So, the new semester has started, and my courses are well underway. I’m taking my final anthropology course – Field Method – the purpose of which will be to prepare me (and help me prepare) for my exciting fieldwork next year.
The specifics of this mythical fieldwork is still not completely clear, but it will involve some the problems hinted at in my essay on various ways of perceiving computers (I’ll get around to uploading that essay shortly).
In order to prepare myself for this challenge, I’ve managed to be allowed to take two courses at the IT university of Copenhagen this semester. One is the Digital Rhetorics course mentioned below, the other is called Interaction Design.
Originally, I had planned to take the Digital Culture and Sociologycourse instead of the Interaction Design one, but it happened to take place in exactly the same timeslot on Tuesday afternoons as the Field Method one, so that was a distinct “no go”.
But I don’t mind much – the Interaction Design course seems very promising, among other things focusing on how ethnographic methods can be used to further the design process: Basically by talking to the users instead of just imagining what they might want. Brilliant.
All in all, my courses look very promising, and will keep me busy. The prospect of going on fieldwork is still quite daunting, but I guess it will lose its intimidating demeanor as I manage to make it more concrete and focused through my choosing the research questions and a specific setting.
We’ll see.