Research
I am currently a PhD candidate in cultural geography at the School of Geographical Sciences in the University of Bristol. My research interests are focussed on how "Technology" is thought about and described. I am particularly interested in how we form accounts of how "Society" and "Technology" relate.
The aim of my PhD is to investigate the ways and means particular futures are anticipated in the research and development (R&D) of ‘ubiquitous computing’ and related commentary.
Thesis
My proposed title is currently: Practising Tomorrows? Anticipating worlds of ubiquitous computing.
Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) research is characterized primarily by a concern with potential future computational worlds. This notion of research by future envisionment has been a feature of ubicomp discourse and reasoning since it earliest days… Such visions, however, are interesting not just for what they say about the future but also for what they say
about the present. This seems to be particularly the case when it comes to normative social relationships.
Bell & Dourish Yesterday’s tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing’s dominant vision
Beyond the continued development of existing communications and computing technologies is the planning and (variously) attempted implementation of sensory and communications techniques in a much broader range of devices. Ubiquitous computing has come to signify the array of projects for the diffusion of information and communications technologies into everyday products and practices.
With technological tomorrows seemingly brought into today, anticipated futures are lent presence and substance, which can influence broader technological ‘common sense’ understandings, policies and business plans. These clean and sharp visions of technological futures can differ from the messiness of plans and goals set in-practice during R&D. My PhD thesis examines how and in what ways anticipatory knowledges are practised in the envisioning and contesting of futures, as peculiar arrangements of people, places and things.
Please also see my page at the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol.
