[Book] An anthropology of futures and technology
This book examines emerging automated technologies and systems and the increasingly prominent roles that each plays in our lives and our imagined futures.
Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
Category Ethnography
Interviews in the social sciences – A Nature Reviews Methods Primer
In this Nature Reviews Method Primer, Eleanor Knott, Aliya Hamid Rao, Kate Summers & Chana Teeger off the London School of Economics focus on the stages and challenges of designing and conducting an interview project and analysing data from it, as well as strategies to overcome such challenges.
Ethnographic research in data centers
Data centers are destroying the natural world, writes anthropologist Steven Gonzalez Monserrate in Wired. But is the cloud an inherently unsustainable paradigm? He foresees three possible pathways for remaking the cloud into something more sustainable for future generations.
Perspectives on the value of ethnography in a future-focused world
In an uncertain world, the safe bet to futures is to explore, identify and invest in what will most likely not change.
An anthropologist on talking about the metaverse
How we describe the metaverse makes a difference – today’s words could shape tomorrow’s reality and who benefits from it
[Book] Everyday Automation
The first book to take an interdisciplinary and international approach to understanding how our everyday lives are being affected by automated decision-making.
[Book] Emerging Technologies / Life at the Edge of the Future
Emerging Technologies / Life at the Edge of the Future invites us to think forward from our present moment of planetary, public and everyday crisis, through the prism of emerging technologies.
[Book] Design Ethnography
This book advances the practice and theory of design ethnography. It presents a methodologically adventurous and conceptually robust approach to interventional and ethical research design, practice and engagement.
Special issue on machine anthropology
Bringing together a motley crew of social scientists and data scientists, the aim of this special theme issue of Big Data & Society is to explore what an integration or even fusion between anthropology and data science might look like.
Three interviews on UX research and anthropology
The Response-ability Summit, formerly known as the Anthropology + Technology Conference, is a unique two-day event that brings social scientists and technologists together to foster interdisciplinary conversations on the important topic of socially-responsible tech.
[Book] Prototype Nation
A vivid look at China’s shifting place in the global political economy of technology production by ethnographer Silvia M. Lindtner
[Book] Experiments of the Mind
An inside view of the experimental practices of cognitive psychology—and their influence on the addictive nature of social media
Designing for new forms of governance
ToNite project presented at Milan conference on design-led approaches to renewing public management and governance
An ethnographic study of Eindhoven’s Smart City project
This article explore the promises of security that are embedded in the smart city technologies and algorithms and their potential implications for creating social inequality and discrimination, through an ethnographic study of the Living Lab Stratumseind, a popular nightlife street in Eindhoven.
An anthropologist on Facebook’s new “Ray-Ban Stories” glasses
With this product, writes anthropologist Sally Applin in MIT's Technology Review, "Facebook is claiming the face as real estate for its own technology."
Top 10 books of everyday social anthropology
Gillian Tett, anthropologist and chair of the US editorial board of the Financial Times, has published - in the Guardian - her list of 10 books offering insights into how we structure our lives.
Anthro-Vision: a new way to see in business and life
If there’s one simple message for the general reader in her new book Anthro-Vision it is this: the promise and value of anthropology lies in making visible that which is close to hand but ignored. It offers a means to see the world differently.
Heidi Larson, vaccine anthropologist
Heidi Larson studies vaccine rumors—how they start, and why some flourish and others wither. Tackling misperceptions individually is like eliminating a single microbial strain: when one germ is gone, another will bloom. Instead, the entire ecosystem must be rehabilitated.
The human error of Artificial Intelligence
Rather than trying to fix the biases of AI systems and their human error, we need to find ways to coexist with it. Anthropology can help us a lot here.
The human factor — why data is not enough to understand the world
In a world shaped by one AI, artificial intelligence, we need a second AI, too — anthropology intelligence, writes Gillian Tett in the Financial Times.