1. 102/06/2016 Making and Doing: Critical and Cross- Disciplinary Engagement within Interdisciplinary iSchools iSchool @ University of Toronto Matt Ratto, Andrew Clement, Stephen Hockema, Kelly Lyons, David Phillips iSchool@UofT

2. 202/06/2016 The iSchool @ utoronto 20 full-time faculty and growing ~450 students, ~40 PhD DEGREES Master of Information (MI) MMSt PhD Collaborative Programs* Part-time & Flex-time available AREAS OF STUDY Archives & Records Management Critical Information Studies Cultural Heritage Information Systems and Design Knowledge and Information Management Library and Information Science Museum Studies *Collaborative Programs in: knowledge media design; book history & print culture; environmental studies; identity, privacy & security; sexual diversity studies; women and gender studies Information People Technology

3. 302/06/2016 Who are We? David Phillips studies the political economy and social shaping of information and communication technologies, especially technologies of surveillance and identification. Andrew Clement studies the social implications of information technology and human-centred systems and is currently focusing on public interest information policies. Stephen Hockema studies information evaluation, credibility and authority in online communities. His research is motivated by a commitment to Open Source and Open Access as core values. Kelly Lyons studies service science, social computing, data management, and business intelligence. Matt Ratto studies how designers, scholars, and technologists use material practices of "making" to conceptualize and express knowledge about the world.

4. 402/06/2016 Making and Doing iSchools are multidisciplinary Diversity is an asset and a challenge Crossing boundaries between technical work and reflexive critical scholarship Making and doing

5. 502/06/2016 Critical Making Use modes of material engagement in shared spaces to extend critical reflexive thinking Connect design methodologies to critical information studies Make things together in order to think and conceptualize together Meta-level: How does material engagement provide resources for conceptual exploration? Practices, pedagogies, theories

6. 602/06/2016 The Arduino: Hardware Open source hardware micro-controller Uses “simplified” C Includes IDE, one click compile and upload Used by artists and experimenters Large community of co-developers http://arduino.cc

7. 702/06/2016 The Flwr Project Linking critical social theory with physical experiment Reductive process Material engagement Individual physical agents: “Talk” to each other within network Configure them to talk more or listen more Maps to different ways of thinking about communication

8. 802/06/2016 The Flwr Project Stupid Social Theory Badly Modeled Concept Elaboration – Not Hypothesis Testing

9. 902/06/2016 Concept Elaboration Gift economy (or not) Information commons (or not) Information neighbourhoods (or not)

10. 1002/06/2016 Why Physical Agents?

11. 1102/06/2016 Why Physical Agents? Stupid social theory badly modeled New ways of thinking about social theory We have a relationship with what we make Come together around unfamiliar objects Define different interaction among objects

12. 1202/06/2016 The Mechanics We all start with different patterns Start with energy level 1000 We each live in a loop (cost = 2) transmit pattern once (cost = 10) listen once *maybe* receive pattern (gain = 1) *maybe* use pattern (gain = 8) wait for some time repeat

13. 1302/06/2016 The Patterns 1. white, red, green, blue, stop, repeat 2. red, green, blue, stop, repeat 3. white, stop, repeat 4. red, stop, repeat 5. green, stop, repeat 6. blue, stop, repeat 7. cyan, stop, repeat 8. magenta, stop, repeat 9. yellow, stop, repeat 10. stop 11. red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta, repeat 12. random 13. candle 14. water 15. oldNeon 16. season 17. thunderstorm 18. stoplight 19. SOS

14. 1402/06/2016 //--------------------------------------------------------- // The following are things participants might change #define BLINKM_ARDUINO_POWERED 1 // Change 0 to 1 if plugging blinkM directly into arduino int g_ListenMSecs =1000; // Number of milliseconds during which to listen for patterns from other flowers int g_TransmitTimes = 5; // Number of times current pattern will be transmitted per listen phase int g_DelayMSecs = 100; // Number of milliseconds to wait between listen/transmission int g_MyPattern = 17; // STARTING pattern number to display (number between 0 and 18) int g_CurrentEnergyLevel = 1000; // STARTING energy level. (When it reaches 0, you die.) int g_EnergyCostPerLoop = 2; // Cost of living. int g_EnergyCostPerTransmission = 10; // Cost of talking. int g_EnergyGainPerMsgReceived = 1; // Benefit of listening. int g_EnergyGainPerMsgAffectedBy = 8; // Benefit of active listening. // Specify the way to modify my pattern when I receive another pattern void combinePats(int rcvdPattern) { //g_MyPattern ^= rcvdPattern; // bitwise XOR (~add) the patterns return combinePats_GiftEconomy(rcvdPattern); //return combinePats_InfoCommons(rcvdPattern); //return combinePats_InfoNeighborhood(rcvdPattern); } // combinePats()

15. 1502/06/2016 Gift Economy Use every pattern you receive You give gifts, you are dependent on others to get gifts back Reciprocity Everyone has to give Value from exchange Community lives if we all give Eventually we all die

16. 1602/06/2016 Info Commons Use only patterns you do not currently have Maintain difference as long as possible When we are all the same, we die Value from difference Community lives if we all give Eventually we all die

17. 1702/06/2016 Interdisciplinary Engagement Explore together Better understand our colleagues’ ideas Share our concept elaborations with each other Address social, cultural, political, technological questions