INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES AND PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY:
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF VIRTUALITY

A exploratory study of the role of computer simulation and visualization in several fields.

Research Group | Project Summary

RESEARCH GROUP

Joseph Dumit
Hugh Gusterson
David Mindell
Susan Silbey
Sherry Turkle

Arne Hessenbruch
Natasha Myers

PROJECT SUMMARY

Simulation and visualization technologies that have become fundamental to contemporary science, engineering, design, and medicine are tools that make possible new ways of seeing and knowing and thereby change the way practitioners think. This project will explore this process as it is experienced by scientific and engineering professionals. It aims to understand the tradeoffs when new tools encourage new epistemologies. What are the traditional ways of knowing that our new tools discourage? What is their value? Can new technology be introduced while fostering an "epistemological pluralism," actively working to maintain elements of older traditions that may have value? Are there ways to configure design and educational experiences with greater sensitivity to what may be left behind by today's simulation and visualization technologies?

This project will examine how new technologies reconfigure the professional identities that are central to how people see themselves. Work will take place under the auspices of a new research program that studies the effects of technology on people: the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Founded in January 2001 by Professor Sherry Turkle, the Initiative has taken as its mandate the study of the multiple and complex channels by which contemporary technologies are enmeshed in the construction of human identity. Although the relationship between technology and identity is poorly understood, and although engineers rarely take this critical phenomenon into account during the design process, it is often crucial to the eventual success or failure of a technology . People may accept or resist a technology not for what it does but for how it makes them feel. Each of the five faculty who have come together in this project studies science and engineering professions in a culture of virtual representation. The project will look at profession and personhood as they become increasingly dependent on techniques of simulation and visualization. The faculty have discovered common questions in their diverse areas of research: How is information technology changing the way professionals work? How are simulation and visualization changing the way they think about their skills and fields of knowledge? How are their professional identities changing? It is time for collaboration, comparison, and integration. This project crosses over several areas of information technology research because it studies how information technologies are affecting the very practice of science and engineering. Through issues of professionalization, technologies designed to augment individuals also transform the social conditions of their work.

Prior studies of work in the context of computerization tended to focus on single settings. By looking at a broad range of engineering and scientific sites, the project will identify and explore a set of issues as they cut across professional fields. Five different sites will be studied where scientists and engineers lead professional "lives on the screen." They include archaeologists working telerobotically in deep water, weapons scientists running simulations, neuroscientists imaging the brain, physical chemists analyzing nanoparticles with atomic force microscopy, and architects building in the virtual world. The goal will be to develop fundamental questions, approaches, and techniques at the level of the individual, the organization, and the larger society, and to disseminate them for further teaching and research. It is expected that the conclusions of the study will also feed back into the technology development process, allowing researchers and designers to design better human-machine interfaces based on considerations of professional identity.