I finally found the time to read Christopher Kelty’s book Two Bits – The cultural Significance of Free Software. Kelty is one of the few other anthropologists studying Free Software in general, and his work has been a huge inspiration in my thesis work on Ubuntu, so naturally, my expectations were high. As Kelty argues, [...]
Reading the Presentation Zen blog recently, I came across several good things: 1. A reference to the TED conference – a great conference where various brilliant people get 20 minutes each to present their great idea. Loads of great stuff there. 2. A list of great presentations with some great insights. A recurring theme in [...]
Today, I found an interesting presentation delving into a matter, which I touched upon before: the basic differences between the political right and left. The presentation, given by one Jonathan Haidt, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. Based on his research into moral psychology, he claims to have found evidence of 5 [...]
At EPIC, I took part in a very interesting workshop discussion led by Jeanette Blomberg and Elin Rønby, two of the leading figures within the field of ethnography-supported design. The theme of the workshop was making visible the object of design in the design process, and centred on this diagram describing the generalized design process: [...]
Recently, I read Seth Godin‘s new book Tribes. It is a short clever book full of insights on what it means to build and lead a tribe. Godin’s main argument is borrowed from one of Hugh McLeod‘s one-liners: Or, as Woody Guthrie put it: “Basically, man is a hoping machine.” As a marketing guru, Godin’s [...]
Some time ago, I was invited by John D Smith to present my thesis work on Ubuntu as a Community of Practice at the CP Square autumn dissertation fest. CP Square is an online community of researchers and consultants working with Communities of Practice – a term coined by Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave, and [...]
Recently, I made a brief reference to the so-called Dunbar number in relation to my list of friends on Facebook. Since then, I’ve spent some time reading up on Dunbar’s number and the concept of friends on social networking sites, and feel the need to delve deeper into this discussion. danah boyd, one of the [...]