Abstract
Building on data from fieldwork at a medical department, this paper focuses on the varied nature of computational artifacts in practice. It shows that medical practice relies on multiple heterogeneous computational artifacts that form complex constellations. In the hospital studied the computational artifacts are both coordinative, image-generating, and intended for the control of nuclear-physical and chemical processes. Furthermore, the paper entails a critique of the notion of ‘computer support’, for not capturing the diverse constitutive powers of computer technology; its types if you will. The paper is a step towards establishing a lexicon of computational artifacts in practice. It is a call for a wider effort to systematically conceptualise the multiple and specifiable ways in which computational artifacts may be part of work activities. This is for the benefit of design and our understanding of work practice.
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- 1.
Perhaps on the engineering level ‘computer’ may be described in more monolithic terms. Turing’s concept of the ‘Universal Computer’ comes to mind. However, we are concerned with the level of work practice, not the generic features of engineered tools.
- 2.
The department has significant research activity with 125 peer-reviewed publication pr. year.
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Acknowledgements
First, a warm thanks to the employees of the nuclear-medical department – without your openness and generosity this research would not be possible. Thank you. Second, note that this work is part of the Computational Artefacts research project (VELUX33295) and is funded by the Velux foundation. Thanks to Velux and everybody within the project.
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Christensen, L.R., Harper, R.H.R. (2016). The Many Faces of Computational Artifacts. In: De Angeli, A., Bannon, L., Marti, P., Bordin, S. (eds) COOP 2016: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, 23-27 May 2016, Trento, Italy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33464-6_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33464-6_6
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