My research these days concerns the social and political aspects of
computing and networking. I have written a few papers about how computers
(or the people who design them) represent human beings and their lives,
and the close connection between these representational practices and
the inequitable social relations that manifest themselves as (among
other things) systematic invasions of privacy. Most recently I have
begun a field study of computing as a popular technology, for example
the sociology of technical knowledge about computers that circulates in
computer user groups and other less formal contexts. I am also interested
in the construction of masculinity through computing, and I would like
to see what sense, if any, can be made of the notion that computers have
been constructed as masculine artifacts. Most generally, I want to learn
to say things about technology's place in society that are simultaneously
nontrivial assertions about technology and nontrivial assertions about
society. This is difficult. Some of my ideas about these latter topics
can be found in a newsletter I edit on the Internet, whose URL can be
found from my home page, http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/
Phil Agre