Two members of SIRG (Chris Bissell and Chris Douce) recently attended a public lecture by Professor David Stupples at City University, London. Chris Douce has recently written a blog post that summarises some of subjects and themes covered in the lecture.
The next Society and Information Research Group seminar takes place on Wednesday 25 January @ 2 pm in the David Gorham Library. All welcome — details follow.
SIRG Seminar
Wednesday 25 January @ 2 pm
David Gorham Library, Open University (first floor Venables, N1015)
Joe Trenaman’s Investigation of BBC Listeners’ Understanding of Science
Allan Jones
During 1949, Joe Trenaman of the BBC’s Further Education Department conducted an experiment into listeners’ comprehension of science broadcasts (and some non-science broadcasts). Subjects listened to a recorded broadcast and then wrote everything they could recall. Their recollections were marked and correlated with their educational qualifications and level of interest. The major findings were that subjects who understood the talk best were not the ones who found it most interesting. Rather, subjects for whom the talk was only just comprehensible found it most interesting.
This ‘scientific’ test of comprehension had a number of outcomes for the interested parties. Trenaman conducted further experiments and eventually become an academic educationalist. For the BBC, the findings supported existing institutional practices, in particular the three-service network that had been developed just after the War. For scientific advisors to the BBC, however, the findings played into a current debate with the BBC over the form science broadcasts should take. Trenaman’s results were announced just as scientist-advisors were on the defensive, having had their claim that science broadcasts concentrated unduly on ‘social issues’ disproved by evidence from BBC managers. Trenaman’s findings were used by scientists to support their argument that science broadcasts should be managed by an outside scientist, who would ensure that they were comprehensible and scientifically coherent. The outcome was the experimental appointment of a coordinator for scientific broadcasts.
The episode is placed in the context of long-running contention by scientists that the BBC had a duty to privilege science in BBC output ‘in the national interest’, and the BBC’s equally long running resistance to such external scientific pressure.
The next SIRG seminar will take place on Wednesday 30 November at 2 pm. Details follow.
SIRG Seminar
Wednesday 30 November 2011 @ 2 pm
David Gorham Library, Open University (first floor Venables, N1015)
Internet and democracy: the impact of public understanding of science on online citizen engagement
Danilo Rothberg
New information and communication technologies have made an impact on democracy and citizenship, often raising the availability of information on policies and creating mechanisms for participation in policy making in digital public consultations promoted by governments with increasing frequency and scope. But the formal educational systems, scientific diffusion in non-formal environments and initiatives to promote public understanding of science and technology have not fully assimilated this impact, which poses new requirements for citizenship formation, especially in relation to the skills needed for collective participation in the formulation of public policies. This presentation will discuss the implications of findings from public understanding of science surveys carried out by institutions in Europe, US and Brazil which bring evidence to support the idea that citizens want to participate in decisions on science and technology.
Danilo Rothberg holds a PhD in Sociology from Unesp –Sao Paulo State University (Brazil). He is currently a Lecturer in Science Education at the Unesp and a Visiting Lecturer at the Open University, and was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Open University in 2006-2007.
Seminar, Wednesday 19th October, 2pm. Library Seminar rooms 1 & 2.
Amanda Spink
Professor of Information Science, Loughborough University
Abstract: This talk will provide an overview of the field of information science and discuss trends in the field moving forward. The presentation includes a discussion of the major research areas, schools, journals and conferences associated with information science. Currently, the major issue for the field is the growing nexus between computer science and psychology. As information science is a field concerned with the human use of information, it both draws upon and is influenced by fields associated with computer science and technology, as well as psychology and the social sciences. However, being a small field with limited scholarly impact, the long term future for information science is probably limited as “information” is becoming increasingly the purview of many fields related to technology and psychology. For example, there is a shift under way in cognitive and computer science to conduct research into the human aspects of Web and information retrieval, which has been a key area of information science.
Professor Spink is an international leader in information science research with 340+ publications and 6 books. Her research focuses on developing theories and models of information behaviour and she has over 20 years experience in information science in the United States, Australia and the UK. http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/people/ASpink.html
The next SIRG seminar will take place on Wednesday 28 September at 1.00 pm. Details follow.
SIRG Seminar, Open University
Wednesday 28 September 2011 @ 1.00 pm
David Gorham Library (first floor Venables, N1015)
Philip Brey
Allan Jones
Abstract
Philip Brey is a philosopher of technology based at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. He is a prolific author of journal articles and book chapters on topics as diverse as distance education, nanotechnology, and the social construction of technology.
In this short presentation I will offer some comments on his work based, necessarily, on a selective reading of his large output. I will argue that his main strengths are clarity of expression, wide range of interests, and a sympathetic attitude to social studies of science and technology. In so far social scientists and philosophers tend to be suspicious of each other, Brey’s acceptance of social-scientific approaches to science and technology is somewhat unusual. Furthermore, as an outsider, his critical assessment of the various strands of social studies of technology offers several illuminating insights, as I hope to illustrate.
I recently attended the 2nd European Research Conference on Microcredit, held 16-18 June in Groningen, The Netherlands. I was there to present Badruddozza Mia’s paper “Overlapping and Information Systems in Microcredit: A Bangladesh Perspective” (recently also given to SIRG, see following blog entry for the abstract).
Microcredit is an area I’m still learning about, but it arises from an interesting mixture of economics, politics, information, technology and development policy, so fits well into SIRG’s concerns. For more about what I learnt at the conference, see my personal blog.
Details of the final SIRG seminar of the season follow:
Overlapping and Information Systems in Microcredit: a Bangladesh perspective
Mohammad Badruddozza Mia, Communication and Systems, MCT
Wednesday 29 June 2011 @ 2 pm – David Gorham Library, Venables, Walton Hall, Open University
Abstract
Microcredit has been a strategic option in alleviating mass poverty and empowering poor people for about four decades, especially in the least developed countries. With an increasing coverage microcredit is becoming the largest poverty intervention programme on the globe. The programme has been attaining different economic and social objectives but operational issues like overlapping have been causing controversy for the programme in many countries, like Bangladesh. This paper looks into the nature, causes and consequences of overlapping in microcredit.It also proposes the concept of a simple information system that may help minimize the intensity and extent of this operational difficulty that microcredit has been facing in countries like Bangladesh.
The next SIRG seminar — Wednesday 25 May @ 2 pm in the David Gorham Library (first floor Venables, N1015) — will be a round table discussion on technological determinism. Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx’s 1994 edited volume Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism is a suggested starting point for discussion. The book’s introduction and three sample chapters are attached. The entire book is available from the OU’s Net Library.
Tea, coffee and biscuits will be available. I look forward to seeing you there.
Ian
1-Marx+Smith-DoesTechnologyDriveHistory-Intro2.pdf
2-Heilbroner-TechnologicalDeterminismRevisited2.pdf
3-Williams-ThePoliticalAndFeministDimensionsOfTechnologicalChange.pdf
The next SIRG seminar will take place on Wednesday 27 April at 2.30 pm. More details follow.
SIRG Seminar, Open University
Wednesday 27 April 2011 @ 2.30 pm
David Gorham Library (first floor Venables, N1015)
Copyright in a Digital Age
Jeannie Rees
Abstract
Music copyright legislation has generally become stricter and more techno-centric over recent years. The media industries became aware of challenges associated with lobbying for legislative change whilst fully engaged in the policing and shutting down of pirate activities on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) online file sharing services. This copyright evolution developed once digital technology allowed the ease of creation and distribution of perfect copies. The recent emergence of highly popular P2P networks has called into question property rights theory that ownership of copyright is the only instrument that can affect the incentives to invest in the creation of cultural goods. Copyright, as a tool to incentivise investment and value creation, is often criticised for its limitations in a digital age and some argue that we should be moving beyond the limited conceptual framework of copyright to a legal framework that scrutinises the relationships any individual or entity has with information, culture or creativity. These circumstances lead to a questioning of the ways in which copyright legislative developments and Digital Rights Management have affected technological innovation and commercial incentives for the creation of musical works.
Infinite Bandwidth Zero Latency (IBZL) Seminar
Presented by Simon Bell, Steve Walker, Clem Herman, Keith Straughan and Shaun Fensom
Date: Wednesday, 13 April, 2011 Time: 12.00-2.00pm
Venue: David Gorham Library, N1015,Venables Building, Open University, Milton Keynes
Abstract
IBZL is a thought experiment. It starts from the question: what if bandwidth (and latency) in networks like the internet didn’t matter any more? What would become possible?
The capacity and speed of the internet and related networks has increased exponentially over the last 20 years but the change has come in steps, steps that have unleashed waves of innovation. First generation broadband technology gave millions of users an ‘always-on’ connection to the net for the first time. This led to unforeseen, unanticipated and disruptive new applications like Wikipedia and YouTube. Next generation broadband may similarly trigger a wave of disruptive applications, with the potential for almost unlimited bandwidth and radically reduced latency. In this practice based research project we try to imagine. We try to anticipate the sort of new applications and services that might develop and, more importantly, what new technologies will become possible. The IBZL project has sought to identify new possibilities through positing a world with effectively infinite bandwidth and zero latency? IBZL tries to create the conditions to start that imagining process, and can contribute to thinking about the OU’s own work in such a world.