ICS 131: Social Analysis of Computerization

Lecture 3:

Identifying and analyzing

social issues

Key Ideas

• Technical content operates in a

non-technical context.

• Social context is central to technology.

Identify Social Issues

• Goals of Project

• Assumptions

• Stakeholders

• Impacts

Goals of Project

• Why do it?

• Who’s deciding?

Example: Blog software

• Goals– Online journal– Rapid sharing of information– Easy to start up and use– Others

• Who’s deciding?– Coders

Assumptions

• Something that must be true in order for the rest of the discussion to be relevant.

• Implicit -> explicit

• Pre-conditions (make it possible) vs. post-conditions (make it relevant)

• Degree of importance/relevance (e.g., the Earth isn’t going to stop spinning)

Example: Blog software

• Assumptions– Pre-conditions

• Common technology.

• Networked computers.

• Freedom of speech.

• Technically feasible.

– Post-conditions• Someone uses it.

• Interested readers.

– Others…

Stakeholders

• Designer

• Client

• Society

• Others…

Example: Blog software

• Stakeholders:– Software Designers– Bloggers and potential bloggers– Readers– Society as a whole– Politicians– Businesses

Stakeholders

• What do we know about them?– Backgrounds– Goals/Motivations– Preferences/Needs

Example: Blog software

• Stakeholder - Readers:– Background:

• Technically competent

• Interested in topic

– Goals/Motivations:• Keep up with events

• Keep up with friends

– Preferences/Needs:• Seeking information

• Ease of use

Impacts

• Intended - What does it do for the client when it operates correctly?

• Side effects - What else does it do?

• Externalities - Side effect to someone other than the intended client.

Example: Blog software

• Impacts: Intended– Lets a blogger tell his/her friends what their cat

ate for dinner, or who they’re going to vote for and why.

– Lets a reader find out about their friends and see what other people think.

Example: Blog software

• Impacts: Side Effects– Makes bloggers famous– Gets the word “blog” in Merriam-Webster’s

dictionary

Example: Blog software

• Impacts: Externalities– Changes to political landscape.

• Howard Dean– Campaign greatly helped by

grassroots blogging.

– Until that fateful scream.

– Others?

Example: Camera

• Imagine that someone invents a small, self-contained, wireless, web camera, and asks you to write software to allow anyone on the net to see what that camera sees in real time.

• Questions:– What are the goals?– What are the assumptions?– Who are the stakeholders?– What are the impacts?

Reading

• Herbert Simon– Economics, computer science, psychology,

design

• Definition of design– “Everyone designs who devises courses of

action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” (1969)

Software Design

• Understand existing situations

• Conceive of preferred ones– Preferred by whom?

A Note on Readings

• You may need a dictionary.• Terms I looked up the first time I read this:

– Club of Rome - global think tank– Externalities - defined earlier– Bounded rationality

• Rational - “acts in pursuit of its goals”• Bounded - “experience limits in formulating and solving

complex problems and in processing (receiving, storing, retrieving, transmitting) information” (Simon)

– Desideratum - “something desired as essential”

Discussion

• Process– Questions– Talk about them with neighbors– Several people called up to the front to answer

them and discuss.

Slashdot

• Summarize

• Who are the stakeholders?

• What are the impacts?

And our lucky contestants are...

…come on down front!

ALLISON, RYAN KEVIN

DIGIUSEPPE, NICHOLAS

MILLER, ERIC BRANDON

MUNGUIA, EDWIN IGNACIO

SALANGA, JEREMY PATRICK

VASANDANI, SANJAY LAL

WEN, TIMOTHY

ZAVALETA, RODRIGO

DANIEL, JOHN MICHAEL

FURUYAMA, DARYL SEIICHI

HOSSEINY, SARA

Next class

• Thursday

• Social Aspects of Technical Questions I