STS in theory: concepts of scale (by invitation)
Scale and scalability are defining features of many contemporary phenomena—from AI and its promise to offer “scalable solutions,” to the Anthropocene and its challenge to cut across differences. But what is scale and how do we study it? For STS scholar David Ribes, scale is a set of activities and techniques that are put to work by specific people in specific places to make a phenomena knowable and manageable as something that is “of scale,” whatever that scale may be. For Ribes and others, the challenge for the ethnographer is to identify and follow what he calls “scalar devices” — things like statistics, metrics, graphs, and even meeting agendas — to give the ethnographer a means to observe the meticulous labour of maintaining what are often large and distributed infrastructures. But scale extends beyond just proportion and size. There are spatial scales, temporal scales, scales of magnitude and impact, and scales of resolution. So what strategies are useful for following scale across this breadth of meaning? In this reading group workshop, we explore how concepts of scale are used in STS research. We will have guest speakers, pre-circulated readings, and plenty of time for discussion on how scales come to matter in our research and the concepts and methods we can use to grasp it.
*This workshop is by invitation only.
Presented by Thao Phan
Presented by Monash Emerging Technologies Research Lab and Centre of Excellence in Automated Decision Making + Society
Futures at the Edge symposium
This slow symposium discusses futures at/in/from the edge. It calls for a decentralising vision and asks how people, other species, environment and emerging technologies might live together in the as yet unknown, propelled by its edges.
Event Details
- Date:
- 5 December 2023 at 3:00 pm – 3:00 pm
- Venue:
- Building F, Level 6, Room 7, Monash Caulfield campus
Description
Scale and scalability are defining features of many contemporary phenomena—from AI and its promise to offer “scalable solutions,” to the Anthropocene and its challenge to cut across differences. But what is scale and how do we study it? For STS scholar David Ribes, scale is a set of activities and techniques that are put to work by specific people in specific places to make a phenomena knowable and manageable as something that is “of scale,” whatever that scale may be. For Ribes and others, the challenge for the ethnographer is to identify and follow what he calls “scalar devices” — things like statistics, metrics, graphs, and even meeting agendas — to give the ethnographer a means to observe the meticulous labour of maintaining what are often large and distributed infrastructures. But scale extends beyond just proportion and size. There are spatial scales, temporal scales, scales of magnitude and impact, and scales of resolution. So what strategies are useful for following scale across this breadth of meaning? In this reading group workshop, we explore how concepts of scale are used in STS research. We will have guest speakers, pre-circulated readings, and plenty of time for discussion on how scales come to matter in our research and the concepts and methods we can use to grasp it.
*This workshop is by invitation only.
Presented by Thao Phan
Presented by Monash Emerging Technologies Research Lab and Centre of Excellence in Automated Decision Making + Society
Futures at the Edge symposium
This slow symposium discusses futures at/in/from the edge. It calls for a decentralising vision and asks how people, other species, environment and emerging technologies might live together in the as yet unknown, propelled by its edges.