[Air-l] Technical competence

[Andrew Wenn]

Hi,

That is indeed an interesting question. The answer would be pretty much 
determined by what the individual wishes to research, and the 
particular focus they wish to take.

I see absolutely no reason, in theory, a social scientist should have 
to know perl, grep or other scripting languages. If they do it may 
enable them to take their research in a different direction. I use an 
Apple Powerbook with MacOSX installed, but I never have to use UNIX for 
my day to day work and my research. Having said that, I have a good 
knowledge of UNIX and can use grep and javascript if I have to. I could 
also use perl but would rather jump of a bridge into a swiftly flowing 
river first.

My technical background has enabled me to understand the reasons why 
certain things function the way they do on the Internet and use some of 
this knowledge in explicating my findings from a sociotechnical point 
of view.

Obviously, there will be some tools/software etc that people need to 
use because of the direction they wish to take their research and they 
may have been developed for command line use only because that is all 
the original developer needed. I guess that would be one of the factors 
others have to consider when adopting the tool. Can they learn how to 
use it? Or is there a better tool available that still meets budgetary 
constraints.

In other words if you only know how to use a spade, is there any point 
in hiring a mechanical digger that you don't know how to operate to dig 
that drain you promised you would do 6 months ago. Or do you pay a 
commercial operator to come in and do it for you? Or take a course in 
mechanical digger operation?

Andrew

-- 
email: andrewwenn at mac.com
internet: http://homepage.mac.com/andrewwenn/

On 06/06/2005, at 3:22 PM, Elizabeth Van Couvering wrote:

> This comment raises I think an interesting issue, to what extent ought 
> we to be familiar with computer science as Internet researchers?  In 
> other words, should we know the basics of programming, of UNIX, of 
> html, etc.?
>
> My own knowledge is pretty patchy - I did two semesters of algorithms 
> (in Pascal as I recall) about 15 years ago in college; I can hand-code 
> a website with basic HTML and CSS but no scripting; I used to be able 
> to write AppleScripts; and I can navigate up and down a unix system (I 
> basically know the 'ls' command and the 'cd' command).  I know what a 
> webserver does and can read log files.  And owing to my research I now 
> know something about how search engines function :-)  That's it, 
> though -- perl and python are strangers to me, I can't gzip or untar 
> things, and as for the grep commands in AtlasTi... well, let's just 
> say I'm probably not using the program to its full extent.
>
> Still, I know more than most of the other people I know who are 
> studying new media.  But is that right?  Should I know more, should 
> they know more?  Do you think there is a minimum level of technical 
> competence that you need?
>
> Elizabeth
>
>> 2) I am a social scientist, as I (maybe wrongly) thought were most of 
>> the people on this list. I am familiar with UNIX, which already seems 
>> to be kind of a rarity among social scientists. Most of us aren't 
>> and, I might add, shouldn't.
>
>
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