Reinventing Technology, Rediscovering Community: Critical Explorations of Computing as a Social Practice

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This work addresses how computers affect people's everyday lives. Using actual situations and problems that have been encountered with software applications, it contains papers on topics such as the AEGIS disaster, the world of MUD environments, and community networks, including a study of "Community Memory" in Berkeley. The first part of this text contains critical studies, in which the authors explain ways of describing real situations where people are already using computers. These situations are often problematic and much more complicated than the designers envisioned when designing the system. The second half of the book contains constructive studies, reporting experiences to build systems in new ways, with a developed consciousness of what people need and the interactions between computer systems and social sciences.