The Technologies in Practice (TiP) research group at the ITU is happy to present Professor of Media, Culture and Environment in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, Jennifer Gabrys, as our next speaker in our TiP Talk Speaker Series.
Details
Title: How to Do Things with Sensors
When and where: Thursday, 22nd of November 2018, 10.00-12.00 in aud. 4
No registration is needed.
Abstract
Sensors, and the increasing use of these devices for citizen-sensing projects, are 
part of a wider movement toward the how-to and the do-it-yourself. From YouTube videos providing instruction on how to troubleshoot the use of microcontrollers, to handbooks for using and abusing sensors and the Internet of Things, to forums and Instructables for programming sensors, the how-to genres and formats of digital instruction continue to expand and develop. How-to guides and instructions are integral to computation, and increasingly also are central to the formatting of social and political practices. As the how-to proliferates, and instructions unfold through every aspect of the computational, it would seem worthwhile to ask why the how-to has become one of the prevailing genres of the digital. Why the guide, why now, why in this format? This talk will explore the ways in which things are made do-able with and through sensors. It further considers how worlds are made sense-able and actionable through the instructional mode of citizen-sensing projects.
Bio
Jennifer Gabrys is Professor of Media, Culture and Environment in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, and Visiting Professor in 
the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is Principal Investigator on the projects Citizen Sense and AirKit, both funded by the European Research Council. She is author of Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet (2016); and Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics (2011), and co-editor of Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic (Routledge, 2013). Her work can be found at citizensense.net and jennifergabrys.net
TiP Talks – a series of talks
The Technologies in Practice research group at the ITU is the organizer behind this series of talks, “TiP Talks”, where we have invited academically distinguished speakers to ITU to share their research, which we consider as being of inspiration for academics who are interested in qualitative studies of technologically mediated practices in organizations.
This is talk is open for everyone, but the content is intended for an academic audience as it builds upon previous research.