Jul 15, 2019

Beyond the Trolley Problem

May 28, 2019

The Automobile

This text is the last portfolio-submission for the course “187.329 - VU Sociology of Technology” ) and deals with the the questions listed below. It's mainly based on pages 74-88 and 188-195 of W. Sachs’ “For Love of the Automobile: Looking Back into the History of Our Desires” (translated by D. Reneau, 1992) and studies the structuring function and symbolic meaning assigned to cars.

The questions:

3.1: What did the implementation of automobile traffic mean for the distribution of space and power in public spaces of mobility and for the humans’ collective social living? Explain and give examples.

3.2: In what way and why did traffic education and road safety training become requirements for the use of public spaces of mobility for ALL traffic participants (and not only for car drivers) in the wake of the implementation of automobile traffic?

3.3a: Use 3 concrete examples from Austria (may it be Vienna, another city or rural areas, …) to elaborately explain (in terms of a thick description and analysis) the street-oriented transformation of the humans’ living environment since the 1960s discussed by Sachs.

3.3b: Does this process still last today; or is it declining; or does it last while trends in the other directionare observable as well; or …?

May 7, 2019

Technical Acceleration

This text is the second portfolio-submission for the course “187.329 - VU Sociology of Technology” ) and deals with the the questions listed below. It's mainly based on pages 97-107 and 356-359 of H. Rosa's “Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity” (Translated by J. Trejo-Mathys, 2013) and explores the interplay of acceleration and (sense of) space and time.

The questions:

1. Discuss the gradual separation of time from place in modernity. How did this separation occur and by what did it become necessary / possible?
2. How did the awareness of space change in modernity and late modernity? Describe the reversal of the priority of space into the priority of time
3. What does Virilio mean by terminal “polar inertia” or “frantic standstill” (= German title of Virilios essay “L’ inertie polaire” – “Rasender Stillstand”)?
4. Give a concrete example each for the acceleration of the relationship
   • to space,
   • to human beings
   • to things.

May 1, 2019

The Machine Ensemble

This text is the first portfolio-submission for the course “187.329 - VU Sociology of Technology” ) and deals with the the questions listed below. It's mainly based on Shivelbusch’ “Railway Journey, The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century” (1986), and uses the historical of the railway to study the interplay of society and technology.

The questions:

1. Explain why locomotive and rail track constitute a machine ensemble.
2. In what way does the introduction of the transportation monopoly around 1840 closely relate to the fact that the railway (locomotive and rail track) is to be understood as an ensemble, rather than the rail track being a traffic route like the road or similar traffic routes?
3. Why did the rails have to…
   • …be smooth and hard?
   • …run a level and straight course?
4. Which consequences did this have for the course of the railway trail (contrary to e.g. the road)?

Dec 30, 2017

User Research in a “New Age of Computing”

This is my submission for the challenge report submission in the course user research methods. It tries to answer the question about the use and role of user research in the “new age of computing we are entering into”.