[Air-l] Technical competence

[Elizabeth Van Couvering]

But let's consider the recent issue of archiving websites -- clearly  
we need some kind of technical competence for that.  Ditto link  
analysis.  Ditto for reading others' papers and understanding whether  
they've used a correct or appropriate methodology.  For example, in  
understanding the so-called popularity of a website people should  
know to differentiate between 'hits' and 'pages' and 'visitors' and  
should be able to figure out whether robots have been excluded - to  
take a random example that demands a bit of specialised knowledge.  
Shouldn't this be the kind of thing we are considering for our students?

Elizabeth

On 6 Jun 2005, at 22:34, Paula wrote:

> Yes, I'd agree with this - it can be useful to understand something of
> how any particular technical medium is productive in online social
> formations, but find it far more useful to approach social software
> primarily from the point of view of the user. The users will always
> manage to exceed the developers' constructs anyway.
>
> Conversely, I find it really interesting how social softwares
> materialise the culture of their developers whilst users will often  
> try
> to use it according to the needs of a completely different culture.
>
> Paula
>
> Ledbetter, Andrew Michael wrote:
>
>
>> Long-time reader, first-time poster. :-)
>>
>> I agree, interesting question, and an important question. I think  
>> the (a) particular research question and (b) population under  
>> study significantly influence the level of technical competence a  
>> researcher would need. And we must not forget that the vast  
>> majority of web users, e-mail users, online gamers, etc. do not  
>> know much at all about UNIX, perl, Java, or probably even basic  
>> ideas about how the TCP/IP protocol operates. Given this, might  
>> there be occasions where lacking in-depth computer science  
>> knowledge might actually help a researcher approaching the  
>> Internet from a social science perspective, since they may be able  
>> to more easily view the technology through the users' eyes rather  
>> than the developers' eyes?
>>
>> In my own research, I find that my computer science background  
>> helps me understand the contours of how the nature of a technology  
>> encourages and discourages certain forms of social interaction...  
>> but I find that my social science background helps me far more in  
>> understanding how human beings appropriate the technology in their  
>> social interaction.
>>
>> Andrew
>> -------------
>> Andrew M. Ledbetter
>> Ph.D. student, University of Kansas
>> Department of Communication Studies
>> aledbett at ku.edu
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>> ---
>>
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Elizabeth Van Couvering
PhD Student
Department of Media & Communications
London School of Economics and Political Science
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/vancouve/
e.j.van-couvering at lse.ac.uk