This Week's Thought Questions

This week's questions are lined with synthesis. Good night and good luck! I have included the work of Donald Rumsfeld in case you feel confused or frustrated.

1. Sheppard’s and Bowker’s works are not divergent. Within the chapters read (and moreso without the chapters read,) the theme of categorical knowledge is thematically paraded. In Sheppard’s work (early on) we read that we have knowledge types, linear models, novice versus expert, component theory, and more. In Bowker’s work we see classification treated as a construct that brings order, value,(and perhaps even sanity). Please reflect upon both works from categorical point of view and address similarities between the two using language and structures from previous design-focused readings. Use succinct arguments from the reading to support your conjectures. (Ex. A starting point could be Bowker’s distinction of standards vs. classifications and how Sheppard lists items ad nauseum that could be one, the other, or both. One could then discuss Dorst’s or Giery’s or others’ work and the relationship between Dorst’s/Giery’s/others’ parameterizations as a new, thematic operationalizational (yes that is a word) lens upon which to refocus what one dissected from his/her’s treatment of Bowker/Sheppard).

2. Bowker speaks about the “cases” (p.10) that do not “fit.” Please reflect upon the classification and standardization processes as proscribed by Bowker using language and themes from Koen and Jonassen and give concrete examples of violations of both using the concept of a standard or classification that does not “fit” the standard or classification schema to which they (supposedly) belong. (Ex. One could, for instance, dissemble the later part of Bowker’s treatise and give examples of the macroscopic-to-microscopic classification problems in his or her particular line of work. One could then note when such a processes violate Bowker’s examples).

3. In light of earlier reading (Mann report and etc,) please reflect upon the later chapters in Sheppard’s work in using terms from Bowker’s work on classifications to illustrate where the needs of supposed stakeholders have led engineering education down the “primrose path to the everlasting bonfire,” so-to-speak. Feel free to expound upon the misclassification of stakeholders and how such issues have deleterious effects in engineering education. (Ex., I would mercilessly poach the current and historical relationship between industry and the Academy using the semantic differences between classification and standards, and note how these issues eventually lead to substandard engineers and engineering teaching practices at the college level and beyond).

4. Consider Bowker’s notes on classification schemas and the properties they add or detract from a subject, then reflect upon the observations of Latour and how Latour’s subjects added or subtracted value within their environment using classification or a lack thereof. Please be critical of not only Bowker’s writing but also of Latour’s methods or assumptions. (Ex. I would definitely make use of the difference between participant and withdrawn ethnography, take apart one or two of Latour’s conjectures, and then use see where that line of thinking overlaps with Bowker’s work).