Publications
The urban youth frequenting the Internet cafés of Accra, Ghana, who are decidedly not members of their country's elite, use the Internet largely as a way to orchestrate encounters across distance and amass foreign ties--activities once limited to the wealthy, university-educated classes. The Internet, accessed on second-hand computers (castoffs from the United States and Europe), has become…
This dissertation presents an empirical investigation of the role of mobile phones in Rwandan society and economy. The material draws on two summers of fieldwork in sub-Saharan Africa, several thousand interviews with mobile phone owners, and roughly ten terabytes of data on mobile phone use that was obtained from Rwanda's largest telecommunications operator.
I begin by analyzing the…
Information is increasingly hailed as a tool to achieve good governance. This dissertation challenges claims that naturalize the relationship between information and good governance. I argue that such claims are based on the reification of information as a well-defined object with intrinsic value and have shifted focus away from the relations, materials and practices in which information is…
This dissertation is concerned with two phenomena, race and computation, their emergence in modernity and their convergence today in our modern technological epoch. From the perspective of the traditional disciplines the concepts of race and computation are wholly incommensurable. Formally, race refers to a hierarchical taxonomic schema for classifying humans while computation refers to the…
The development and widespread use of Internet technologies and platforms that are grouped under the labels “Web 2.0” and “social media” have led to celebratory accounts of their potential as tools to unleash human creativity. A “creativity consensus” has emerged that describes a vision of creative production via these new platforms as universal, democratic, communal, non-commercial, and…
Many popular facets of live information, known collectively as communication technology, deliver ongoing, socially-relevant narrations of our world. Traditionally, different types of communication media were considered to be in competition, but recently they have been discovered to be complementary and synergistic. This paper will concentrate on the role, influence, and potential of the…
Great By Choice
Why some companies thrive in uncertainty and others do not.
Based on nine years of research, buttressed by rigorous analysis and infused with engaging stories, Jim Collins and Morten Hansen enumerate the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times.
With a team of more than twenty researchers,…
A succession of doctrines for enhancing cybersecurity has been advocated in the past, including prevention, risk management, and deterrence through accountability. None has proved effective. Proposals that are now being made view cybersecurity as a public good and adopt mechanisms inspired by those used for public health. This essay discusses the failings of previous doctrines and surveys the…
While the turn from traditional regulation to more collaborative, experimentalist, and flexible forms of governance has garnered significant academic focus, far less attention has been paid to the effects of such “New Governance” approaches on regulated firms’ understanding of the laws’ demands, and on the structures employed within business organizations to meet them. This article targets…
It's the second week of a six-week website redesign at a San Francisco design consultancy. The visiting researcher asks the senior interaction designer about his work. He responds, "Oh, I'm not doing any real work on the project anymore. I'm just showing up at client meetings and hand waving."
"Hand waving" is an apt name for what happens when designers meet with clients. To make…
Current scholarly understanding of information security regulation in the United States is limited. Several competing mechanisms exist, many of which are untested in the courts and before state regulators, and new mechanisms are being proposed on a regular basis.
Perhaps of even greater concern, the pace at which technology and threats change far outpaces the abilities of even the most…
Through essays contributed by leading experts and scholars, Deviant Globalization argues that far from being marginal, illicit activities are a fundamental part of globalization. Narcotrafficking, human trafficking, the organ trade, computer malware, transnational gangs are just as much artifacts of globalization as are CNN and McDonald’s, free trade and capital mobility, accessible air travel…
Among the first casebooks in the field, Software and Internet Law presents clear and incisive writing, milestone cases and legislation, and questions and problems that reflect the authors' extensive knowledge and classroom experience. Technical terms are defined in context to make the text accessible for students and professors with minimal background in technology, the software…
This ethnographic study of 22 diverse families in the San Francisco Bay Area provides a holistic account of parents' attitudes about their children's use of technology. We found that parents from different socioeconomic classes have different values and practices around technology use, and that those values and practices reflect structural differences in their everyday lives. Calling attention…
Digital media and technology have become culturally and economically powerful parts of contemporary middle-class American childhoods. Immersed in various forms of digital media as well as mobile and Web-based technologies, young people today appear to develop knowledge and skills through participation in media. This MacArthur Report examines the ways in which afterschool programs, libraries,…