Sense-Making

Sense-Making: the ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed.

Technology and Human Action: Qualitative Methodologies


This course focused on qualitative research approaches to the study of use, design and consequences of technologies. Topics included: How to study technology and materiality? How do we research action, conversation and discourse around technology? And how do we qualitatively study large-scale technologies such as infrastructure?

Professor David Ribes
Written Recommendation from Professor Ribes

 

Culture – The Cognitive Artifact

 

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how the philosophy of “technology and human action” has evolved into “human action is technology;” thus, making human action an active stakeholder in the machinery of knowledge production. The significance of this topic is magnified in our knowledge economy and its supporting global coordination. In order to advance in the future, we must understand the power of culture within knowledge settings and appreciate the peripheral consequences of those statements of truth. As society moves toward its own knowledge setting, the focus on epistemic cultures becomes more emphatic. The goal is to reorient the conversation regarding culture in decision-making situations. The point is to see culture as part of the process focused on making things happen, a technological tool that encompasses the capacity to produce and the capability to implement.

 

Final Paper

The Meta-Power of Culture in the Construction of Knowledge

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