October 2017

Cultural October

The Lab is up to speed having welcomed 11 new Junior Researchers for the next season that overlaps the fall 17 and spring 18 semesters! We are also lucky to have a few volunteers enrolled!

The Junior researchers recently gave their first presentations to a number of affiliated researchers for a 'pitch & play' session kicking off their projects. We are thrilled that there is a diversity in both students, interests and types of projects. Some students are doing their Junior Researcher projects as extra curricular activities according to their interests, other are doing their MSc thesis, a 7,5 ECTS project or a pilot project to prepare for their thesis sprint.

This week, we are delighted that Professors Lucy Suchman and Andrew Clement are visiting the Technologies in Practice (TiP) Research Group. Professor Suchman has agreed to a short session in the ETHOS Lab with students and she will also be giving a Public talk on The Fantasy of Social Robots on Friday, October 6, in Aud 4 - read more below.

Deriving from a need and a request from the DIM students, we are also launching a 6 week study group on Python and a workshop on ShareLatex. Last week we had a successful workshop on Zotero and if you missed it, you can sign up and we will inform you of the next one in November.

The lab was crowded for Requiem of a Spacecraft event celebrating the final moment where the Cassini satellite lost its signal to NASA and ended its life evaporating into Saturn stardust. This moment was significant in several ways, particularly for co-head of lab Marisa Cohn sharing her ethnographic research and insights on the mission. The lab was transformed into a mission control center showing #grandfinale and #cassini hashtag visualisations, live-streams, satellite real time data and co-head of lab Rachel Douglas-Jones shared how this moment in research marked important ties to the Data As Relation sub-projects.

If you missed the Requiem of a Spacecraft event, then you have a chance of re-visiting the mission control center that will be set up for Kulturnatten 2017 (Culture Night) at the IT University on Friday, October 13. For Culture Night, ETHOS Lab will also be launching the 'Googlification Bubble' allowing visitors to enter a physical thought bubble setting the scene for interacting with the Google Home device. This is an experiment of reflecting on what it means to invite these devices and the embedded politics into people's homes and lives. Our other digital assistant Alexa, will also be hosting sessions where visitors can interact and play games, getting a taste of the digital home and the capabilities of these assistants facilitating social group interaction. Everyone is welcome to come and try out our 3 installations and be part of the experiment.

Shut up & Write sessions for students recently launched, are popular especially among MSc thesis students working solo. We are now a fairly consistent group meeting up every Thursday from 9:30-11:30. Register here and get the invitations - it is open to everyone and you do not have to attend every week. We also have one for researchers every Wednesday afternoon - contact us for details.

A Call for application for a methods workshop is now official with a deadline of 1st December. The workshop 'Participant Observation and Collaboration in STS Ethnography: Generating Methodographic Sensibilities for Science and Technology Studies' will take place in Berlin from April 12-14 2018 in collaboration with the STS Lab at Humboldt University in Berlin.

On the blog, we are featuring two new posts by Junior Researcher from Spring 2017. Dana Yu, is giving us a really interesting insight into her project on automated facial recognition and the related concerns in her blog post 'Your face is average. According to that guy'.
Silja Vase and Alona Vibe Vestergaard Andersen have written the blog post asking 'Can Speech Recognition Contribute to Danish Municipalities? Their project was revolving around the speech recognition software from Mirsk being implemented as a pilot into municipality work practices. Have a read and look out for more blog posts in the coming seasons from our other Junior Researchers.

Stay tuned on our Facebook page, Twitter and ReadIT for information about upcoming activities and contact us if you have any great ideas for lab involvement.

All the best,

ETHOS Lab

Cæcilie Laursen - What is a data sprint?

ETHOS Lab @Kulturnatten

On Friday October 13, from 18:00-23:00 The IT University is opening their doors to visitors exploring the Culture Night in Copenhagen. The ETHOS Lab team is presenting several installations that visitors can explore.

A bubble tent 'Googlification' will set the scene for interacting with our Google Home device by solving specific tasks, or having an exploratory voice recognition chat

The lab's Alexa device will also be inviting people into the living room simulator for game challenge or a chat about artificial life inviting visitors to reflect on what we install in our homes and how everyday technological companions shape our lives.

CASSINI MISSION CONTROL is a room presenting the life of a satellite circling Saturn and its temporal relations with sending data from the universe to Earth. This installation is inspired by Associate Professor Marisa Cohn's ethnographic research on the Cassini mission that recently ended on September 15, 2017.

When: Friday, October 13 from 18:00-23:00
Where: IT University, Atrium

Teaching: ShareLatex

We are offering a new workshop, and for some people, a new tool for academic practices. Tired of Microsoft word's limited editing and collaborative possibilities?

Many students and researchers are already using the free software package Latex for managing and editing papers and articles. If you want to explore these advantages, then what better way, than to spend a Friday afternoon on an informal introductory course to ShareLatex?

When: Friday, October 27, 14:30-16:30
Where: ITU
Register here

Research: Visit & Public Talk by Professor Suchman

This week, Lucy Suchman, Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology at Lancaster University is visiting the Tip Research Group. Friday, October 6, Professor Suchman will give a Public talk with the title ‘The Fantasy of Social Robots: Reconfiguring the future of care technologies’.

The talk will provide a critical examination of the notion that the future of care-giving lies in a technological solution in the form of human like machines, and offers an alternative approach to design with/for elderly adults care.

Junior Researcher at the ETHOS Lab have the opportunity to join a group session with Professor Suchman on Thursday, October 5, in the afternoon. The session is dedicated to getting brief feedback on a particular part of your Junior Researcher project.

When/Where:

- Group session in ETHOS Lab (1C05) for Junior Researcher on Thursday 5 October, in the afternoon. Please e-mail Marie Blønd for sign-up.

- Public talk on Friday Oct 6, 13:00- 15:00 in Aud 4

Services: Python Study Group

Students have requested the start-up of a Python Study Group and we can now announce the start-date on Thursday, October 26 from 18:30-20:30!

For 6 weeks we will meeting up and following a Python Introduction. To participate, there are no requirements of previous experience or skill-level. We may create subgroups divided by interests/tracks and a few experienced Python coders will be present to guide everyone. The ecology for this study group is to build a learning community of collective efforts and support.

Remember to sign up and get the details on e-mail when we get closer to the start date.

When: Every Thursday from October 26 to November 30. We meet from 18:30-20:30

Register here

Blog: Speech Recognition in Danish Municipalities

ETHOS Lab’s Junior Researchers for Spring 2017, Silja Vase and Alona Vibe, present a blog post on their research done in Danish Municipalities. Focus of their research is Speech Recognition Technology and its implementation in the public sector.

Read more on how Speech Recognition Technology affects the relationship between the citizens and the municipality in the full blog article here.

Blog post by Dana Marie Yu

Your face is average. According to that guy. This is a blog post written by Dana Marie Yu. Dana was a Junior Researcher in ETHOS Lab in the spring semester 2017. She is on the MSc in Software Development programme at the ITU and during the fall of 2017 she is studying abroad in Japan. Your adolescent self can kindly …

Other News

• Call for papers 'Participant Observation and Collaboration in STS Ethnography: Generating Methodographic Sensibilities for Science and Technology Studies'. It will take place in Berlin from April 12-14 2018 in collaboration with the STS Lab at Humboldt University in Berlin. Deadline December 1. All workshop applicants are expected to also submit a revised paper for the organisers’ event at the upcoming EASST conference in Lancaster, UK (25-28th July 2018). The revised papers are intended for a future special issue, guest-edited by the workshop organisers.

• Videos from former PublicETHOS events

• Opening hours are Tuesday and Thursday at 12.30-16. We are closed from 11-23 October due to Autumn holidays. You can always send us an email and we will respond asap.