ICS 234B: Theories of Computerization and Information Systems

Overview

The purpose of this class is to introduce you to the dominant theoretical approaches used in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and allied investigations of collective action mediated by technology. There are two aspects to this. First, after taking this class, you should be familiar with the major elements, modes of reasoning, and analytic commitments of the theories that we cover. Second, you should be able to discuss the relationship between them, understand their relationships, and be able to place them within some meta-theoretical framework.

My colleague Matthew Chalmers has claimed that theory is like the library; everyone's glad that there is one, but most people don't want to go there much. One of the distinctive features of our program is its analytic and theoretical grounding; you should all be card-carrying library-goers by the time we're done!

I want to cover three main theories and two aspects of each. The theories are ethnomethodology, distribued cognition, and activity theory. The two aspects I want to look at are, first, the theory itself, it structure, claims, and concerns; and second, how the theory has been used to analyse and understand individual and collective action with and through information systems. We'll spend a couple of weeks on each theory, getting a basic grounding, and looking at how it gets used in practice.

Readings

From the first week:

• my "myths and manifestos" draft (not for further distribution)
• Dourish and Button, "technomethodology" (HCI Jnl);
• Murray Davis' "That's Interesting!"

Ethnomethodology:

• Zimmerman and Poller, The Everyday World as a Phenomenon.
• Sacks, On Doing Being Ordinary
• Suchman, Office Procedures as Practical Action
• Tolmie et al, Unremarkable Computing
• Garfinkel, What is Ethnomethodology? (from Studies in Ethnomethodology)
• Garfinekl and Sacks, Formal Structures of Practice Action
• Bowers et al., Workflow from Within and Without
• Bowers, The Work to Make the Network Work

Distributed Cognition:

• Hutchins, How a Cockpit Remembers its Speeds
• Hollan et al, Distributed Cognition: Toward a New Foundation for HCI Research
• Rogers and Ellis, Distributed Cognition: An Alternative Framework for Analyzing and Explaining Collaborative Working
• Scaife and Rogers, External Cognition: How do Graphical Representations Work?
• Kirsh, The Intelligent Use of Space
• Scaife, Halloran, and Rogers, Let's Work Together: Supporting Two-Party Collaborations with new Forms of Shared Interactive Representations.
• Ackerman and Halverson, Considering an Organization's Memory
• Rogers, Ghosts in the Network: Distributed Troubleshooting in a Shared Working Environment, Proc. ACM CSCW'92.

Activity Theory:

• Collins, Shukla and Redmiles, Activity Theory and System Design: A View from the Trenches, JCSCW, 11.
• David Redmiles' lecture slides.

Comparing Theories:

• Christine Halverson, Activity Theory and Distributed Cognition
• Bonnie Nardi, Response to Halverson
• Graham Button, Review of "Cognition in the Wild"
• Howard Becker, Theory -- A Necessary Evil?