1 Ravi Vatrapu Director, Computational Social Science Laboratory (CSSL) Associate Professor, Center for Applied ICT Copenhagen Business School Howitzvej 60, 2.10, Frederiksberg, DK-2000, Denmark Cultural Considerations in HIP Thursday, 31-March-2011 T14: Human Information Processing

Socio-Technical Interactions Vatrapu, R. (2010). Explaining Culture: An Outline of a Theory of Socio-Technical Interactions. Proceedings of the 3rd ACM International Conference on Intercultural Collaboration (ICIC 2010), August 2010, Copenhagen, Denmark.  Socio-Technical Systems involve:  Interacting with Technologies  Interacting with Others via Technologies  Interacting with Technologies  Perception of Affordances  Appropriation of Affordances  Interacting with Others via Technologies  Structures of Technological Intersubjectivity  Functions of Technological Intersubjectivity 2

A FFORDANCES  Cognitive Psychology  Subjectivity of Meaning: Interpretation  Internal Representations & External Representations  Minded Meaning: Symbolic/ Semantic  Mind : Brain :: Software : Hardware (Block, 1995)  “Copying in the world”  Ecological Psychology  Relationality of Meaning: “Direct Perception” of “Circumambient Arrays” (Gibson, 1979)  Affordanes: Action-Taking Possibilities and Meaning-Making Opportunities  Embodied Meaning: Informational/Pragmatic  Mind : Brain :: Action : Perception  “Coping with the world” Problem Logical Gap between Interpretive and Informational Theories of Meaning One Solution Bridge the gap by making Meaning Ecologically Cognitive 3

Affordances  From J.J. Gibson to Alva Noë  Norman’s introduction to HCI and the debate thereafter  Enactive Approach: Evolutionary Biology, Ecological Psychology, Consciousness Studies  Action-Taking Possibilities & Meaning-Making Opportunities  Two -Systems Hypothesis (Bridgeman, 2000)  Functionally Separate Visual Systems  Visual (Meaning-Making)  Visual Guidance of Behavior (Action-Taking) 4

2001: A Space Odyssey The ”greatest edit” ever 5

Affordances  From J.J. Gibson (1977, 1979) to Alva Noë (2004)  Norman’s (1988) introduction to HCI and the debate  Enactive Approach: Evolutionary Biology, Ecological Psychology, Consciousness Studies  Action-Taking Possibilities & Meaning-Making Opportunities  Two -Systems Hypothesis (Bridgeman, 2000)  Functionally Separate Visual Systems  Visual (Meaning-Making)  Visual Guidance of Behavior (Action-Taking) 6

Uptake in HCI  POET (Norman, 1988)  Types  Perceptible, Hidden, False (Gaver, 1991)  Physical, Sensory, Functional and Cognitive (Hartson, 2003)  Classes  Technology, Media, Interaction (Gaver, 1991, 1992, 1996)  Social (Bradner, 2001)  Perceived Affordance (Norman, 1999)  Review (McGrenere and Ho, 2000)  “We Can’t Afford it!” (Torenvliet, 2003) 7

Perception of Affordances  What do you perceive in a particular situation?  Ecological Information, Technological Mediation, Cultural Agency, “Demand Characteristics”(Orne, 1962)  Professional Vision (Goodwin, 1994)  Strong Argument  Differences are Incommensurable  Socio-Biological Explanation  Weak Argument  Acculturation, Assimilation, Accommodation  Socio-Cultural Explanation 8

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Appropriation of Affordances  Rogoff and Lave (1984): “cognition is something one uses, not something one has”  Not deterministic, actors can choose to enact socio- culturally appropriate actions in a given situation  Intentional utilization of affordances is culture- sensitive, context-dependent, & tool-specific  Eg: Coke Bottle in the movie Gods Must be Crazy 10

Gods Must be Crazy Please watch the movie or a ”youtube” clip for the ”appropriate of affordances” that ensues and the societal change that emerges 11

Socio-Technical Affordances Affordances are meaning-making opportunities and action-taking possibilities in an actor-environment system in a particular situation, relative to actor competencies and system capabilities  Ontological Foundations (Turvey, 1992)  Materialist  Dynamicist  Property Realist  Principle of Reciprocity—distinguishable yet mutually supportive realities 12

Intersubjectivity  Problem of Other Minds  Having vs. Knowing  Psychological as well as Phenomenological  Situational vs. Dispositional Attribution  Contact Hypothesis  Social consequences of connectivity augured by information and communication technologies  Time-Shifting  Place-Shifting 13

T ECHNOLOGICAL I NTERSUBJECTIVITY Production, Projection, and Performance of Intersubjectivity How actors interact with, relate to, and form impressions of each other 14 "Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge; Image used with permission.

Technological Intersubjectivity (TI)  Structures of TI  Configuration of the particular social relationship  Mother – Child  PhD Advisor – Student  Project Manager – Member  Dependent vs. Interdependent Conceptions of the Self  Functions of TI  Dynamics of the particular social relationship  Eg: proxemics, socio-linguistics, interactional patterns  Cultural Variation in Structures and Functions of TI 15

C ULTURE  Kroeber and Kluckhorn(1952)  Compilation of over 200 definitions of culture  Categorized into 6 distinct groups of definitions 16

C ULTURE AND B EHAVIOR 17 Cultural Dimension “West”“East” Social HierarchyLower Power DistanceHigher Power Distance Group CohesionHigher IndividualismHigher Collectivism Gender Egalitarianism High-ModerateModerate-Low Assertiveness HighLower (House et al., 2004)

C ULTURE AND C OMMUNICATION 18 Low-Context CommunicationHigh-Context Communication Informational EmphasisRelational Emphasis Effective SpeechPersuasive Speech Unambiguous Interpretation Sought Ambiguous Interpretation Tolerated Context is FunctionalContext is Structural (Hall, 1976)

C ULTURE AND C OGNITION 19 Cognitive Process“Westerners”“East-Asians” AttentionObjectField PerceptionObject-OrientedRelation-Oriented Causal InferenceDispositionalSituational Knowledge Organization Categorical RulesRelational Similarities ReasoningAnalyticalHolistic (Nisbett and Norenzayan,2002)

Culture and Computers Reeves and Nass’s (1996)“The Media Equation” Social aspects of human-computer interaction User Interface Design Usability Evaluation Web Design E-Commerce Information Systems Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Online Learning 20 Vatrapu, R. and Suthers, D. (2007). Culture and Computers: A Review of the Concept of Culture and Implications for Intercultural Collaborative Online Learning. In Ishida, T., Fussell, S.R. and Vossen, P.T.J.M. eds. Intercultural Collaboration I : Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag 2007,

C ULTURE AND CSCL 21 Vatrapu, R., & Suthers, D. (2010). Intra- and Inter-Cultural Usability in Computer Supported Collaboration. Journal of Usability Studies, 5(4), Vatrapu, R., & Suthers, D. (2010). Cultural Influences in Collaborative Information Sharing and Organization. Proceedings of the 3rd ACM International Conference on Intercultural Collaboration (ICIC 2010), Copenhagen, Denmark. Vatrapu, R., & Suthers, D. (2009). Is Representational Guidance Culturally Relative? Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Practices: CSCL2009 Conference Proceedings, Rhodes, Greece, pp Vatrapu, R. (2008). Cultural Considerations in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 3(2),

Formal Definition of Socio-Technical Affordance Let W = (T, S, O) be a socio-technical system (e.g., person-collaborating-with- another-person system) constituted by Technology T (e.g., collaboration software), Self-actor S, (e.g., artifact creator), and Other-actor O (e.g., artifact editor). Let p be a property of T; q be a property of S and r be a property of O. Let β be a relation between p, q and r, p/q/r. β defines a higher order property (i.e., a property of the socio-technical system). Then β is said to be a socio-technical affordance with respect to W if and only if: (i)W = (T,S,O) possesses β (ii)Neither T,S,O; (T, S); (T,O); (S,O) possesses β 22

Design Space of Affordance Classes 23 Affordance Classes Theoretical Sources PerceptualGestalt Theory of Perception NotationalCognitive Dimensions of Notations RepresentationalRepresentational Guidance MediaGrounding Constraints ConversationalConversation Analysis Socio-Cognitive and Socio-CulturalCulture Theory InteractionalEthnomethodology

Grounding Constraints 24 Grounding Constraints in Communication Clark, H. H., & Brennan, S. E. (1991). Grounding in communication. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition (pp ): American Psychological Association.

S OCIO -C OGNITIVE P ROPERTIES 25 Cognitive Process“Westerners”“Easterners” AttentionObjectField PerceptionObject-OrientedRelation-Oriented Causal InferenceDispositionalSituational Knowledge Organization Categorical RulesRelational Similarities ReasoningAnalyticalHolistic (Nisbett and Norenzayan,2002)

Future Work Computational Social Science Laboratory (CSSL) 26 Instrumentation, Instrumentation and Instrumentation  Actors  Eye-Tracking and Pupilometrics  Physiological Measures  Neuro-imaging?  Interactions  Screen-Recordings  Software Logs  Contexts  Ethnographic Observations

Future Analytical Work Contingency Graphs & Uptake Analysis (Suthers et al. 2010) 27

Q&A 28