The Social Life of Spacecraft: Organized Science on NASA’s Robotic
<br>Spacecraft Teams
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<br>Lecture by Janet Vertesi (Princeton University)
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<br>Monday 10 December 2018, 5pm - 6pm
<br>Warwick in London
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<br>Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Photo by J. Krohn
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<br>How does social organization affect the conduct and practice of science? To
<br>explore this question, Vertesi presents empirical data from a comparative
<br>ethnographic study of work on two NASA robotic spacecraft mission teams. While
<br>the robots appear to be singular entities operating autonomously in the
<br>frontiers of space, decisions about what the robots should do and how they
<br>accomplish their science are made on an iterative basis by a large,
<br>distributed team of scientists and engineers on Earth. As spacecraft team
<br>members negotiate among themselves for robotic time and resources, their
<br>sociotechnical organization is paramount to understanding how decisions are
<br>made, which scientific data are acquired, and how the team relates to their
<br>robot, with implications for team solidarity, data sharing, and scientific
<br>results.
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<br>Janet Vertesi is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Princeton University with
<br>a focus on the sociology of science, technology, and organizations. Dubbed
<br>“Margaret Mead among the Starfleet” in the Times Literary Supplement, her
<br>past decade of research, funded by the National Science Foundation, examines
<br>how distributed robotic spacecraft teams work together effectively to produce
<br>scientific and technical results. Her book Seeing Like a Rover (University of
<br>Chicago Press, 2015) describes the collaborative work of the Mars Exploration
<br>Rover mission including the people, the images, and the robots who do science
<br>on Mars. Vertesi is also a long-time contributor to the Association of
<br>Computing Machinery conferences on human-computer interaction and computer
<br>supported cooperative work. She is an advisory board member of the Data and
<br>Society institute in New York City and is a member of Princeton University’s
<br>Center for Information Technology Policy.
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<br>Attendance is free but registration is required. Available places will be
<br>allocated on a first come, first serve basis.
<br>
<br>Please click here
<br> to register to attend
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<br>This Lecture is supported by the ERC project BLINDSPOT, the Centre for
<br>Interdisciplinary Methodologies (University of Warwick), the Sociological
<br>Review, and the Center on Organizational Innovation (Columbia University).
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<br>
<br>
<br>Dr Noortje Marres
<br>
<br>Associate Professor |
<br>Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM
<br>) |
<br>University of Warwick
<br>
<br>Visiting Professor |
<br>Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS ) |
<br>University of Leiden.
<br>
<br>http://noortjemarres.net/
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