For the past week I have been in California at an interdisciplinary workshop, entitled “Values in Design,” that brought together graduate students from several programs in science and technology studies, iSchools, and humanities and social sciences (from US and EU) whose research interests revolve around information technologies. Our motley group, guided by provocative faculty, worked through some interesting divergences in understanding how “values,” “design” and “values in design” might be conceptualized. Great selection of readings was a shared basis for our discussions of intent and agency in computer systems, methods (notably ethnographic ones) for grasping “values,” and the links between formulating theoretical understandings and research and artifact design.
One part of the workshop was a week-long group project. My group was thematized by organizers Geof Bowker and Helen Nissenbaum as “open source / cyberculture.” Our project was inspired by “the freedom to study” which is one of foundational principles of free software, “page source” option on many web browers, and the “view source” key on the One Laptop Per Child computers. We asked, what kinds of “sources” would be necessary to foster software literacy in a diverse population? Our response was in the form of a web-based application intended to promote understanding of software as a socio-cultural, organizational and technical artifact. Specifically, we wanted to highlight the (often overlooked) diversity of activities that drive a software project forward in various key moments. We were also concerned with increasing means for raising awareness about diversity (or lack of it) among free software and open source contributors. The slides of our final presentation are available for download.