Check this out!
>Distributed Collective Practice Public Conference
>
>
>Saturday, 9 February 2002, 10.00am-5.00pm
>
>Institute of the Americas, UCSD
>(http://ioa.ucsd.edu/background/directions.html)
>
>In the context of an ongoing franco-american collaboration sponsored
>by the National Science Foundation, the Information Technology
>Series at UCSD is putting on a free public conference on Saturday 9
>February featuring four major international figures in the social
>and cognitive analysis of distributed collective practices.
>
>
>10.00am-11.00am John King, School of Information, University
>of Michigan Transport-Based Terrorism as Distributed Collective
>Practice
>The events of September 11 might not at first seem like a form of
>distributed collective action, but they certainly were. Otherwise,
>how would it be possible for a small group of comparatively poor,
>anti-modern fanatics to appropriate very modern assets worth
>hundreds of millions of dollars and use them to bring down buildings
>worth billions of dollars, killing thousands of people in the
>process? This feat was literally enabled by the highly
>sophisticated infrastructure of air transport that was designed,
>quite deliberately, to put a great deal of control in the hands of
>end-users. Naturally, none of those who designed this
>infrastructure intended this use, and efforts are being made to
>interdict such use for the future. Nevertheless, it is important to
>recognize that many of the objectives of the terrorists were closely
>aligned with the objectives of the infrastructure: to permit
>disaggregated individuals to engage in the collective practice of
>air travel with remarkably low coordination and transaction costs.
>These connections will be explored.
>
>11.00am-12.00pm Laurent Thevenot, Directeur du Groupe de
>Sociologie Politique et
>Morale (EHESS-CNRS), Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
> What’s the Good of Distributed Collective
>Practice? The politics and morality of heterogeneity
>Distributed collective practice (DCP) raises three main issues:
>heterogeneity, coherence, collectivity. These practices are praised
>because they are supposed to enhance heterogeneity. But they are
>not only considered in their isolated peculiarity. They are viewed
>as coordinated, when they take part in the construction of some
>collectivity. Thus, DCP enables us to see collectivities as built
>on differences and particularities, and leads us to take into
>account the resulting tension which moves us away from traditional
>conceptions of substantive social groups. This is one of the points
>where the development of distributed collaborative computing
>technology contributes to rethinking basic social categories. In
>addition, DCP enables us to see collectivity from a pragmatic
>viewpoint - as the dynamic result of technical practices which
>constantly update the list and character of who and what aim at
>collectivity. And some coherence is needed for the actor to orient
>one's conduct and coordinate it.
>These views might contribute to a fresh understanding of
>collectives, and of the most extended of them, the common
>collectivity which is referred to in politics, when evaluations have
>to be made by reference to some common or public good. But, these
>views also raise problems:
>• How is heterogeneity dealt with so as to achieve coordination and
>to overcome the tension between such heterogeneity and commonality
>or the public good?
>• What idea of the good might govern the evaluation of achieved
>coordination, and of the outcome which is collectively relevant?
>
>12.00pm-12.30pm Discussion
>
>12.30pm-2.00pm Lunch (lunch will not be provided; there
>will be food available on campus or in nearby La Jolla)
>
>2.00pm-3.00pm Dick Boland, Weatherhead School of Management
>Case Western Reserve University
>Mind Eats Body and Other Tales of Terror From Distributed Mediated Cognition
>In this talk I will explore the phenomenon of distributed mediated
>practice from an openly existential and structuralist viewpoint.
>Both are currently out of fashion but I will argue that the field of
>distributed mediated practices brings them into focus anew. It
>raises fundamental questions of theory, existence, language and
>meaning that resurface enduring concerns of Western thought andcall
>out for existential and structuralist voices.
>
>3.00pm-4.00pm Michel Callon, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris
> Economic markets as calculating and
>calculated collective devices
>The paper is based on the assumption that economic marckets provide
>an interesting (and crystal clear) illustration of DCP and that
>lessons could consequently be drawn from the understanding of their
>functioning. More precisely, markets are considered as collective
>devices that perform calculation on the value of goods, establishing
>negotiated compromises between different conceptions, expectations
>and values. Performing these calculations require calculable
>products, calculative agencies as well as rules arranging the
>encounter between specific supplies and demands. Comments are given
>on the growing role of laboratory research in the design and
>implementation of markets.
>
>4.00pm-5.00pm Discussion and Closing
>
>Queries may be addressed to: bowker who-is-at ucsd.edu.
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