Erhardt Graeff – Page 19

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an amazing work of anthropology. The amount and quality of research poured into the author’s study of machine gambling makes for a convincing account of how the casino and gambling machine industries continue to refine and perfect slot machines, video poker machines, and other electronic gambling devices in order to keep gamblers in their stools and feeding money into the machine. The odds are stacked against the average gambler in many ways beyond simply the random number generators powering the spins of reels and deals of cards. Not only does the author give us this view into the industry through technical and anecdotal details, but also offers an overview of local, national, and multi-national regulatory frameworks governing the industry: their complexity and ultimately their limitations. The discussion of lobbying activities by the industry to focus the point of responsibility for gambling on the individual using arguments from neo-liberalism and funding research to build up analysis about problem gambler’s individual psychology and predisposition rather than the role of the machines was fascinating.

The larger takeaway from the field of science, technology, and society is the revelations around how problem gambling is a co-construction between the machines and their human users. The author offers heartbreaking accounts of gamblers who can’t stop gambling, who have structured their lives around the practice, and hurt themselves and their families in the process. We readers see what it means to be truly addicted to something. The effect is a deeply humanizing account of gambling addicts.

One advisory for potential readers: this is a piece of rigorous academic scholarship, whose audience may include lay readers and policymakers, but is definitely meant for other anthropologists and science, technology, and society scholars. There are many references to philosophers and sociologists like Erving Goffman, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, and others. This makes the book a very dense read. I appreciate the situation of the work in the academic literature but it definitely raises barriers to a broader audience. That said, the author does an excellent job of constructing a road map through the work and helping readers keep track of where they are in her argument and where threads are coming together, which really helps the accessibility. Overall, I highly recommend Addiction by Design.

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It’s Complicated book review

26 March 2014Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens by danah boyd

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed danah’s book. Although I was already familiar with most of the research leading into it, I felt like I took away more insights through reflection and connection across the themes and findings. One thing that I was particularly struck by was how eager I feel to recommend the book to others in my life, others who are definitely not academics like myself, and that’s thanks to its well-thought-out structure and editing.

danah has worked hard to write a book that is not just a summary and synthesis of her research but also a resource for a multiple audiences. There is a lot of depth below the surface, but the surface is perfectly accessible. I may be biased, since I’m well-versed in the research and know danah personally, but the book seems to achieve her goal in appealing to a wide audience. And the structure of the book as a resource, which can be referenced by chapter and in many cases by sub-chapter, makes it very handy.

I believe the new takeaways from her research for me were a result of its accessible, resource-like approach. I was coaxed out of my academic shoes and into those of someone who hopes to be a parent in the not too distant future. danah’s central argument is that a lot of youth practices remain the same as previous generations even though they appear different, due to the fact that they take place through new digital media and networked publics. The most important chapter in my opinion, setting stage for this point, is the one on privacy. On page 76, danah writes, “Privacy is valuable because it is critical for personal development. As teenagers are coming of age, they want to feel as though they matter.” This speaks to me on multiple levels: scholar, future parent, and designer of civic technologies for adults and youth.

Lastly, in case it’s not obvious, “it’s complicated” is more than a reference to the nature of the networked teens’ social lives, it represents danah’s approach to the topic and goal: complicate your view of contemporary teen sociality. And she does this with quotes like the one above, wherein she offers advice through insight. Those looking for prescriptions for policy and parenting won’t find it here. Rather, the book is an invitation to improve our understanding and relationships with teens through powerful anecdotes and reflections that challenge our assumptions and current practices. Share widely!

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Action Path: A Location-Based Tool for Civic Reflection and Engagement

22 March 2014Erhardt Graeff

Link

https://civic.mit.edu/blog/erhardt/action-path-a-location-based-tool-for-civic-reflection-and-engagement

Excerpt

In his book The Good Citizen, Michael Schudson talks about different eras in America that idealized different types of citizenship (1998). What it meant to be a good citizen at the dawn of American democracy differs substantially from whatever it means now. In particular, Schudson talks about how the ideal of the “informed citizen” dominated the discourse of the 20th century and was deeply intertwined with the role journalism played in society.

However, we are at a point where journalism’s role is fraught in society and where the range of information necessary to be a fully realized participant in democracy, according to these ideals, is impossible. There is too much to know and too much to have an opinion on. Schudson argues that we need a new framework, a new kind of citizenship for contemporary times.

One model he proposes is the “monitorial citizen.” “Monitorial citizens scan (rather than read),” in Schudson’s words (1998, 310). And they integrate their civic duties into their daily lives: watching their kids, keeping abreast of important consumer recalls, noting how weather affects the cost of groceries or their ability to check in on family members’ safety. In aggregate these might give us the omniscience necessary to fully participate in Walter Lippmann’s opinion, that is according to Lippmann’s books The Public Opinion (1922) and The Phantom Public (1925). So rather than rely on individual specialist and experts, we might crowdsource expertise among monitorial citizens—to use contemporary jargon.

This can be a year-long, rather than a season-long practice of citizenship, argues Schudson. We can’t and don’t need to expect the kind of participation that only emerges during the fall of a Presidential Election year.

Where I think we can go one step farther than Schudson is by saying that monitorial citizens are gathering useful information rather than simply watching. Mobile phones and social media give us a trail of data that might be convertible into civic utility.

Life Between Buildings book review

17 March 2014Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space by Jan Gehl

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Quick read full of insights into how people approach public spaces. This is understandably a classic of urban planning, and is incredibly accessible. I loved how every spread had at least one photo, and often several supporting the text with observable evidence. The book seems like a nice complement to Jane Jacobs classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, focusing more on the details of design that support the type of livable, walkable cities they both dream of.

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Balancing Deep and Wide Impacts in the Design of Civic Tech (preface)

8 March 2014Erhardt Graeff

Link

https://civic.mit.edu/blog/erhardt/balancing-deep-and-wide-impacts-in-the-design-of-civic-tech

Excerpt

I’m working on a project called Action Path. Similar to Promise Tracker, which will be the featured case study in this session, Action Path is a smartphone app for civic engagement. Specifically, the app uses geo-fencing, a technique based on the awareness of the user’s GPS coordinates, to send notifications to users about opportunities to take quick actions in the form of polls or documentation of a local area for easy, yet contextually-relevant civic engagement. As indicated by my promo slide here, it’s meant to marry mobile computing with the concept of a “Jane Jacobs Walk,” whereby you only really understand a city’s needs and resources through walking its streets. I hope you all agree that this sounds great… at least in theory.

But what does this look like in practice? Well, right now it looks like three two-hour public meetings per week, where I sit and learn about the ongoing planning processes in Somerville—the city where I live and hope to do my research. I am building trust with folks in the planning department at the City of Somerville and the leaders and organizers in civil society organizations who work on issues like land use, affordable housing, and beautification in different neighborhoods around town.

There are lot of conflicting agendas among these different groups, all of whom I need buy-in from in order to, 1) make sure that I have enough people test my app, and 2) ensure the app is stocked with relevant actions that a) make my partners feel good about endorsing it among their members, and b) make the city and private developers happy because the feedback will be in a form that can inform their planning processes, WITHOUT becoming overly politicized. I want to have real impact, and tying the technology to real impact is important for my research

In the end, I have to write this up as a thesis. And that means I need a rigorous study of some kind showing that people’s understanding of their ability to make a difference in their city has changed.

I appreciate that this is an iterative and interactive process that demands flexibility, but it’s also hard from the perspectives of design, research, PLUS overall impact. And it’s actually the social processes around the technology that are harder to design than the mobile app itself.