Putting to (information) work: A Stengersian perspective on how information technologies and people influence information practices

Submitted by Isto Huvila on Thu, 06/07/2018 - 19:57

Publication Type:

Journal Article

Authors:

Huvila, Isto

Source:

The Information Society, Volume 34, Number 4, p.229–243 (2018)

Abstract:

Instead of merely subscribing to an unspecific inseparability in the co-constitution or mangle of information technologies and human-actors, there is a need for conceptual tools to describe and explicate the mechanics of how the enmeshment of technologies and human-beings is occurring in information contexts: how information technologies are both setting standards of the social conduct of information practices, and how people are using information technologies to regulate the social process. Building on an empirical study of human-technology relations in the context of archaeological information work, this article discusses how the imaginary of putting Stengers to work can make a contribution to such an end. Stengers describes an ideal system of human-actors and technology working seamlessly ?World-as-Clock?that is unattainable but can serve as a benchmark and a lens for understanding frictions and discrepancies in the cohesion of the two.

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Taxonomy terms:

Information Services and Digital Literacy provides an alternative perspective for understanding information services and digital literacy, and argues that a central problem in the age of the social web and the culture of participation is that we do not know the premises of how we know, and how ways of interacting with information affect our actions and their outcomes.

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Taking Health Information Behaviour into Account: implications of a neglected element for success- ful implementation of consumer health technologies on older adults (HIBA) is an Academy of Finland funded research project at Åbo Akademi University.

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ARKDIS project maps the implications and opportunities of the digitalisation of information and information work in the domain of archaeology and to develop and evaluate conceptual and practical methods and procedures for enhancing archaeological information work in the digitalised environment.

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