Contact: Bonnie Nardi

There is a strong need to find new ways to think about the social and cultural changes that come with new technologies. Our limited ability to predict change coupled with enormous human creativity has led to a situation of instability in which systemic effects of technological change can only be responded to after the fact, such as pollution from wireless devices. New political and social forms are needed. Movements such as green design, life cycle analysis, and cradle to cradle design address some problems and can be applied to digital technologies. Social changes are more difficult to characterize and require better theorizing. One of my interests is in what I call "placeless organizations" which are distributed groups dedicated to transforming practice. In the modern context they inevitably make use of computer-mediated communication as they attempt to "co-construct," in activity theory terms, the way things are done. Examples of placeless organizations are Open Source software development projects, Doctors without Borders, the World Trade Organization, and transformations in scientific disciplines from "small science" to "big science". Understanding how placeless organizations are effective with relatively few people is a current focus of my research.