Kenneth T. Anderson

Collective information practice: emploring privacy and security as social and cultural phenomena

As everyday life is increasingly conducted online, and as the electronic world continues to move out into the physical, the privacy of information and action and the security of information systems are increasingly a focus of concern both for the research community and the public at large. Accordingly, privacy and security are active topics of investigation from a wide range of perspectives-institutional, legislative, technical, interactional, and more. In this article, we wish to contribute toward a broad understanding of privacy and security not simply as technical phenomena but as embedded in social and cultural contexts. Privacy and security are difficult concepts to manage from a technical perspective precisely because they are caught up in larger collective rhetorics and practices of risk, danger, secrecy, trust, morality, identity, and more. Reductive attempts to deal with these issues separately produce incoherent or brittle results. We argue for a move away from narrow views of privacy and security and toward a holistic view of situated and collective information practice.

Living for the global city: mobile kits, urban interfaces, and ubicomp

Using ethnographic methods, 28 young professionals across the global cities of London, Los Angeles, and Tokyo were studied to understand in some detail what items they carried with them (their mobile kits) and how they used these items to access people, places, and services (through various urban interfaces). The findings are analyzed in terms of these cities as existing sites of ubiquitous information and communication technology (ICT) use. More specifically, findings are considered with respect to the prospects in these cities for ubicomp as a paradigm of trusted, environmentally embedded computing, as opposed to a wearable computing paradigm of individual self-sufficiency. Overall, at least for the young professional class studied, practices of urban interfacing were remarkably similar across all three cities studied, suggesting that ubicomp systems might be developed to address the range of urban concerns and to unburden and empower urbanites.

Infrastructures and Their Discontents: Implications for Ubicomp

Infrastructures (persistent socio-technical systems over which services are delivered) are normally taken for granted by their users, but are powerful forces of constraint and enablement with implications for the design, use, and adoption of ubiquitous computing. To approach the study of infrastructure from an ethnographic perspective, we conducted an exploratory field study of people for whom infrastructure had become visible due to some form of active engagement (rejecting, augmenting, or caretaking). From considering together individuals as disparate as homeschoolers, gated community dwellers, and voluntary simplicity advocates, a number of challenges and opportunities for ubicomp emerged in terms of appropriation, empowerment, and reflection.

Anchored mobilities: mobile technology and transnational migration

Mobile technologies are deployed into diverse social, cultural, political and geographic settings, and incorporated into diverse forms of personal and collective mobility. We present an ethnography of transnational Thai retirees and their uses of mobile technology, highlighting forms of mobility that are spatially, temporally, and infrastructurally anchored, and concepts of the house as a kinship network that may be globally distributed. We conclude in pointing out several ways in which our observations and analysis can influence design.

Cultural mobilities: diversity and agency in urban computing

The rise of wireless networks and portable computing devices has been accompanied by an increasing interest in technology and mobility, and in the urban environment as a site of interaction. However, most investigations have taken a relatively narrow view of urban mobility. In consequence, design practice runs the risk of privileging particular viewpoints, forms of mobility, and social groups. We are interested in a view of mobility that reaches beyond traditional assumptions about the who, when, why, and what of mobility. Based on analytic perspectives from the social sciences and on empirical fieldwork in a range of settings, we outline an alternative view of technology and mobility with both analytic and design implications.

Cultural appropriation: information technologies as sites of transnational imagination

The diverse ways in which technologies are modified and appropriated into local contexts are an important theme in CSCW research. Today, translocal processes such as the formation of international corporations and the movement of people and ideas across nation states increasingly shape these local contexts of technology use and design. We draw from prior work on appropriation in CSCW and meld it with work from transnational studies to illustrate appropriation as a cultural phenomenon and as it unfolds in relation to emerging translocal processes. We ground our explorations in findings from ethnographic research on collaborations and exchange among IT professionals in urban China. This work makes two main contributions. First, it expands CSCWs focus on socio-technical systems by taking seriously socio-political and socio-economic processes. Second, it contributes to debates on cross-cultural and global technological development by employing transnational imagination as an analytical tool.

Sizing Up Information Societies: Toward a Better Metric for the Cultures of ICT Adoption

When researchers study technology diffusion in a global and comparative manner, they often find that economic productivity explains differences in the diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs). But when researchers study technology diffusion in a regional, national, or subnational context, they often find that politics and culture explains different diffusion rates. How do we make use of different kinds of conclusions drawn from different levels of analysis? Just knowing the ways in which wealth explains technology diffusion can obscure the ways in which politics and culture also explain patterns in technology diffusion. In this article, we offer a new perspective on weighting technology diffusion data by economic wealth to set into sharp relief the ways in which other factors—such as politics and culture—influence how well a country metabolizes new technologies. A simple but useful computation is offered, examples are assessed, and implications for public policy, industry, and research are discussed.

Practical considerations of context for context based systems: An example from an ethnographic case study of a man diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease

The meaning of context with respect to computational systems has been the focus of considerable discussion specifically as related to context aware and proactive computing. However, there are no reports of peoples direct, experiential understanding of the lived experience of context. As a result, there is a significant gap between theoretical approaches for understanding context and the actual practice of context, which is critical for the specification of systems. This paper reports the results of an ethnographic case study that illuminates the practical nature of context and highlights specific challenges for ubiquitous computing systems in general. We conclude that context is simultaneously more subtle, fluid and idiosyncratic than previously reported under theoretical approaches to understanding context. We further suggest implications for the design of computing systems based on these findings.

Place storming: performing new technologies in context

We present Place Storming, an original method of brainstorming technological concepts, particularly in the area of pervasive computing. Place Storming is context-driven and play-based, combining real world environments with the immersive and performative aspects of gaming. In this paper, we discuss the background and techniques we used to create and deploy our method. Examples are drawn from a February 2004 Place Storming event to highlight key strengths of the method. Suggestions are made for what produces successful Place Storming sessions.

What's in your wallet?: implications for global e-wallet design

As part of a comparative ethnographic study of everyday life of young professionals in London, Los Angeles, and Tokyo, we conducted a detailed survey of wallets and their contents, through photographs, interviews, diary studies, and observation. Despite prominent differences in culture and lifestyle, there were remarkable similarities across all three sites in terms of what wallets contained and how they were used. Individuals arrived at similar (if imperfect) solutions to common problems of temptation management and access control, identity management and partitioning, and collecting tokens of affiliation and history. Our findings suggest that future electronic wallets (e-wallets), whether physical devices or distributed functionalities, will be able to capitalize on these existing patterns, solve some of the existing problems, and encounter new challenges. Furthermore, they frame the potential value of e-wallets in a broader context than traditional concerns over privacy, security, and efficiency.