The Usher Institute of Population Health and Informatics and the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation (ISSTI) are co-hosting colleagues from the University of Washington for a joint seminar on the social dimensions of data science.
This will take place 11.30-13.00 on the 31st of July in the Seminar Room at Old Surgeon’s Hall (Department of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies). Please see below for abstracts. All welcome – no need to register.
Prospecting (in) the Data Sciences
Andrew S. Hoffman
Research Scientist, Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington
The Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs and Spokes initiative (BDHubs) is a recent iteration of the US National Science Foundation’s continued support of community building efforts in the computer and information sciences. Regionally focused, the Hubs and Spokes have in the past two years undertaken significant steps towards brokering cross-sectoral, domain-oriented partnerships, leveraging data assets and expertise to address societal grand challenges. We have noticed a particularly vital activity that, even beyond the scope of the Hubs and Spokes themselves, we hold is characteristic and endemic of knowledge work in data science writ large: that of prospecting. By this term, we refer to the active, engaged discovery of - and negotiation of access to - disparate and relatively independent data science resources, for which the Hubs seek to serve as a centralizing device. In this talk, we will discuss the pervasiveness of prospecting within and outwith the BDHubs initiative: as a problem-solving activity; as formative and structuring of organizational and social partnerships; as working to constitute and define the field of data science; and as a very precondition of data scientific work carried out across domains and societal sectors.
The Logic of Domains
David Ribes
Associate Professor, Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington
The logic of domains has become a key organizing principle for contemporary computing projects and for broader science policy. As more and more projects are organized by the logic of domains they increasingly position computing as a universal science relative to the domains. The term "domain" serves to demarcate and characterize spheres of knowledge, for example, biology as the “domain science” of life, or geologists as the “domain experts” of the earth. The concept of a domain is set against a proposition that there is a more general technique that can serve to intermediate the domains; for instance, a data analytic tool may be dubbed “domain independent”, meaning that it can be of use across many, or all, domains. This presentation will track the development of the discourse of domains from artificial intelligence research in the 1970s to the computing and data sciences today.