Murray Goulden

Apportioning energy consumption in the workplace: a review of issues in using metering data to motivate staff to save energy

The UK government has set ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions, and lowering energy demand within workplaces is important to help meet these. With the rollout of smart metres and the availability of more fine-grained energy monitoring equipment for the workplace, it is increasingly possible to disaggregate collective energy consumption and apportion this among building users. This article presents an interdisciplinary perspective on the rationale and feasibility of different approaches to apportionment to motivate staff to reduce energy consumption. Our review indicates greatest potential for energy saving when consumption is apportioned to small to medium-sized groups, rather than individuals or entire buildings, particularly when they represent existing communities to which staff members strongly identify. We highlight the complexity of technical, psychological, social and organisational factors that not only inspire, but also often confound, efforts to innovate in this area.

Exploring Interpretations of Data from the Internet of Things in the Home

The ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) can be expected to radically increase the amount of potentially sensitive data gathered in our homes. This study explores the social implications of the presentation of data that could be collected within the household. In particular, it focuses on how ambiguities in these data, combined with existing interpersonal relationships, could influence social dynamics. Thirty-five participants were each presented with three separate household scenarios, involving ambiguous data that were collected and presented via near-future IoT technologies. Each participant was asked to respond to a series of open and closed questions about how they would interpret the data, how they would react to it and their general opinions of the technologies presented. Through qualitative and quantitative analysis of their responses, we contribute an understanding of how people interpret information about those around them. We find a common willingness to make inferences based on ambiguities within the data, even when participants are aware of the limitations of their understanding. We also find that sharing data produced via tagging of everyday objects raises a high level of privacy concern, and that, in a somewhat incoherent stance, users are more comfortable in sharing data publicly than in a targeted fashion with commercial organizations. Our findings also suggest that the age of the target user group has a greater effect on ease of use judgements than the nature of the technology, and we find some evidence that user’s interpretations can be biased by an individual’s age.

Boundary-work and the human—animal binary: Piltdown man, science and the media:

The infamous Piltdown hoax offers an excellent opportunity to study how a figure that straddled the human—animal boundary (both figuratively in its positioning as a “missing link,” and literally given its post-hoax status as a modern human skull and a modern orangutan jaw) was made to fit dichotomous understandings of it. The process of making this figure human reveals how scientific claims in the disputed border zone between humans and non-human animals are shaped by the cultural themes upon which the division stands. Nationalism, race and species classification became enmeshed in the efforts to lead Piltdown from its liminal position to more conceptually stable ground. The result was a stretching of human-ness, that brought Piltdown closer to us whilst modern-day “savages” were moved further away. The papers theoretical framework shifts Gieryns boundary-work model from an ontology of culture to an ontology of nature. Transplanting Gieryns model in this way is useful not only because of the parallels specifically between the science—culture and human—animal boundaries, but also as it serves as a reminder of the strong relationship between the categorization of the social and natural worlds.

Exploring Acceptance and Consequences of the Internet of Things in the Home

The Internet of Things (IoT) presents huge potential for designing new technologies. However it is not yet clear which of these technologies will actually be accepted as a part of our everyday lives. Alongside the development of prototypes and exploratory evaluations, other research methods could be useful in eliciting responses to future visions, and developing implications that can inform design. In this paper we explore factors that could affect the acceptance of IoT technologies in the home. We present a review of relevant literature from human factors, HCI, sociology and psychology, and analyse the results of a survey in which participants were presented with scenarios of near-future IoT systems in use in the home. Based on this, we develop an initial set of design principles for IoT technologies in the home.

Wild interdisciplinarity: ethnography and computer science

Abstract Drawing on the experiences of a novel collaborative project between sociologists and computer scientists, this paper identifies a set of challenges for fieldwork that are generated by this wild interdisciplinarity. Public Access Wi-Fi Service was a project funded by an ‘in-the-wild’ research programme, involving the study of digital technologies within a marginalised community, with the goal of addressing digital exclusion. We argue that similar forms of research, in which social scientists are involved in the deployment of experimental technologies within real world settings, are becoming increasingly prevalent. The fieldwork for the project was highly problematic, with the result that few users of the system were successfully enrolled. We analyse why this was the case, identifying three sets of issues which emerge in the juxtaposition of interdisciplinary collaboration and wild setting. We conclude with a set of recommendations for projects involving technologists and social scientists.

Tailored scenarios: a low-cost online method to elicit perceptions on designs using real relationships

This paper describes the on-going development of a method to elicit perceptions of design ideas for social technologies, through automatically tailoring scenarios presented in online surveys using information gathered from respondents. The work has been driven by a desire to understand perceptions of various information sharing technologies for the home, across a broad population. Reviewing literature in this area from HCI and beyond, we find potential value in generating scenarios that are tailored to each respondents own household. We explore the results of a study using this method (n=79) and discuss initial comparisons with the results of studies using alternative methods.

The Future as a Design Problem

An often unacknowledged yet foundational problem for design is how ‘futures‘ are recruited for design practice. This problem saturates considerations of what could or should be designed. We distinguish two intertwined approaches to this: ‘pragmatic projection’, which tries to tie the future to the past, and ‘grand vision’, which ties the present to the future. We examine ubiquitous computing as a case study of how pragmatic projection and grand vision are practically expressed to direct and structure design decisions. We assess their implications and conclude by arguing that the social legitimacy of design futures should be increasingly integral to their construction.

Hobbits, hunters and hydrology: Images of a “missing link,” and its scientific communication

Dissemination of the 2004 discovery of Homo floresiensis, aka the “Flores Hobbit,” provides the case material for an analysis of science communication models, using coverage of the find in science journals, popular science magazines, and UK newspapers. A distinction is made between “popular science” and “public science,” the latter notable for the proactive manner in which it seeks not simply to interpret science for a wider audience, but also expand upon it. The nature of the flows of knowledge between science and nonscience cultures is used to critique both traditional canonical models of science communication, and more recent constructivist accounts like that of Hilgartner’s “continuum” model. The paper concludes by suggesting an extended model that builds on the logic of the river metaphor used by both Hilgartner and Gieryn. It is argued that this more complex, multi-directional, “hydrologic” model provides a richer account of science communication.

Chapter 2 Managing the Future: Models, Scenarios and the Control of Uncertainty

Purpose – To consider the emerging qualitative approaches that consider the future, exploring ways in which these may be better used to complement and extend established practice in global climate models. Methodology/approach – A review of contemporary modelling approaches that consider the future for transport applications, with a focus on complexity and uncertainty issues, the search for foresight, the role of engagement and the credibility of qualitative foresight. Findings – The importance of the need to incorporate socio-economic scenarios in climate change models and the possibilities offered by the tool of systematic qualitative foresight are demonstrated. Originality/value – Explores limitations of quantitative modelling approaches to foresight and introduces a potentially complementary, innovative approach based on the systematic use of qualitative methodologies.

Bringing Bones to Life: How Science Made Piltdown Man Human

The story of Piltdown man today has the unfortunate status of being perhaps the most notorious scientific hoax of all time. Announced in 1912 by a team led by prominent British scientist A. S. Woodward and amateur geologist/archaeologist Charles Dawson, the fossilized figure—apparently a creature on the cusp of humanity, with a large human-like skull and an ape-like jaw—was heralded as ‘the earliest Englishman’ (Woodward, 1948), and received huge scientific and popular interest. However, further discoveries during the 1920s and 1930s, notably Australopithecus in Africa and ‘Peking Man’ in Asia, made Piltdown appear as an evolutionary anomaly. These other discoveries showed that in the human lineage the large ape jaw had shrunk before the skull had enlarged—the opposite of the development that Piltdown exhibited. This contradiction was not solved until 1953, when a team of scientists reappraising the discovery began to suspect foul play, and sent the remains for analysis. Tests showed that Piltdown man was actually no more than a modern human skull and a modern orangutan jaw, the bones having been stained to give the appearance of age, and the teeth filed to appear more human. In the years since numerous names have been put forward regarding the identity of the hoaxer(s) (see, for example, Wiener, 1980; Blinderman, 1986; Russell, 2003), but for social scientists the case raises many other questions besides. Like all ‘missing link’ figures, Piltdown man occupied the liminal zone between human and nonhuman animal, by definition neither clearly one nor the other. In a similar (but more literal) way to contemporary primates, missing links occupy ‘the border zones between those potent mythic poles’ (Haraway, 1989, p. 1) of nature and culture. Such figures refuse to comply with the common binary configuration with which Western civilization has conceptualized the human/animal divide. Within this Judeo-Christian inspired system of thought, human and animal are mutually exclusive Science as Culture Vol. 16, No. 4, 333–357, December 2007