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PARC Forum Presents: "Culture" has become a hot topic in computing research as information technologies become enmeshed in global flows of people, products, capital, ideas, and information. However, wh...

PARC Forum Presents: "Culture" has become a hot topic in computing research as information technologies become enmeshed in global flows of people, products, capital, ideas, and information. However, while much attention has been focused on the problems of "cross-cultural collaboration" and "cultural difference," a useful alternative is opened up by thinking about culture from a generative, rather than a taxonomic, perspective -- that is, as a framework for understanding and interpreting the world around us, rather than a framework for classifying people. In this talk, I will outline and illustrate an approach that my colleagues and I have been developing, which draws on anthropology, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies to help us examine the contexts of encounter between people, information technology, and culture.