# Syllabus

## Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 1 session / week, 2 hours / session

## Summary Description

### Digital Anthropology

Digital Anthropology is a Spring 2003 applied social science and media arts seminar surveying the blossoming arena of digital-artifact enabled experimental sociology/anthropology. We will emphasize both (a) Technology Testbeds – systematically deploying research lab prototypes and corporate pre-production products in a sample human organizational population and carefully observing the social consequences, and (b) Sociometrics – using digital artifacts to better observe and measure the complex social reality of interesting human systems.

### Technology Testbeds

Technology Testbeds result when multiple labs at MIT and a variety of corporate sponsors showcase their advanced prototypes and pre-production models – at MIT Sloan, MIT-generally, in our surrounding Kendall community, and even at sponsor homesites – while we closely track their social impact, observe real usage patterns over time, and systematically assess future market potential.

### Sociometrics

Sociometrics are the data and corresponding statistical analysis of social phenomena. Such metrics result from the systematic deployment of – and observation via – minimally intrusive digital artifacts which capture relevant and complex social interaction data over time.

### The Zauri Initiative

Registered students in the seminar will receive a Zaurus mobile Linux® PDA for the duration of the semester. This will be our common platform for application development and trial experiments.

## Expected Student Deliverables

All students are expected to:

1. participate in the exploratory phase of the Reality Mining project,
2. form teams to build novel experimental tools/artifacts and/or applications,
3. run at least one rigorous experiment, and
4. write a summary project report.

We hope this class effort will be the basis for future research and/or publications.

## Credits

9 (2-4-3)

## Target Student Population

We expect between 10 and 20 MAS, EE, and Sloan students. Registration will be limited by hardware and resource availability.

## Interwoven Themes

Woven throughout the semester are a series of critical strategic themes and threads, including, broadly:

- Predictive Microcosms
- Fast Iteration
- Experimental Sociology
- Comparative Market Research
- Cross-Campus Connections

## Sections

We will review live and historical research projects – from within and beyond MIT – all in the emerging Digital Anthropology arena:

1. Historical Cases of Success and Failure
   - Project Athena
   - Project Canard
   - MemeTags and ThinkingTags
2. Current Live Cases
   - Shortcuts
   - PDA SNA
   - Reality Mining
   - Project Oxygen
   - Paperless Classroom
   - MasterCard RF Payments
   - Spotme
3. Speculative and Emerging Cases
   - Project Mercury
   - MyTags

## Potential Speakers (Yet to Be Confirmed)

Pascal Chesnais – Project Canard and MessageMachines
Sherry Turkle – STS, Technology and Self
Keith Hampton – DUSP, Cyber Sociology
Dan Ariely – Sloan, Experimental Design
Jim Hines – Sloan Organizational Evolution
Wanda Orlikowski – Sloan, Groupware
Jonathon Cummings – Sloan, Social Network Analysis
Larry Prusak – IBM, Complexity and soc net in org
Thomas Davenport – Accenture KM
Albert Barbasi – Notre Dame, Prof of physics; "Linked"
Robert Axelrod – Agent-based Simulation
Duncan Watts – Colloquium speaker
Karen Stephenson – Netform, Corporate Anthopologist
Rick Boravoy / Fred Martin -- Spot Designs, digital nametags
Mikhak, Paradiso, Selker, Resnik, Bender, Donath, et. al.