Ethnocomputing

Ethnocomputing is the study of the interactions between computing and culture. It is carried out through theoretical analysis, empirical investigation, and design implementation. It includes research on the impact of computing on society, as well as the reverse: how cultural, historical, personal, and societal origins and surroundings cause and affect the innovation, development, diffusion, maintenance, and appropriation of computational artifacts or ideas. From the ethnocomputing perspective, no computational technology is culturally "neutral," and no cultural practice is a computational void. Instead of considering culture to be a hindrance for software engineering, culture should be seen as a resource for innovation and design.

Subject matter

Social categories for ethnocomputing include:

Indigenous computing: In some cases, ethnocomputing "translates" from indigenous culture to high tech frameworks: for example, analyzing the African board game Owari as a one-dimensional cellular automaton.
Social/historical studies of computing: In other cases ethnocomputing seeks to identify the social, cultural, historical, or personal dimensions of high tech computational ideas and artifacts: for example, the relationship between the Turing Test and Alan Turing's closeted gay identity.
Appropriation in computing: lay persons who did not participate in the original design of a computing system can still affect it by modifying its interpretation, use, or structure. Such "modding" may be as subtle as the key board character "emoticons" created through lay use of email, or as blatant as the stylized customization of computer cases.
Equity tools: a software "Applications Quest" has been developed for generating a "diversity index" that allows consideration of multiple identity characteristics in college admissions.

Technical categories in ethnocomputing include:

Organized structures and models used to represent information (data structures)
Ways of manipulating the organized information (algorithms)
Linguistic realizations of computation (theories of computation)
Mechanical realizations of computation (computational tools)
User interfaces
Internationalization and localization
Cultural HCI
Uses of computational tools (uses)
Ethnotechnology

Origins

Ethnocomputing has its origins in ethnomathematics. There are a large number of studies in ethnomathematics that could be considered ethnocomputing as well (e.g., Eglash (1999) and Ascher & Ascher (1981)). The idea of a separate field was introduced in 1992 by Anthony Petrillo in Responsive Evaluation of Mathematics Education in a Community of Jos, Nigeria, Dissertation (Ph.D.): State University of New York at Buffalo, which Petrillo elaborated a bit more on in March 1994, Ethnocomputers in Nigerian Computer Education, paper presented at the 31st Annual Conference of the Mathematical Association of Nigeria. Just like computer science is nowadays considered to be a field of research distinct from mathematics, ethnocomputing is considered to be a research topic distinct from ethnomathematics. Some aspects of ethnocomputing that have their roots in ethnomathematics are listed below:

Counting and sorting: The use of a systematic way to compare and order discrete objects
Locating: Exploring one's spatial environment and conceptualizing and symbolizing that environment with models, maps, drawings, and other devices
Measuring: Quantifying qualities like length and weight for the purposes of, for instance, comparing, classifying, or ordering objects
Designing: Applying formal or non-formal algorithmic or computational ideas in arts or design
Playing: Devising and engaging in games and pastimes with more or less formalized rules that all players must abide by
Explaining: Finding systematic ways to represent phenomena or the relationships between phenomena

External links

Applications Quest Juan Gilbert's tool for diversity in college admissions
AADMLSS The African-American Distributed Multiple Learning Styles System
CSDT Culturally Situated Design Tools
Engineering with Social Metaphors A one day theme of the "Socially Inspired Computing Symposium," University of Hertfordshire, April 2005.
Ron Eglash: The fractals at the heart of African designs TED Talk

Ethnicity

Related concepts

Ethnology

Groups by region

Africa Europe Oceania	Arab League Europe Australian indigenous Indigenous Oceanian Europeans in Oceania

Americas	Indigenous Canada Mexico United States Central America South America

Asia	Central East Northern South Southeast West

Identity and
ethnogenesis

Multiethnic society

Ideology and
ethnic conflict

Major fields of computer science

Note: This template roughly follows the 2012 ACM Computing classification.

Hardware	Printed circuit board Peripheral Integrated circuit Very-large-scale integration Energy consumption Electronic design automation

Computer systems organization	Computer architecture Embedded system Real-time computing Dependability

Networks	Network architecture Network protocol Network components Network scheduler Network performance evaluation Network service

Software organization	Interpreter Middleware Virtual machine Operating system Software quality

Software notations and tools	Programming paradigm Programming language Compiler Domain-specific language Modeling language Software framework Integrated development environment Software configuration management Software library Software repository

Software development	Software development process Requirements analysis Software design Software construction Software deployment Software maintenance Programming team Open-source model

Theory of computation	Model of computation Formal language Automata theory Computational complexity theory Logic Semantics

Algorithms	Algorithm design Analysis of algorithms Randomized algorithm Computational geometry

Mathematics of computing	Discrete mathematics Probability Statistics Mathematical software Information theory Mathematical analysis Numerical analysis

Information systems	Database management system Information storage systems Enterprise information system Social information systems Geographic information system Decision support system Process control system Multimedia information system Data mining Digital library Computing platform Digital marketing World Wide Web Information retrieval

Security	Cryptography Formal methods Security services Intrusion detection system Hardware security Network security Information security Application security

Human–computer interaction	Interaction design Social computing Ubiquitous computing Visualization Accessibility

Concurrency	Concurrent computing Parallel computing Distributed computing Multithreading Multiprocessing

Artificial intelligence	Natural language processing Knowledge representation and reasoning Computer vision Automated planning and scheduling Search methodology Control method Philosophy of artificial intelligence Distributed artificial intelligence

Machine learning	Supervised learning Unsupervised learning Reinforcement learning Multi-task learning Machine learning algorithms Cross-validation

Graphics	Animation Rendering Image manipulation Graphics processing unit Mixed reality Virtual reality Image compression Solid modeling

Applied computing	E-commerce Enterprise software Computational mathematics Computational physics Computational chemistry Computational biology Computational social science Computational engineering Computational healthcare Digital art Electronic publishing Cyberwarfare Electronic voting Video game Word processing Operations research Educational technology Document management

Computer science portal

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Ethnocomputing

Subject matter

Origins

Further reading

External links