studies

This page point to salient works about domestic informatics, appliance design and usability.

It covers -

• introductions
• domestic informatics
• ideologies
• economics

     introductions

Andrew Odlyzko's 1999 article on The visible problems of the invisible computer: A skeptical look at information appliances is one of the more incisive studies of convergence. Donald Norman's The Invisible Computer (Cambridge: MIT Press 1998) is essential reading.

Michael Dertouzos' The Unfinished Revolution: Making Computers Human-Centric (New York: HarperBusiness 2001), Why Things Bite Back: Technology & the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (New York: Knopf 1996) by Edward Tenner and The Social Life of Information (Boston: Harvard Business School Press 2000) by John Seely Brown & Paul Duguid are also of significance.

     domestic informatics

Points of entry for literature on domestic informatics are Ian Miles' Home Informatics: Information Technology and the Transformation of Everyday Life (London: Pinter 1988), the 2001 US National Science Foundation study The Application and Implications of Information Technologies in the Home: Where are the Data and What Do They Say? and 2000 A Taxonomy of Internet Appliances (PDF) by Sharon Gillett, William Lehr, John Wroclawski & David Clark.

     ideologies

For ideology see Dolores Hayden's Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work and Family Life (New York: Norton 1984), Ruth Cowan's More Work for Mother: the ironies of household technology from the open hearth to the microwave (New York: Basic Books 1983), Priscilla Brewer's From fireplace to cookstove: technology and the domestic ideal in America (Syracuse: Syracuse Uni Press 2000) and Susan Strasser's Never done: a history of American housework (New York: Pantheon 1982) and David Nye's superb Electrifying America: social meanings of a new technology, 1880-1940 (Cambridge: MIT Press 1990), Mary Douglas' The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1979) and The Social Shaping of Technology: how the refrigerator got its hum (Milton Keynes: Open University Press 1985) edited by Donal MacKenzie & Judy Wajcman.

     economics

Industry imperatives are explored in Alfred Chandler's Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics & Computer Industries (New York: Free Press 2001), Christina Hardyment's From mangle to microwave: the mechanization of household work (Cambridge: Polity Press 1988) and Virginia Postrel's The Substance of Style (New York: HarperCollins 2003).

Devotees of the IETF RFC game will enjoy the 1998 Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol RFC (2324)

 

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