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The Social and Interactional Dimensions of Human‐ Computer Interfaces. Peter J. Thomas. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 268 pp.

As a contribution to the CCW's third informal meeting of experts on lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), this briefing paper focuses on the implications of the requirement of situational awareness for autonomous action – whether by humans, machines or complex human-machine systems. For the purposes of this paper, 'autonomy' refers to self-directed action, and more specifically the action-according-to-rule that comprises military discipline. Unlike the algorithmic sense of a rule as that term is used in Artificial Intelligence (AI), military rules always require interpretation in relation to a specific situation, or situational awareness. Focusing on the principle of distinction, I argue that International Humanitarian Law (IHL) presupposes capacities of situational awareness that it does not, and cannot, fully specify. At the same time, autonomy or 'self-direction' in the case of machines requires the adequate specification (by human designers) of the conditions under which associated actions should be taken. This requirement for unambiguous specification of condition/action rules marks a crucial difference between autonomy as a legally accountable human capacity, and machine autonomy. The requirement for situational awareness in the context of combat, as a prerequisite for action that adheres to IHL, raises serious doubts regarding the feasibility of lawful autonomy in weapon systems.

This article explores the resonating figures of primate, child, and robot in contemporary technoscientific corporealizations of the 'almost human'. We take as our model (in)organism 'Lucy the Robot Orangutan', roboticist Steve Grand's project to create an artificial life form with a mind of its own. One aspect of Lucy's figuration by Grand, we argue, which ties her to Haraway's analysis of the primate, is of the robot as a model for animal, and more specifically (or aspirationally) human, cognition. We follow the trope of 'model organism' as it is under discussion within science and technology studies and as an ironic descriptor for our own interest in Lucy as an entity/project through which to illuminate figurations within robotics more widely. Primate and robot together are forms of natureculture that help to clarify how the categories of animal and machine are entangled, while making explicit investments in their differences from one another, and from the third category of the human. We conclude, again following Haraway, by imagining what other possibilities there might be for figuring humans, robots, and their relations if we escape the reiterative imaginary of the robot as proxy for becoming human.

Written as the introduction to a special issue of Body & Society on the topic of animation and automation, this article considers the interrelation of those two terms through readings of relevant work in film studies and science and technology studies (STS), inflected through recent scholarship on the body. Drawing upon historical and contemporary examples, we trace how movement is taken as a sign of life, while living bodies are translated through the mechanisms of artifice. Whereas film studies has drawn upon work ranging from production history to semiotics and psychoanalysis to conceptualize the ways in which the appearance of life on the cinema screen materializes subjectivities beyond it, STS has developed a corpus of theoretical and empirical scholarship that works to refigure material-semiotic entanglements of subjects and objects. In approaching animation and automation through insights developed within these two fields we hope to bring them into closer dialogue with each other and with studies of the body, given the convergence of their shared concerns with affective materializations of life. More specifically, an interest in the moving capacities of animation, and in what gets rendered invisible in discourses of automation, is central to debates regarding the interdependencies of bodies and machines. Animation is always in the end a relational effect, it seems, while automation implies the continuing presence of hidden labour and care.

Clerical workers in an office scheduled for the installation of an office information system were interviewed regarding the social and technical organization of their work. The interviews were designed to disclose some of the actual practices involved in accomplishing procedural tasks. An analysis of the interview responses focusses on three requirements of procedural work: (1) the application of general guidelines to the problems of particular cases, (2) the co‐ordination of actions and revisions with other participants in a transaction, both within the office and outside, and (3) accomodation to the practical exigencies of handling paper documents. The conclusion suggests some broad implications of these issues of procedural work in a traditional office environment for the design of office information systems.

Mit ihrem Buch "Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication" erschloss Lucy SUCHMAN (1987) nicht nur ein neues Wissenschaftsfeld, sie zeigte auch, wie sich der Fokus ethnomethodologischer Forschung gewinnbringend vergrößern lässt. Seitdem ist sie bekannt für ihre einflussreichen Beiträge im Feld der Science and Technology Studies. In diesem Interview erläutert SUCHMAN, wie sie sich ethnomethodologisch sensibilisiert neuen Forschungsthemen widmete, insbesondere der Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion und der feministischen Wissenschaft. Sie teilt persönliche Anekdoten über ihre Treffen mit Harold GARFINKEL und reflektiert zentrale ethnomethodologische Themen wie die Analyse von Alltagspraktiken und die fundamentale Sozialität wechselseitiger Verständlichkeit. Indem sie die Relevanz materialer Studien hervorhebt und diskutiert, wie die Ethnomethodologie zu einer politisch engagierten Wissenschaft beitragen kann, demonstriert SUCHMAN eindrucksvoll die Aktualität des ethnomethodologischen Programms. ; With her book "Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication," Lucy SUCHMAN (1987) not only opened up a whole new domain of scientific interest but also showed how the scope of ethnomethodological inquiry can be widened in a fruitful way. Since then she is best known for her extensive contributions to the field of science and technology studies. In this interview, SUCHMAN gives insights into how she brought ethnomethodological sensibilities to new research fields, including human-machine interaction and feminist scholarship. She shares personal anecdotes of her meetings with Harold GARFINKEL and reflects upon key ethnomethodological elements such as the analysis of mundane practices and the fundamental sociality of mutual intelligibility. Discussing the relevance for material studies and how ethnomethodology can contribute to a politically engaged social science, SUCHMAN strikingly demonstrates the actuality of ethnomethodology's program.

With her book "Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication", Lucy Suchman (1987) not only opened up a whole new domain of scientific interest but also showed how the scope of ethnomethodological inquiry can be widened in a fruitful way. Since then she is best known for her extensive contributions to the field of science and technology studies. In this interview, Suchman gives insights into how she brought ethnomethodological sensibilities to new research fields, including human-machine interaction and feminist scholarship. She shares personal anecdotes of her meetings with Harold Garfinkel and reflects upon key ethnomethodological elements such as the analysis of mundane practices and the fundamental sociality of mutual intelligibility. Discussing the relevance for material studies and how ethnomethodology can contribute to a politically engaged social science, Suchman strikingly demonstrates the actuality of ethnomethodology's program.

This paper reports our experiences in developing a workoriented design practice. We sketch our general approach to relating work practice studies and design, including our use of case-based prototypes to bridge between the worlds of professional design and the settings in which new technologies will be used. We go on to describe our entry into the work site that was the setting for this project, our encounters with members of the site and with their work, and the development of our design agenda. Along the way we discuss the difficulties of maintaining alignment, the limits of research prototypes. and the politics of representing work practices.

This article provides an overview of a research program developed over the past 20 years to explore relations between everyday practices and technology design and use. The studies highlighted reflect three interrelated lines of inquiry: (a) critical analyses of technical discourses and practices, (b) ethnographies of work and technologies-in-use, and (c) design interventions. Starting from the premise that technologies can be assessed only in their relations to the sites of their production and use, the authors reconstruct technologies as social practice. A central problem for the design of artifacts then becomes their relation to the environments of their intended use. Through ethnographies of the social world, the analyses focus on just how social/material specificities are assembled together to comprise our everyday experience.