Society and Information Research Group

The talk advertised below has unfortunately been postponed because Elizabeth Bruton is unwell. There will be a short business meeting instead.

Elizabeth Bruton (Leeds University, elizabeth.bruton@gmail.com) will speak on

Singing arcs and oscillations: Henri Poincaré’s contributions to British wireless developments in the early twentieth century

A re-evaluation of the work of French mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré in early wireless developments was the subject of a 2010 paper by Ginoux and Petitgirard. This scholarly study was centred on Poincaré’s “forgotten” wireless telegraphy conference in 1908, in particular the mathematical equations produced by Poincaré which were required for the establishment of a stable regime of maintained oscillations in the singing arc, a form of wireless signal detection. The singing arc was initially developed as a form of electrical oscillator and lighting by English physicist William Duddell, and was further adapted into the first wireless transmitter to produce continuous waves by Danish physicist Valdemar Poulsen. In this paper, I will trace the dissemination of Poincaré’s publications on wireless including “Les Oscillations Electriques” (1894) and “Théorie de Maxwell et les oscillations hertziennes” (1899) in Britain and discuss how English translations of Poincaré’s works became part of the accepted canon of wireless publications in Britain. I will further examine the influence of Poincaré’s work upon British wireless pioneers with examples including Duddell and Oliver Heaviside. In conclusion, I will show that Poincaré’s 1908 conference formed the keystone of his work in the formative years of wireless communications stretching from the end of the nineteenth century up to World War One and beyond.

All welcome

The Next SIRG meeting will be on Wednesday 30 January at 2.00 in the DG Library (Venables N1015)

Elizabeth Silva, Professor of Sociology at the Open University, will speak about her 2010 book  Technology, Culture, Family: Influences on Home Life. Elizabeth has supplied the following abstract

Technology, Culture, Family presents new understandings of connections between personal, relational and material matters in everyday life in the context of broader and long standing social problems. It reflects on the connections between mundane domestic practices and the technological patterns and practices of a world driven by forces that go much beyond any individual or small group.

Silva, E.B. (2010) Technology, Culture, Family: Influences on Home Life. London: Palgrave.

The November SIRG meeting will be on Wednesday 28 November at 2.00 in the David Gorham Library (Venables N1015). Becky Faith will present the following talk.

Technology as freedom and ‘unfreedom’: capability theory and digital inclusion

Social theorists consider that the arrival of mass communications and ubiquitous networked digital technologies have transformed society: yet it is also clear that these transformations are experienced differently by different members of society. ‘Digital inclusion’ and the ‘digital divide’ evolved as a means to express the idea that access to the benefits of digital technology is linked to socio-economic benefit. In recent years debates about digital inclusion have evolved to respond to more sophisticated understanding of technology use – unpicking what is meant by access and engagement with digital technologies

This talk will look at digital inclusion in the UK today using the framework of capability theory, exploring how this theory might give us a language and framework to talk about technology and social justice.

Becky Faith is a PhD student in the Communication and Systems Department, looking at the role mobile phones might play in overcoming digital exclusion in the UK. She blogs about her research at http://beckyfaith.net and is @Becky_Faith on Twitter.

Congratulations to Advait Deshpande on having his first journal article accepted. It is ‘Broadband deployment and the bandwagon effect in the UK’ and will appear in info, a journal of policy, regulation and strategy for telecommunications, information and media, which modishly uses a lower case ‘i’ in its title.  Advait’s article is expected to be published in early 2013, in  vol. 15, no. 1.

My paper on the early BBC science producer Mary Adams has now finally appeared in print:

Jones, Allan, (2012) ‘Mary Adams and the producer’s role in early BBC science broadcasts’ Public Understanding of Science, Volume 21, Issue 8, November, pp. 968 – 983.

Sadly it’s not free!

http://pus.sagepub.com/content/21/8/968

Advait has supplied the following abstract for his talk on 31 October 2012

In this presentation I’ll talk about my research in relation to the history of broadband technologies in the UK. I’ll go over some of the theoretical ideas associated with the history and social studies of technology, coupled with economic, political and regulatory concepts that (I think) are relevant to the research. The findings from the archival material and the research interviews will also form a part of the discussion. Towards the end, I’ll cover some of the possible conclusions and the narrative that has emerged as the ‘writing up’ phase begins.

A paper by three SIRG members, Allan Jones, Chris Bissell and David Chapman, was presented at the 25th annual conference of the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU), held in Pahos, Cyprus, during 27-28 September 2012. The paper, presented by Chris Bissell, was entitled ’Open resources for case studies and assignments’ and was based on novel teaching approaches used in two 30-point, third-level Open University modules which SIRG members are closely associated with: T324 Keeping Ahead in Information and Communication Technology, and T325 Technologies for Digital Media. The paper is available from the following link.

http://oro.open.ac.uk/34422/1/Jones_Bissell_Chapman_%20Open%20Resources%20for%20case%20studies.pdf

The following speakers have been lined up for forthcoming meetings. Details of their presentations will be posted in due course.

Wed. 31 October 2012, Advait Deshpande (http://www.cands.org/research-students/advait-deshpande). Advait is a research student associated with SIRG.

Wed. 28 November 2012, Becky Faith (http://beckyfaith.net/about/). Becky is a research student in The Open University’s Department of Communication and Systems.

Wed. 30 January 2013, Professor Elizabeth Silva (http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/staff/people-profile.php?name=Elizabeth_Silva). Elizabeth is Professor of Sociology at The Open University.

For our next meeting, on 27 June at 2.00 in the David Gorham Library, we are pleased to welcome Adam Linson, currently pursuing a PhD in the OU’s Computing department. Adam has supplied the following abstract:

About Adam Linson

Adam Linson (born 1975 in Los Angeles) is currently a PhD candidate doing research in Artificial Intelligence and Improvised Music at the Open University (UK), in the Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology. His research interests extend to other areas of musical human-computer interaction, especially phenomenology and cybernetics. He received an MFA from Bard College in 2012, and a BA in Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego in 1998, where he also studied composed and improvised music under George Lewis (now his PhD co-supervisor), and classical double bass under Bertram Turetzky. As a software engineer and GNU/Linux specialist, he has extensive experience in the private sector, ranging from large-scale distributed architectures to embedded systems. He is active internationally as a double bassist, improvisor and composer, performing acoustically and with live electronics, solo and in a wide variety of ensembles. He also designs, develops, and performs with real-time interactive computer music systems. He has composed music for chamber ensembles and international contemporary dance productions, and can be heard on several critically-acclaimed albums. (website: www.percent-s.com)

SIRG is delighted to announce that the next meeting will be devoted to a presentation by the distinguished academic Professor Judy Wacman of the London School of Economics. The meeting (which is open to all) will be at 2.00 in the Systems Seminar Room (Venables, S0049) at Walton Hall. Professor Wajcman has supplied the following abstract.

Life in the fast lane? Towards a sociology of technology and time

The subject of time has become a major preoccupation in academic and popular writing because people feel short of it. It is now conventional wisdom to think that more and more aspects of our lives are speeding up. While many factors are contributing to this phenomenon, information and communication technologies are seen as the main drivers. Images of technologically tethered, blackberry-addicted workers abound. This talk considers the way social theorists analyse concepts of time and acceleration and then examines how these claims might be assessed in the light of empirical research. Such research shows that time compression has multiple dimensions, and that the effect of digital devices like the mobile phone is not simply one of acceleration. In particular, I suggest that the social studies of technology offers a richer analysis of the reciprocal relationship between technological innovation and changing time practices.

Judy Wacjman’s web page:

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/sociology/whoswho/academic/wajcman.aspx