This chapter contains sections titled: Metaphors for Technology, Library as Information Ecology, Ecological Thinking

article Share on Making a place for seniors on the Net: SeniorNet, senior identity, and the digital divide Authors: Mizuko Ito National Institute for Educational Policy Research of Japan, Tokyo, Japan National Institute for Educational Policy Research of Japan, Tokyo, JapanView Profile , Vicki L. O'Day Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CAView Profile , Annette Adler Agilent Labs, Palo Alto, CA Agilent Labs, Palo Alto, CAView Profile , Charlotte Linde NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CAView Profile , Elizabeth D. Mynatt Georgia Institute of Techology, Altanta Georgia Institute of Techology, AltantaView Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM SIGCAS Computers and SocietyVolume 31Issue 3September 2001 pp 15–21https://doi.org/10.1145/504696.504699Published:01 September 2001Publication History 23citation1,297DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations23Total Downloads1,297Last 12 Months31Last 6 weeks2 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

The field of molecular biology is in a remarkably rapid period of change, as the genome sequencing projects and new experimental technologies have generated an explosion of data. To analyze and draw insights from the vast amounts of information, biologists use a new generation of bioinformatics software tools, often working closely with mathematicians and computer scientists. There are elements of both collision and convergence in these interdisciplinary encounters. We conducted user studies with biologists engaged in investigating the molecular basis of disease. We describe several issues that arise in this collision/convergence of disciplines, drawing on the notion of boundary objects in-the-making. We provide recommendations on building technology for people whose work now sits at the crossroads of diverse and rapidly changing scientific fields.

We conducted an ethnographic study of SeniorNet, an organization focused on helping seniors gain access to computing technology. Our research examines the social and cultural context of access to computing, with a particular focus on the role of community. Our study of SeniorNet has helped us understand the nature of seniors as a group, as we have immersed ourselves in the uniquely supportive and cohesive communities of SeniorNet. At the same time, our stereotypes of seniors have been challenged as we have come to understand the diversity that the category of "senior" so incompletely describes. This diversity has implications for how we approach access issues for the senior population and as we consider the benefits of computing for seniors as well as benefits for others in interacting with seniors.

Summary This paper argues that the way we see, think, and talk about technology has consequences for the way we use it. The author observes that we have difficulty bringing critical sensibilities into our evaluation and use of technology; she posits three reasons for this difficulty: the rhetoric of inevitability, the limitations of partial perspectives, and the effects of metaphor. The author proposes paying attention to technology and observing the social practices surrounding its use. One good way of paying attention to technologies and concomitant social practices is to think ecologically. By positing an information ecology, we will provide ourselves with a framework for thinking about and evaluating technology, both within and outside libraries.

With the explosion of participation on the Internet, there is increasing interest and speculation in extending its uses to support diverse online communities, and particular interest in using the Internet to combat loneliness and isolation amongst senior citizens For the past year, we have been investigating SeniorNet (SN), a 12 year old organization that attempts to bring seniors together via computer networking technologies. We found a rich tapestry of human relationships supported by various technical and social underpinnings. In this paper, we delve into the richness of an active community and describe the intertwining technical and social factors that make it valuable and useful for its members. An underlying question in these discussions is "If network communities have to be principally created and maintained by their members (as we posit), then how do designers help without getting in the way?".

Chapter Two: Framing Conversations about Technology, from the book, Information Ecologies. This book calls for call for responsible, informed engagement with technology in local settings, or information ecologies.

The common rhetoric about technology falls into two extreme categories: uncritical acceptance or blanket rejection. These two positions leave us with poor choices for action. They encourage us to accept as inevitable whatever technological changes come along. Claiming a middle ground, these chapters from the book Information Ecologies (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999) call for responsible, informed engagement with technology in local settings, or information ecologies. An information ecology is a system of people, practices, technologies, and values in a local environment. Like their biological counterparts, information ecologies are diverse, continually evolving, and complex.

Designers of Internet applications and those helping others learn about the net need to understand the problems Internet newcomers face as they encounter the idiosyncratic structures that organize the networked world. As part of an ethnographic study of SeniorNet, an organization that helps seniors learn to use computers, we explore early encounters with the networked world by analyzing questions asked in introductory computer classes. These questions, grounded in newcomers' prior experience, show how the taken-for-granted assumptions and strategies underlying successful Internet use differ from those in other domains. The questions and analysis are grouped in the following categories: identity on the Internet; boundaries and scope of the Internet; boundaries and scope of the personal computer; and organizations and providers in the networked world.

The common rhetoric about technology falls into two extreme categories: uncritical acceptance or blanket rejection. These two positions leave us with poor choices for action. They encourage us to accept as inevitable whatever technological changes come along. Claiming a middle ground, these chapters from the book Information Ecologies (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999) call for responsible, informed engagement with technology in local settings, or information ecologies. An information ecology is a system of people, practices, technologies, and values in a local environment. Like their biological counterparts, information ecologies are diverse, continually evolving, and complex.

We discuss design considerations in moving practice through the boundaryfrom physical to virtual places. Although the examples are grounded in aschool environment, we believe that the design tradeoffs apply to anynetworked collaborative space. The context for discussion is Pueblo, aMOO-based, cross-generation network learning community centered around aK-6 elementary school. The development of practice in Pueblo draws uponteachers‘ and students‘ experience with semi-structured classroomparticipation frameworks – informal structures of social interactionwhich foster certain ways of thinking, doing, and learning through guidedactivities and conversations. We have translated several familiar frameworksinto the Pueblo setting, using the classroom versions as models to beadapted and transformed as they are aligned with the affordances of the MOO.We identify four design dimensions that have emerged as particularlyinteresting and important in this process: audience, asynchrony andsynchrony, attention and awareness, and prompts for reflection. Weillustrate design choices in each dimension using several of theparticipation frameworks that have been translated into Pueblo. We discussthe relation between MOO affordances and design choices and provide examplesof successful and unsuccessful alignment between them.

Collaboration has long been of considerable interest to both designersand researchers in the CHI and CSCW communities. This paper contributes tothis discussion by proposing the concept of network communities as a newgenre of collaboration for this discussion. Network communities are robustand persistent communities based on a sense of locality that spans both thevirtual and physical worlds of their users. They are a technosocialconstruct that requires understanding of both the technology and thesociality embodying them. We consider several familiar systems as well ashistorical antecedents to describe the affordances these systems offer theircommunity of users. Based on our own experience as designers, users andresearchers of a variety of network communities, we extend this initialdesign space along three dimensions: the boundary negotiations between realand virtual worlds, support for social rhythms and the emergence anddevelopment of community. Finally we offer implications for designers,researchers and community members based on our findings.

We describe a framework for learning from simulations based on reciprocal teaching, a successful method used to teach reading skills in grade school. The framework consists of four kinds of activity: clarification, summarization, questioning and predicting. This framework is useful for teaching kids how to reflect on their own use of modeling and simulation techniques and for helping organize collaborative activity around such tasks. We give examples from our experience in Pueblo, a MUD-based learning community.

Network communities are especially interesting anduseful settings in which to look closely at theco-evolution of technology and social practice, tobegin to understand how to explore the full space ofdesign options and implications. In a networkcommunity we have a magnified view of the interactionsbetween social practice and technical mechanisms,since boundaries between designers and users areblurred and co-evolution here is unusually responsiveto user experience. This paper is a reflection on howwe have worked with social and technical designelements in Pueblo, a school-centered networkcommunity supported by a MOO (an Internet-accessible,text-based virtual world). Four examples from Puebloillustrate different ways of exploring the designspace. The examples show how designers can rely onsocial practice to simplify a technicalimplementation, how they can design technicalmechanisms to work toward a desirable social goal, howsimilar technical implementations can have differentsocial effects, and how social and technicalmechanisms co-evolve. We point to complexities of thedesign process and emphasize the contributions ofmediators in addressing communication breakdowns amonga diverse group of designers.

We are building an infrastructure for collaborative construction, exploration and presentation of system dynamics microworlds in an educational setting. This work is part of the Pueblo project, a mud-based learning community with participants ranging from kindergarten students to senior citizens. This note describes our goals and early progress.

This introduction is a summary of the workshop from the perspective of one of the workshop participants. It is followed by a report written by the workshop organizers, giving their perspective, and then the position papers.

Article Free Access Share on Design for network communities Authors: Elizabeth D. Mynatt Xerox PARC Xerox PARCView Profile , Annette Adler Xerox Systems Architecture Xerox Systems ArchitectureView Profile , Mizuko Ito Stanford University & Institute for Research on Learning Stanford University & Institute for Research on LearningView Profile , Vicki L. O'Day Xerox PARC Xerox PARCView Profile Authors Info & Claims CHI '97: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human factors in computing systemsMarch 1997 Pages 210–217https://doi.org/10.1145/258549.258707Published:27 March 1997Publication History 63citation1,662DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations63Total Downloads1,662Last 12 Months52Last 6 weeks7 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my Alerts New Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF