All Episodes
Displaying episodes 31 - 48 of 48 in total
E17: James C. Scott’s /Seeing Like a State/, part one
An introduction to the core ideas of Scott's /Seeing Like a State/. Three examples. Nothing about software yet.
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Interview: Glenn Vanderburg on engineering
In episode 12, I used the chapter in /Image and Logic/ about Monte Carlo methods to argue that analogies of software development to engineering are not helpful. Glenn ...
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Interview: Mark Seemann on /Blindsight/ and /Thinking, Fast and Slow/
How two books influenced Danish software designer Mark Seemann to get the non-rational part of his brain working on his side.
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BONUS: Lord, preserve us from totalizing systems
Why *are* teams stuck in hierarchical and commercial exchange economies, when they'd be happier and just as productive if the example of the previous episode were the ...
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David Graeber’s three kinds of economies
David Graeber claims every society contains a mixture of variations on three types of economies: hierarchy, exchange, and "baseline communism". The context for softwar...
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David Graeber, gift economies, and open source projects
An introduction to gift economies, based on the writings of anthropologist David Graeber. A critique of Eric Raymond's "Homesteading the Noosphere", which – I claim – ...
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Analogies in and around /Image and Logic/
A comparison of how Monte Carlo analogies and software analogies played out. Plus: a suggestion that Galison's "trading zone" analogy in /Image and Logic/ has an impor...
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Mini-episode: What does Galison mean by “tradition”?
Galison's definition of a scientific tradition is continuity over time of skills and technology, people, and standards of evidence. How does that apply to software? So...
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Mini-episode: Galison doubts Kuhn’s idea of scientific revolutions
A brief episode. Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book /The Structure of Scientific Revolutions/ was enormously influential. In /Image and Logic/, Galison argues that Kuhn was wrong...
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Galison’s /Image and Logic/, Part 2: The Trading Zone
Galison uses the metaphor of cultures meeting to trade to describe how, say, experimentalists and theorists collaborate. He describes procedures, machines, and diagram...
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Galison’s /Image and Logic/, Part 1: The stickiness of experimental tradition
Peter Galison's book, /Image and Logic/, has several themes. One traces the multi-decade competition between two traditions in experimental particle physics. I discuss...
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E7: Imre Lakatos on what persuades scientists to risk their careers
Imre Lakatos intended to give rules for when scientists would be *rational* to switch to a new research program. At this, he probably failed, but I think he provides g...
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Interview: James Shore and Boundary Objects
Episode one described the idea of “boundary objects.” In this episode, I interview James Shore as he describes how he’s used the idea in his own work as an old-school ...
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Interview: Downsides of packages, upsides of jUnit (with Elisabeth Hendrickson and Chris McMahon) ("Packages", Part 4)
Final episode on Fujimura's "packages": how the theory part of a package can cause harm. Interview with Elisabeth Hendrickson and Chris McMahon, who don't think jUnit ...
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Theories of What? or: Richard Rorty Weighs in on TDD ("Packages", Part 3)
Why did so many biologists shrug and accept the proto-oncogene theory of cancer, while most programmers rejected TDD – and rather fiercely? Using an idea from Richard ...
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jUnit and What Makes a Successful Tool ("Packages", Part 2)
What characteristics make a tool or technology successful? This is the second of four episodes on Joan Fujimura’s idea of “packages” for spreading theory and techno...
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E2: Viruses, Cancer, TDD, and "Packages": Part 1
The first of three episodes discussing how Joan Fujimura's ideas about technology and theory diffusion apply to test-driven design and other approaches to doing software.
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E1: Boundary Objects
Boundary objects are an idea from the sociology of science. They are about how people use ambiguous nouns – or things – to coordinate the work of people with different...
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