Articles I've read (autumn)

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Last April, I pledged to read a lot of academic articles (in our "30-day challenge" at the department) and then I promised to do the same thing again in May. I did manage to uphold both of these promises and read 200 pages of text per month. That effort resulted in two blog posts about "articles I've read lately" (April articles, May articles).

More recently, I made reading articles regularly into one of my new year's promise, with the caveat that I only promise to uphold it during the spring term - since I have a lot of teaching (= less time to read stuff) during the autumn. I have (more or less) kept that promise, but I haven't come around to writing blog posts about "articles I've read lately" yet.

In fact, I now and then seem to be behind in writing about stuff I do here on the blog. Instead of writing about things that happened this week or last week, I sometimes write about things that happened a month or two ago...  There are even a few things that happened back in December when I was oh-so-busy and didn't have time to write blog posts that I might squeeze in during the spring since I think they are still of interest.

Despite not having had a lot of time to read articles during the autumn, I did have some time and I did read some articles, and, here they are (shortly annotated). The articles can for the most part be found through Google scholar (good luck!).

This time around I have not primarily organized them alphabetically, but have instead first divided them topically; I read a bunch of articles about ubiquitous computing during the autumn and I have separated these articles from the rest since that makes more sense.

Articles about ubiquitous computing:

- Bell, G., & Dourish, P. (2007). Yesterday’s tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing’s dominant vision. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 11(2), 133–143. */ Great article about the discrepancy between scientists' continued use of a 20-year old vision about "the future" that is contrasted with the much more messy-but-ignored present of ubiquitous computing; "the framing of ubicomp as something yet to be achieved allows researchers and technologists to absolve themselves from responsibilities for the present". Great article./*

- Coroama, V., Kostakos, V., Magerkurth, C., & De Vallejo, I. L. (2005). UbiSoc 2005: first international workshop on social implications of ubiquitous computing. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: CHI’05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (Vol. 2, pp. 2111–2112). */ Two-page overview of the area, input for a workshop../*

- Dourish, P, & Bell, G. (2008). Resistance Is Futile": Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. */ A rhetorical analysis of how visions of the future are constructed and used - complete with the connections between active researchers and the cultural backdrop of five iconic science fiction TV shows. "visions of the future are particularly revealing about the present. An account of "how we shall live" is inherently grounded in assumptions about the problems and opportunities of the time at which it is written." Great article./*

- Dourish, Paul, Anderson, K., & Nafus, D. (2007). Cultural mobilities: Diversity and agency in urban computing. Human-Computer Interaction–INTERACT 2007 (pp. 100–113). Springer. */ portable computing/urban mobility "design practice runs the risk of privileging particular viewpoints, forms of mobility, and social groups./*

- Galloway, A. (2004). Intimations of everyday life: Ubiquitous computing and the city. Cultural Studies, 18(2-3), 384–408. */ Thesis: "social and cultural studies have been almost entirely absent in discussions of the design of ubiquitous technologies". Galloway thinks this is wrong. Social and cultural theories of everyday life can bring much much to the table. We want in!/*

- Ito, M., Okabe, D., & Anderson, K. (2009). Portable objects in three global cities: The personalization of urban places. The reconstruction of space and time: mobile communication practices, 67–87. */ The results of a study that tracked how young professionals in three cities (Tokyo, Los Angeles, London) used "portable objects" (music players, credit cards, transit cards, keys, ID cards and mobile phones)./*

- Jain, R., & Wullert II, J. (2002). Challenges: environmental design for pervasive computing systems. Proceedings of the 8th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking (pp. 263–270). ACM. */ Thesis: pervasive computing can have "possible negative environmental impacts, particularly in terms of physical waste and energy consumptions." Can software fix or ameliorate the problem?/*

- Kinsley, S. (2011). Anticipating ubiquitous computing: Logics to forecast technological futures. Geoforum, 42(2), 231–240. */ Based on interviews with hotshots in the area, "this article seeks to address: a logical certainty with which the technological near future is frequently addressed"./*

- Tolmie, P., Pycock, J., Diggins, T., MacLean, A., & Karsenty, A. (2002). Unremarkable computing. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 399–406). ACM. */ An analysis of "invisible" computing/technologies - stuff that comes to be routine and unremarkable as we come to take them for granted./*

- Weiser, M. (1993). Some computer science issues in ubiquitous computing. Communications of the ACM, 36(7), 75–84. */ One of the foundational texts about ubiquitous computing. Good but both visionary and a little dated at this point./*

- Weiser, M. (1994). The world is not a desktop. interactions, 1(1), 7–8. */ One of the foundational texts about ubiquitous computing. Only two pages long. Great article./*

- Williams, A., & Dourish, P. (2006). Imagining the city: The cultural dimensions of urban computing. Computer, 39(9), 38–43. */ Thesis: urban computing views "the city" as a generic city and produce findings that might apply to any city. Williams and Dourish instead view cities as culturally and historically specific./*

- Woelfer, J. P., & Hendry, D. G. (2011). Homeless young people and technology: ordinary interactions, extraordinary circumstances. interactions, 18(6), 70–73. */ Also homeless people (in the US) have computing needs (cell phones, iPods etc.), but it is difficult to satisfy these needs. What can be done?/*

Other, non-ubiquitous computing articles. Several are very critical of both this and that.

- Baumer, E. P. S., & Silberman, M. (2011). When the implication is not to design (technology). Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 2271–2274). ACM. */ To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To the man with a computer science degree, everything can be solved by building a computer system. But "it is important to consider situations in which computational or information technologies may be less appropriate"./*

- Blevis, E., & Blevis, S. (2010). Hope for the best and prepare for the worst: interaction design and the tipping point. interactions, 17(5), 26–30. */ "We describe the potential role of interaction design in preparation for and adaptation to a post-tipping point world. [...] at least some if not many of us need to also consider the degree to which some of our efforts need to be directed toward designing digital interactivity to prepare for and adapt to the potential effects of global warming and climate change."/*

- De Decker, Kris (2009). The monster footprint of digital technology. Low-tech Magazine. */ The title pretty much says it all. ICT production has huge costs in terms of energy and materials. Great article./*

- Heinberg, R., & Mander, J. (2009). Searching For a Miracle: Net Energy Limits & the Fate of Industrial Society. Post Carbon Institute. */ What (desirable or less desirable) characteristics do different energy sources have (renewability, reliability, energy density etc.)? What different energy sources are at our disposal? No less than 18 different energy sources are analyzed and compared with each other and with society's need of 1) quantity of energy vs 2) avoiding global warming and climate change. "Can any combination of known energy sources successfully supply society's energy needs at least up to the year 2100?" Great report. /*

- Hilty, L. M. (2012). In Arndet, H. K. (ed.): EnvironInfo 2012, Proceedings of the 26th Environmental Informatics Conferences. Why energy efficiency is not sufficient–some remarks on “Green by IT.” */ Text about the dreaded "rebound effects" and with a great case study of smart, energy-efficient vending machines in Japan that still in the end (by way of the dreaded rebound effects) managed to use more energy than their non-smart and energy-wasting predecessors - since more (energy-efficient) vending machines were produced. "In short, as technological improvements increase the efficiency with which a resource is used, total consumption of that resource may increase rather than decrease." Great article/*

- Nelson, T. H. (1997). Crush and crash: logic of a terrible tomorrow. Communications of the ACM, 40(2), 90–91. */ The inventor of hypertext predicts doom and gloom for humanity/*

- Silberman, M. S., & Tomlinson, B. (2010). Precarious infrastructure and postapocalyptic computing. Examining Appropriation, Re-use, and Maintenance for Sustainability, workshop at CHI 2010. */ "'HCI as usual' tends to assume no serious disruptions to infrastructure or the availability of energy and raw materials [...] Post-apocalyptic computing, on the other hand, act as if it has already occurred. [...] The term itself may simply be too inflammatory to be of scholarly use."/*

- Wong, J. (2009). Prepare for descent: interaction design in our new future. Defining the Role of HCI in the Challenges of Sustainability, workshop at CHI 2009. / Sustainable interaction design assumes "that the right technology can change behaviors of society-at-large quickly enough to avert irreversible damage. [...] sustainable interaction design should also consider the design context to be a world radically altered by environmental damage"/*
- Åhman, Henrik. (2012). Social sustainability - Society at the intersection of maintenance and development. Draft - submitted to a journal (I don't know the status of the article). */ Written by a ph.d. student/colleague of mine. Thesis: "much of the debate about sustainability has been dominated by ecological perspectives", but social sustainability is really important (and under-valued) too. "This article addresses the lack of theorization [of social sustainability]"./*