Librations

Okay so I just saw this so I am admittedly engaging in a knee-jerk reaction but I ran across a completely new term today: High-Tech Anthropology®. It was created and registered by a computer programmer, analyst, architect, manager, and executive and addresses the lack of community/cultural/people sensitivity in software design. I’m all about cultural sensitivity and I think that programmers and professionals creating tools for people to use should know the user very well. And since anthropologists study pretty much anything related to humanity, especially including tools, the idea of merging these two fields isn’t really that far-fetched. My problem, however, is with this term…its implications and its use.

I wonder about their methods:

“Interestingly enough, many of the best practices did not come from computer science; they came from anthropology. So we began to talk to anthropologists, study their techniques, and learn from their discipline. Eventually, we even called our practice “High-Tech Anthropology®” and our team members “High-Tech Anthropologists®.”

I got my undergraduate degree in anthropology. I’m getting an MSI to become an ALA-certified librarian. I like titles and I do, generally speaking, like the educational landscapes I must traverse through to get these titles. Talking to an anthropologist doesn’t make you one.  I feel like this organization, however well intended, has made the same mistake they seek to redress: they are making assumptions that their methods and approaches are correct and appropriate without taking into context the paths that are needed to properly use these approaches and methods.

Besides, anthro is in DDC 301 and computer programming is in DDC 005. That’s like stacks and stacks away.

I espouse interdisciplinarity, the intellectual weight of non-expert knowledge and I like the idea of a practice of High-Tech Anthropology®, I just have a feeling that this is well intended but ultimately kind of misses the point. That or I just pointed out how much of a hypocrite I am and that I really am a Category Nazi who doesn’t like to shake up her p’s and q’s. Probably my reaction is a bit of both.