Press || > ||~ ISBN || 978-0-262-29071-5 || > ||~ Date || 2010-03-12 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Paul N. Edwards || > ||~ URL || [] || > ||~ Volume || 24 || > ||~ Issue || 2 || > ||~ Pages || 229-278 || > ||~ Publication || Social Studies of Science || > ||~ ISSN || 0306-3127, 1460-3659 || > ||~ Date || 05/01/1994 || > ||~ || || > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Ludwik Fleck || > ||~ Publisher || University of Chicago Press || > ||~ ISBN || 978-0-226-25325-1 || > ||~ Date || 1981-08-15 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Diana E. Forsythe || > ||~ URL || [] || > ||~ Volume || 23 || > ||~ Issue || 3 || > ||~ Pages || 445-477 || > ||~ Publication || Social Studies of Science || > ||~ ISSN || 0306-3127, 1460-3659 || > ||~ Date || 08/01/1993 || > ||~ || || > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Kim Fortun || > ||~ URL || [] || > ||~ Volume || 4 || > ||~ Issue || 1 || > ||~ Pages || 309-329 || > ||~ Publication || HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory || > ||~ ISSN || 2049-1115 || > ||~ Date || 2014-06-23 || > ||~ || || > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Michel Foucault || > ||~ Place || New York || > ||~ Publisher || Vintage || > ||~ ISBN || 978-0-394-71106-5 || > ||~ Date || September 12, 1982 || > ||~ || || > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Tarleton Gillespie || > ||~ Book Author || Pablo J. Boczkowski || > ||~ Book Author || Kirsten A. Foot || > ||~ Publisher || MIT Press || > ||~ Pages || 167 || > ||~ ISBN || 978-0-262-31947-8 || > ||~ Date || 2014-01-17 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || David Golumbia || > ||~ Publisher || Harvard University Press || > ||~ ISBN || 978-0-674-03292-7 || > ||~ Date || 2009-04-30 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Susan Halford || > ||~ Author || Catherine Pope || > ||~ Author || Mark Weal || > ||~ URL || [] || > ||~ Volume || 47 || > ||~ Issue || 1 || > ||~ Pages || 173-189 || > ||~ Publication || Sociology || > ||~ ISSN || 0038-0385, 1469-8684 || > ||~ Date || 2013-02-01 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Donna Haraway || > ||~ URL || [] || > ||~ Volume || 14 || > ||~ Issue || 3 || > ||~ Pages || 575 || > ||~ Publication || Feminist Studies || > ||~ ISSN || 00463663 || > ||~ Date || 23/1988 || > ||~ || || > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || George P. Landow || > ||~ Publisher || JHU Press || > ||~ ISBN || 978-0-8018-8257-9 || > ||~ Date || 2006 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Mark Marino || > ||~ URL || [] || > ||~ Publication || electronic book review || > ||~ Date || 2006 || > ||~ || || > ===Notes:=== > ||~ Editor || Timothy Lenoir || > ||~ Author || Hans-Jorg Rheinberger || > ||~ Place || Palo Alto, CA || > ||~ Publisher || Stanford University Press || > ||~ Pages || 285-303 || > ||~ ISBN || 978-0-8047-2777-8 || > ||~ Date || 1998 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || David Ribes || > ||~ Author || Geoffrey C. Bowker || > ||~ URL || [] || > ||~ Volume || 19 || > ||~ Issue || 4 || > ||~ Pages || 199-217 || > ||~ Publication || Information and Organization || > ||~ ISSN || 1471-7727 || > ||~ Date || October 2009 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak || > ||~ Publisher || Routledge || > ||~ ISBN || 978-1-135-07081-6 || > ||~ Date || 2012-12-06 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Susan Leigh Star || > ||~ Publisher || SUNY Press || > ||~ Pages || 88 || > ||~ ISBN || 978-1-4384-2097-4 || > ||~ Date || 1995 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Susan Leigh Star || > ||~ Author || Karen Ruhleder || > ||~ URL || [] || > ||~ Volume || 7 || > ||~ Issue || 1 || > ||~ Pages || 111-134 || > ||~ Publication || Information Systems Research || > ||~ ISSN || 10477047 || > ||~ Date || March 1996 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Lucy Suchman || > ||~ Edition || 2 edition || > ||~ Place || Cambridge ; New York || > ||~ Publisher || Cambridge University Press || > ||~ ISBN || 978-0-521-67588-8 || > ||~ Date || December 4, 2006 || > ||~ || || > ===Notes:=== > > === === > ||~ Author || Elizabeth A. Wilson || > ||~ Publisher || University of Washington Press || > ||~ ISBN || 978-0-295-80000-4 || > ||~ Date || 2010-08-01 || > ||~ || || > === === > ===Notes:=== > > === ===
 * ==Towards a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AI==
 * ~ Type || Book Section ||
 * Agre describes how developing a critical eye in AI required "waking up" and recognizing the discursive habits and metaphors that undergirded AI work. This, he called, a critical technical practice.
 * ==The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology==
 * ~ Type || Book Section ||
 * In describing the politics of translation in cultural anthropology, Asad reminds readers there exists an "inequality of languages. He encourages ethnographers to attend to power dynamics when translating between languages.
 * ==Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology==
 * ~ Type || Book ||
 * This reference is important for how Bateson describes information as a difference that makes a difference: There are differences between the chalk and the rest of the universe, between the chalk and the sun or the moon. And within the piece of chalk, there is for every molecule an infinite number of differences between its location and the locations in which it might have been. Of this infinitude, we select a very limited number, which become information. In fact, what we mean by information—the elementary unit of information—is a difference which makes a difference, and it is able to make a difference because the neural pathways along which it travels and is continually transformed are themselves provided with energy. (Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of the Mind) I'm interested in how politics constitute which differences make a difference.
 * ==Biodiversity Datadiversity==
 * ~ Type || Journal Article ||
 * Bowker describes the need for databases that can capture the historicity and context of data - an information infrastructure that is attentive to the conflicts that diverse communities of practice bring to research data. I also find this article important because Bowker makes the argument that you cannot have data without something to store it in - some way to name it. You cannot have data without some classification system. This is a limit to information design - similar to that with Cornell describes.
 * ==Building Information Infrastructures for Social Worlds — The Role of Classifications and Standards==
 * ~ Type || Book Section ||
 * This is a shorter version of Bowker and Star's book //Sorting Things Out//, where they argue that standards, categories and technologies tend to converge in information infrastructures and that politics often are rendered invisible "buried beneath obscure representation." They develop their idea of infrastructural inversion - the need to turn an information infrastructure inside out in order to interrogate its components.
 * ==Programmed Visions: Software and Memory==
 * ~ Type || Book ||
 * ==Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems==
 * ~ Type || Book ||
 * Cilliers argues that symbolic knowledge representation approaches to AI relied on formal rules of meaning to construct a system, whereas neural network approaches/connectionist approaches allowed a system to emerge. Thus neural network approaches are more post-modern in Lyotard's sense; they leave space for de-centered representation, for complexity. I find this argument super compelling, but I also believe it is based on a reductive view that all AI research in the knowledge representation tradition is based on Chomskian formal semantics.
 * ==The Philosophy of the Limit==
 * ~ Type || Book ||
 * Cornell argues that there is an Other to any given system - that no system can encapsulate everything. We therefore need to design systems that are open to radical transformation in the anticipation of unpredictable futures. Deconstruction, for Cornell, is the philosophy of the limit.
 * ==Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema==
 * ~ Type || Book ||
 * de Lauretis argues that, as women are faced with situations where they are at once, excluded from and imprisoned within dominant discourse, they only mode of resistance is deviant reading and writing - reading and writing that goes against the grain.
 * ==Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences==
 * ~ Type || Book Section ||
 * Structure, Sign, and Play argues that the centering of a structure limits freeplay. "Freeplay is the disruption of presence" - the drift of signification through a chain of differences. Importantly, no language can be characterized by totalization, not because of the finiteness of signs and structures but because language is always in freeplay, always substituting meaning within finite signs and structures. Information infrastructure should capture this drift (which I would argue hypertext often does). And the Semantic Web is all about structure and sign.
 * ==A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming==
 * ~ Type || Book ||
 * Edwards’s book illustrates the complex and tricky processes by which climate knowledge became global knowledge – how it had to become global knowledge in order to make a political case for global warming. In bringing to the fore a history of disagreement and debate – what he refers to as “data friction” – he makes the important claim that negotiated and contested collection methods, metadata standards, and computer models largely mediate what we currently know of climate science and global warming.
 * ==Hyper Text and Hypertension: Post-Structuralist Critical Theory, Social Studies of Science and Software==
 * ~ Type || Journal Article ||
 * Edwards argues that SCSK and poststructuralism/critical theory are often characterized as in conflict (with SCSK focusing on the social, whereas PSCT on the semiotic). He notes, however, that PSCT's concept of intertextuality focuses on the social and that SCSK's concept of inscription focuses on the semiotic (both in similar ways). He uses these claims to argue that when SCSK responded to claims that AI refuted the strong programme, their responses didn't deal with the issue that AI is not only cognitive - it is also a social actor - or a hypertext. This hypertext carries the tension between cognitive and the social - a hypertension.
 * ==Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact==
 * ~ Type || Book ||
 * Flecks concept of thought styles and thought communities will be important for my work in characterizing how engineers from different intellectual lineages come together to build the Semantic Web for very different research purposes. I'm interested in how competing thought styles become embedded in technologies.
 * ==Engineering Knowledge: The Construction of Knowledge in Artificial Intelligence==
 * ~ Type || Journal Article ||
 * Forsythe characterizes the engineering of knowledge in AI as embodying "I am the world" thinking, where engineers assume that something that applies to them, also applies to everyone else in the world and design accordingly. I find this to be a somewhat reductive view of AI.
 * ==From Latour to late industrialism==
 * ~ Type || Journal Article ||
 * Fortun's argues that platform information infrastructures - informed by assumptions about language - can eclipse the subaltern and the politics surrounding them. She also makes an important argument about the incapacity for controlled vocabularies to cut across difference.
 * ==The Archaeology of Knowledge==
 * ~ Type || Book ||
 * I find Foucault's description of a discursive practice - formalized rules about language and discourse - to be important for describing how Semantic Web engineers establish the rules that govern what has the potential to become know-able.
 * ==The Relevance of Algorithms==
 * ~ Type || Book Section ||
 * At the AAA, one of my discussant's described my project as an "interrogation of the algorithm" as called for by this paper. I see my project more as an interrogation of the data structure (which I think is actually a better category for some of the examples Gillespie offers in this paper).
 * ==The Cultural Logic of Computation==
 * ~ Type || Book ||
 * In this book, Golumbia describes a sort of pervading thought style around computation as one that serves as a metaphor for the design of so much else in the world. He shows how the logic of computation functions in society writ large. I find Golumbia's argument to be a bit too technologically dystopian - I believe that computation can be structured differently and that leveraged creatively, it can open possibilities for epistemological pluralism. Still, it is an extremely important point of reference for it opens space to talk about computationalist logics.
 * ==Digital Futures? Sociological Challenges and Opportunities in the Emergent Semantic Web==
 * ~ Type || Journal Article ||
 * This is the only piece of writing in social science that I can find that deals directly with the Semantic Web.
 * ==Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective==
 * ~ Type || Journal Article ||
 * Ontologies on the Web, most often, do not capture situated knowledges and instead order the world according to a God's eye view. I'm interested in information infrastructures that are capture situated knowledge.
 * ==Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization==
 * ~ Type || Book ||
 * Landow argues that hypertext is a manifestation of post-structural concepts. The book shows how the affordances of this information infrastructure align it with certain philosophies of language.
 * ==Critical Code Studies==
 * ~ Type || Journal Article ||
 * Marino introduces the field of critical code studies in this paper, which is a methodological approach I would like to contribute to. But critical code studies is primarily employs literary hermeneutics on source code, whereas I'd like to do an ethnography of code - not of developers - but of code, studying it for how it embodies the thought styles, philosophies and macro-contexts of its designers.
 * ==Experimental Systems, Graphematic Spaces==
 * ~ Type || Book Section ||
 * ~ Type || Book Section ||
 * I'm interested in information infrastructures that tolerate shifts in analytic research projects - or in Rheinberger's words, experimental systems. Systems that do not try to reproduce, but that try to reproduce with difference, with drift.
 * ==Between meaning and machine: Learning to represent the knowledge of communities==
 * ~ Type || Journal Article ||
 * Ribes and Bowker conduct an ethnography of a research community formalizing knowledge with an ontology. They argue that: “Ontologies have their own epistemology: what and how the computer can ‘know’ is very particular, limited by the available description logics and the extant level of formalization” (17)
 * ==In Other Worlds: Essays In Cultural Politics==
 * ~ Type || Book ||
 * I'm particularly drawn to Spivak's arguments about displacement as a tool for holding the limit in tension - for dealing with the contradiction of never being able to access and articulate 'other worlds' without being in non-other worlds. In answering this question: How do the Web (and AI’s) data structures - such as frames - produce information margins? I can't articulate information margins because they are non-knowledge - they are Other to the system - In Other Worlds. This is the philosophy of the limit. The only way to write this is through creative engagements with displacement.
 * ==The Politics of Formal Representations: Wizards, Gurus, and Organizational Complexity==
 * ~ Type || Book Section ||
 * Susan Leigh Star reminds her readers that such “formal representations” render the political decisions that go into their creation invisible – while such representations appear “neutral and objective to many, if not most, people, [...] in fact, information is highly decentralized and always incomplete.” Thus, society tends to “delegate moral decisions or responsibilities to technology in ways that are blind.” This argument is particularly interesting with how Sem Web people characterize their job as formalizing knowledge.
 * ==Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces==
 * ~ Type || Journal Article ||
 * This is sort of the origin article for information infrastructure studies, defining information infrastructures and establishing a series of logic types. I find the article to be a bit too definitive - for instance, Brian Larkin points out in his Anthro review article on infrastucture that some infrastructures (in spite of Star and Ruhleder's definition) are extremely visible.
 * ==Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions==
 * ~ Type || Book ||
 * Lucy Suchman argues that humans and machines are in a constant state of reciprocally reconfiguring each other. We respond to the ordering devices embedded in machines just as much as they respond to us.
 * ==Affect and Artificial Intelligence==
 * ~ Type || Book ||
 * Wilson argues that artificial intelligence research has not always been about codifying rules and logic but has also been about getting machines to learn and play - like raising children. There has thus been an element of affect in AI research, yet so often affect, emotions, rhetoric, etc. get eclipsed from such conversations.