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Category Archives: informatics

this is interesting, actor network

What is Actor-Network Theory: various ANT definitions. The possibility of applying the actor-network theory and its methodology to different disciplines and fields of study is evident by the many senses in which it has been used. The What is Actor-Network Theory? site provides various definitions. These and many other colors and flavors of ANT represent a very… [infoSophy: Socio-technological Rendering of Information]

however, the fixation on the actor is still present. get rid of it, stop thinking about it, think about networks, only networks, and then think about how it constructs the actor, then i think you have a theoretically interesting actor-network theory.

Cultural Informatics

Here is my current definition of cultural informatics

Cultural Informatics is the application and understandings of information technology in the broadest senses of cultures and cultural institutions.

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Here is an expansion and clarification:

To that end, it deals with understandings of culturally centered information, cultural heritage, cultural communities, the transmission of information through cultures and relations between culture and information technology. While there are productive, design and creative elements to cultural informatics, that design has to be understood as constructed within a rich cultural milieu, and situated as such as part of a process to generate understanding within and across cultures. Cultural informatics must continually be reflexive and critical of the systems we create and participate in order to generate new possibilities that will work across cultural domains. It is not enough to build the tool, we build the tool in a culture, and we build cultural and political assumptions into that tool which have clear implications for the positioning of cultures, peoples, and technologies.