Michigan Lecture: Plans and Models

On April 21st, 2016 I gave a lecture “Plans and Models: Digital Tools, Sticky Practices and the Thorny Problem of Innovation” as part of the University of Michigan’s “Digital Futures Lecture Series.”

Continue Reading →

Disruption and the Political Economy of Biosensor Data

Science and Technology Studies has long held that the frames and definitions designers give to new tools matter enormously for how users initially receive and ultimately modify those tools. Discourses are powerful forces in technology design, shaping, for instance, how gender and racial inequalities get designed into technologies. The startups working in biosensing and self-tracking […]

Continue Reading →

Technologies for Sharing: lessons from Quantified Self about the political economy of platforms

Quantified Self (QS) is a group that coordinates a global set of in-person meetings for sharing personal experiences and experiments with self-tracking behaviours, moods, and activities. Through participation in US-based QS events and watching online QS presentations from around the globe, we identify a function of ambiguous valuation for supporting sharing communities. Drawing on Stark’s […]

Continue Reading →