‘The biggest legal battle in UK casino history’: Processes and politics of ‘cheating’ in sociotechnical networks

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark R Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Previous Literature ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Sociotechnical Networks ◽  
Legal Battle

Previous literature on cheating has focused on defining the concept, assigning responsibility to individual players, collaborative social processes or technical faults in a game’s rules. By contrast, this paper applies an actor-network perspective to understanding ‘cheating’ in games, and explores how the concept is rhetorically effective in sociotechnical controversies. The article identifies human and nonhuman actors whose interests and properties were translated in a case study of ‘edge sorting’ – identifying minor but crucial differences in tessellated patterns on the backs of playing cards, and using these to estimate their values. In the ensuing legal controversy, the defending actors – casinos – retranslated the interests of actors to position edge sorting as cheating. This allowed the casinos to emerge victorious in a legal battle over almost twenty million dollars. Analyzing this dispute shows that cheating is both sociotechnically complex as an act and an extremely powerful rhetorical tool for actors seeking to prevent changes to previously-established networks. Science and Technology Studies (STS) offers a rich toolkit for examining cheating, but in addition the cheating discourse may be valuable to STS, enlarging our repertoire of actor strategies relevant to sociotechnical disputes.

scholarly journals Hackers against technology: Critique and recuperation in technological cycles

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 841-860 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxigas
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Pragmatic Sociology ◽  
Browser Extensions

I offer an interpretation of hackers’ technological choices through a theoretical framework of critique and recuperation in technological cycles, building on prior research that brings the pragmatic sociology of Boltanski and Chiapello to bear on matters in Science and Technology Studies. I argue that contextualizing technology choices in the development of capitalism through innovation illuminates their political significance. I start with the counterintuitive observation that some browser extensions popular with hackers, like RequestPolicy, make it considerably harder for them to look at websites. This observation showcases the Luddite aspects of hackerdom, in that they are willing to ‘break’ popular websites that would otherwise cheat on the user. In line with an undercurrent of hacker studies, in this case study I find hackers fighting technological progress they see as social decline.

scholarly journals Users as Co-Designers of Software-Based Media: The Co-Construction of Internet Relay Chat

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillaume Latzko-Toth
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Early Development ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Intrinsic Property ◽  
Internet Relay Chat ◽  
Technical Device ◽  
Technology Studies

While it has become commonplace to present users as co-creators or “produsers” of digital media, their participation is generally considered in terms of content production. The case of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) shows that users can be fully involved in the design process, a co-construction in the sense of Science and Technology Studies (STS): a collective, simultaneous, and mutual construction of actors and artifacts. A case study of the early development of two IRC networks sheds light on that process and shows that “ordinary users” managed to invite themselves as co-designers of the socio-technical device. The article concludes by suggesting that IRC openness to user agency is not an intrinsic property of software-based media and has more to do with its architecture and governance structure.Cet article présente des travaux ayant pris pour objet des situations, des pratiques, des objets et des processus de communication dans les champs scientifique et technique. Il propose ainsi de définir la spécificité de l’approche communicationnelle au sein du domaine « Sciences, technologies, sociétés » (STS). Il insiste sur la teneur critique de cette approche dans sa phase d’émergence au cours des années 1970-1980, et il distingue différents courants de travaux constitutifs de l’approche communicationnelle au sein des STS dans les décennies 1980 et 1990. Il souligne enfin la difficulté d’articuler à la fois l’attention à la singularité des formes, des objets et des situations et la prise en compte des dynamiques spatiotemporelles de grande ampleur qui influencent les enjeux de communication dans le domaine STS.

The Describer's Nightmare: Touching Form in Colson Whitehead's John Henry Days

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 442-459
Author(s):  
Ezra Dan Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reliable Identification ◽  
Critical Response ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Way Of Knowing ◽  
Real Challenge

Abstract The form and formlessness of histories, regions, races, ballads, fictions, lists, characters, and mountains are among the topics of concern in Colson Whitehead's John Henry Days, and they pose a real challenge to conveying what this novel is like. Caroline Levine's Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network advocates considering forms in terms of their affordances, “the potential uses or actions latent in materials and designs” (6). This depends, however, on the reliable identification of forms in a particular text, activity, or material; and the critical response to John Henry Days gives us evidence that, while we can analyze forms the novel deploys and contains, it remains a challenge to identify the novel's form as a whole. In a different vein, Heather Love's work on description is explicitly concerned with “forms of analysis,” but not with the analysis of form per se. The present examination of John Henry Days attempts to bridge such valuable conversations about form and description. This article argues that as John Henry Days grapples with describing forms that constantly remake themselves, it takes a position akin to science and technology studies scholar Michael Lynch's theoretical agnosticism with respect to capital-O Ontology. Refusing anything like a full-blown theory of form, John Henry Days both practices and advocates provisional taxonomy—touching and moving on—as a way of knowing its ever-changing material. This article's analysis of the describer's nightmare is thus a case study for Lynch's claim that “particular descriptions—including descriptions of ontologies—can make sense, apparently even to others who do not share our grand theories.”

At the Junction Between Subsistence and Reference: A Pragmatist Take on Interaction Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-113
Author(s):  
Thomas Martine ◽  
Boris H J M Brummans ◽  
François Cooren
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Interaction Analysis ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Language And Social Interaction ◽  
Modes Of Existence

Abstract This paper presents a view of interaction analysis that departs from the intersubjectivist assumptions that underlie its ethnomethodological tradition. Adopting a pragmatist perspective, we propose to treat phenomena as being composed of relations; that is, as being constituted by passing through various things and beings. Extending Latour’s work on modernity, we argue that interaction analysts aim to capture social phenomena at the junction between two modes of existence or two manners of passing through others. In the mode of subsistence, social phenomena are (re)produced by continuously passing through new elements. In the mode of reference, social phenomena sustain themselves by going back and forth between various inscriptions. Based on a case study, we show how the movement of subsistence always eludes that of reference, and how analysts can only move along with this movement by limiting their corroboration techniques, both in number and in range. Thus, this paper makes an important contribution to research on language and social interaction, as well as science and technology studies.

scholarly journals INCUBATOR Lab: Re-Imagining our Biotech Future Through Art / Science Research

Artnodes ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 76-84
Author(s):  
Jennifer Willet
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Creative Arts ◽  
Creation Process ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
Special Events ◽  
Teaching Facility

INCUBATOR: Hybrid Laboratory at the Intersection of Art, Science and Ecology, is a bioart research and teaching facility housed in the School of Creative Arts at University of Windsor in Canada. Founded in 2009 by Dr. Jennifer Willet, INCUBATOR houses ongoing student and faculty bioart projects, science and technology studies research, and special events investigating the intersection of biotechnology, art and ecology. This paper traces for readers the fundamental conceptual premise of INCUBATOR lab activities, the complex ecological entanglement between contemporary laboratory practices and our planetary ecology as a case study to elucidate the research/creation process at play within the lab.

scholarly journals ¿Distanciamiento social o distanciamiento de lo social? Un enfoque no antropocéntrico en antropología

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristian Terry
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Technology Studies

Los Estudios de Ciencia y Tecnología (Science and Technology Studies [STS]) y la Teoría del Actor-Red (Actor-Network Theory [ANT]), junto con la antropología “más allá de lo humano”, promueven un enfoque no antropocéntrico en las ciencias sociales, donde las entidades no humanas hacen parte del mundo social. Desde dicha perspectiva no antropocéntrica, este artículo tiene como objetivo cuestionar el uso de “distanciamiento social” como un término preciso, donde el calificativo “social” se asocia únicamente a seres humanos. Si el distanciamiento es un concepto clave para prevenir el contagio de COVID-19 entre seres humanos, sería más correcto hablar de distanciamiento físico o corporal. Al hablar de distanciamiento social, en realidad estamos distanciando lo social, reduciendo su complejidad, ya que está compuesto por entidades que no son necesariamente humanas o incluso visibles a nuestros ojos, como el nuevo coronavirus. Este artículo invita a buscar términos alternativos al concepto de “distanciamiento social” que nos permitan expresar mejor la complejidad de lo social de una manera menos antropocéntrica.

scholarly journals Writing Nature

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Asdal ◽  
Gro Birgit Ween
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Clear Cut

<div>This special issue of the Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies is interested in how nature, in different versions and forms, is invited into our studies, analyses, and stories. How is it that we “write nature”? How is it that we provide space for, and actually describe the actors, agents, or surroundings, in our stories and analyses? The articles in the issue each deal with different understandings of both the practices of writing and the introduction of various natures into these. In this introduction to the issue the editors engage with actor-network theory as a material semiotic resource  for writing nature. We propose to foreground actor-network theory as a writing tool, at the expense of actor-network theory as a distinct vocabulary. In doing this and pointing out the semiotic origins to material-semiotics we also want to  problematize a clear-cut material approach to writing nature.</div>

scholarly journals Trois regards sur la notion de « culture chinoise »

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-116
Author(s):  
Basile Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Interactional Expertise ◽  
General Argument ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Chinese Studies

Abstract Chinese studies are going through a period of reforms. This article appraises what could constitute the theoretical and methodological foundations of contemporary sinology today. The author suggests an approach of “Chinese culture” by drawing from recent frameworks of Science and Technology Studies (STS). The paper starts with current debates in Asian studies, followed by a historical overview of the concept of culture in anthropology. Then, two short case studies are presented with regard to two different STS approaches: studies of expertise and experience and the notion of interactional expertise, and the framework of waves and forms. A general argument is thereby sketched which suggests how “Chinese culture” can be understood from the perspective of materiality.

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