Info 435/635: Seminar on Applications of Information Science

Week 2: Computerization and the Social Nature of Economic Activity

The week beginning January 29 will be based around the colloquium to be given by Steve Sawyer from Penn State. See: http://www.infosci.cornell.edu/about/seminarSeries.html.

• Before the class on Monday, January 29 read the four papers listed below. We will discuss them during the class.
  
  
• Attend the colloquium on Wednesday, January 31.
  
  
• Write a short critique of one of the papers in light of the colloquium and send it by email to the course team (wya@cs.cornell.edu and Tracy.Mitrano@cornell.edu) by Saturday, February 3 at 11:00 p.m. See the Guidelines for Writing Paper Critiques. [Note the change of due date.]

The following papers were selected by Professor Sawyer:

• Bar, F. (2001), "The construction of marketplace architecture". In Tracking a Transformation: E-commerce and the Terms of Competition in Industries, The BRIE-IGCC Economy Project Task Force on the Internet, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 27-49. [readings/w2-bar.pdf]
  
  This paper theorizes on the nature of online activity by unpacking the metaphor of online markets.  It contrasts the architectures of on-line and traditional marketplaces.
  

• Sawyer, S. (2005), "Social Informatics: Principles and Opportunities," Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, June/ July, American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2-6.   http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Jun-05/sawyer.html.
  
  This paper is a simple summary of the social informatics perspective, a primer on the author's approach to scholarship.  It uses the Google library digitization project as example.
  

• Sawyer, S., Wigand, R. and Crowston, K. (2005), "Redefining Access: Uses and Roles of Information and Communications Technologies in the Residential Real Estate Industry from 1995-2005," Journal of Information Technology, 20(4), 3-14. [readings/w2-sawyer.pdf]
  
  This is a summative piece that is a good background to the talk.  For those who do not know much about buying/selling a house in the US, this has a summary that should be useful.
  

• Swedberg, R. (2003), Principles of Economic Sociology, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, Chapter 1. http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7525.html.
  
  This book chapter is a review of the bases and interests of economic sociology. Its scope is such that many readers will also benefit from the historical engagement of fundamentals of sociology and economic perspectives.  It introduces the roles that social relations play in the conduct of economic activity.
  

• Dutton, W. (2005), "The Internet and Social Transformation: Reconfiguring Access." In Dutton, W., Kahin, B., O’Callaghan, R. and Wykoff, A. Transforming Enterprise: Economic and Social Implications of Information Technology, 375-394, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [readings/w2-dutton.pdf]
  
  This is a theory-building piece on the implications of increased access to information.