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I run a reading group on Theoretical Computer Science (TCS) + Science, Technology, & Society studies (STS). We’re welcoming to broadly TCS-adjacent folks who are STS-curious, as well as STS scholars who use that lens to study TCS-related topics. The focus for our readings is on STS that is relevant to those in TCS-adjacent fields. For the purposes of this group, the work done in these technical areas is seen as our main point of intervention, whether by internal or external critique (or a combination thereof). See our to-read list here.
If this intersection sounds like you, please reach out to zbell (at) berkeley (dot) edu !
A recommended ~2-year syllabus, if meeting on a monthly basis:
Epistemic virtues: Daston, Lorraine and Galison, Peter. "Objectivity" Ch. 1 "Epistemologies of the Eye", 3 "Mechanical Objectivity", 6 "Trained Judgement" (2010)
Intro to STS: Rouse, Joseph. “What Are Cultural Studies of Scientific Knowledge?” (1992) AND Eglash, Ron. “Multiple Objectivity: An Anti-Relativist Approach to Situated Knowledge” (2011) AND Law, John. “Material Semiotics” (2019)
Objectivity: Douglas, Heather. "The Irreducible Complexity of Objectivity" (2004) AND Daston, Lorraine and Galison, Peter. "Objectivity" Ch. 4 "The Scientific Self", 7 "Representation to Presentation" (2010)
Bureaucratic quantification: Porter, Theodore M. “Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life” (2020) AND Igo, Sarah E. "The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public" (2008)
Privacy policy: Mulligan, Deirdre K. and Koopman, Colin and DotyIgo, Nick. "Privacy is an Essentially Contested Concept: A Multi-Dimensional Analytic for Mapping Privacy" (2016) AND Sarah E. “The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America” (2020)
Standards: Star, Susan Leigh and Lapland, Martha. “Standards and Their Stories: How Quantifying, Classifying, and Formalizing Practices Shape Everyday Life” and especially the introduction “Reckoning with Standards” (2008)
Trust & mistrust: MacKenzie, Donald. "Mechanizing Proof: Computing, Risk, and Trust" (2001) AND Carey, Matthew. “Mistrust: An Ethnographic Theory” (2017)
Cryptographic digitization: Blanchette, Jean-François. “Burdens of Proof: Cryptographic Culture and Evidence Law in the Age of Electronic Documents” (2012)
Abstraction (modern): Steingart, Alma. “Axiomatics: Mathematical Thought and High Modernism” (2023)
Equations at work: Dryer, Theodora. “Settler Computing: Water Algorithms and the Equitable Apportionment Doctrine on the Colorado River, 1950–1990” (2023) AND MacKenzie, Donald. "An Equation and its Worlds: Bricolage, Exemplars, Disunity and Performativity in Financial Economics" (2003)
Abstraction (premodern): Latour, Bruno. "The Netz-Works of Greek Deductions" (2008) AND Netz, Reviel. "The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics: A Study in Cognitive History" (1999)
Mathematical purity & foundational anxiety: Massimo, Mazzotti. “Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity” (2023) or the abridged article “The Geometers of God: Mathematics and Reaction in the Kingdom of Naples” (1998) or book review “Foundational Anxieties, Modern Mathematics, and the Political Imagination” (2023)
Material cultures & pedagogic training: Mahoney, Michael. "The Mathematical Realm of Nature" (2008) AND Warwick, Andrew. “Masters of Theory" (2003)
Wittgenstein: Bloor, David. “Wittgenstein and Mannheim on the Sociology of Mathematics” (1973) AND Wittgenstein, Ludwig. “On Certainty” (1969) AND Bloor, David. "Wittgenstein, Rules and Institutions" (1997)
Rules & algorithms: Daston, Lorraine. “Rules: A Short History of What We Live By” (2022) AND Ames, Morgan and Mazzotti, Massimo. “Algorithmic Modernity: Mechanizing Thought and Action, 1500-2000” (2023)
Probability & statistics: Hacking, Ian. “The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference” (2013) AND MacKenzie, Donald. “Statistics in Britain, 1865-1930: The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge” (1981)
Statistics & machine learning: Jones, Matthew L. and Wiggins, Chris. “How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms” (2023) AND Joque, Justin. “Revolutionary Mathematics: Artificial Intelligence, Statistics and the Logic of Capitalism” (2022)
Cybernetics: Pickering, Andrew. “The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future” (2010) AND Medina, Eden. “Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile” (2011)
Numbers & algorithms: Lippert, Ingmar and Verran, Helen. “After Numbers? Innovations in Science and Technology Studies’ Analytics of Numbers and Numbering” (2018) AND Lippert, Ingmar. "On Not Muddling Lunches and Flights: Narrating a Number, Qualculation, and Ontologising Troubles" (2018) AND Kenney, Martha. "Counting, Accounting, and Accountability: Helen Verran's Relational Empiricism" (2015)
Trading zones: Galison, Peter. "Image and Logic" (1997) or the abridged article "Trading Zones: Coordinating Action and Belief" (1998)
Boundary work & boundary objects: Star, Susan Leigh. “This is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of a Concept” (2010) AND Gorman, Michael E. "Trading Zones and Interactional Expertise: Creating New Kinds of Collaboration" (2010)
Infrastructure & design: Star, Susan Leigh. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure” (1999) AND Suchman, Lucy. “Figuring Service in Discourses of ICT: The Case of Software Agents” (2003) AND Suchman, Lucy. “Practice-Based Design of Information Systems: Notes from the Hyperdeveloped World” (2011)
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