Bonnie Nardi - Nardi in Her Own Words

Nardi in Her Own Words

Activity Theory

Citation:

Activity theory proposes that consciousness is shaped by practice, that people and artifacts mediate our relationship with reality. Consciousness is produced in the enactment of activity with other people and things, rather than being something confined inside a human head. Activity theory began in Russia with the work of Lev Vygotsky in the 1920s, continuing through his student Aleksey Leontiev, and then through students of Leontiev. This work has been influential in education, organizational design, and interaction design. Activity theory works well with design because activity theorists have always tested their theories in practical ways and believe that application is an outcome of theory, not a separate activity. In some of my writings I have discussed how, as a psychological theory, activity theory can be scaled to collaborative settings without losing sight of individual participants in an activity.

Information Ecology

Citation:

There is a strong need to find new ways to think about the social and cultural changes that come with new technologies. I have examined some such changes with respect to the work of librarians and others discussed in Information Ecologies. Our limited ability to predict change coupled with enormous human creativity has led to a situation of instability in which systemic effects of technological change can only be responded to after the fact. In the current global economy we have efficient ways of distributing technology but ineffectual means of addressing negative consequences (such as pollution from wireless devices). New political and social forms are needed. Movements such as green design, life cycle analysis, and cradle to cradle design address some problems and can be applied to digital technologies. Social changes are more difficult to characterize and require better theorizing. One of her interests is in what I call "placeless organizations" which are distributed groups dedicated to transforming practice. In the modern context they inevitably make use of computer-mediated communication as they attempt to "co-construct," in activity theory terms, the way things are done. Examples of placeless organizations are Open Source software development projects, Doctors without Borders, the World Trade Organization, and transformations in scientific disciplines from "small science" to "big science". Understanding how placeless organizations are effective with relatively few people is a current focus of my research.

Nardi blogs at http://bon-blog.blogspot.com/