Technology in Practice

Abstract

AbstractEthnomethodology has made an important and highly influential contribution to our understanding of technology. It has provided the analytic and methodological resources with which to reconsider a number of key concepts and ideas within the social and cognitive sciences and has provided the foundation to a substantial corpus of studies of technology in action. To exemplify these analytic concerns, the authors consider a surveillance technology and the ways in which personnel use the system to detect and manage the problems and difficulties that arise in the operation of a major urban transport network. They consider how the use of the technology, to survey and manage incidents and events that might ordinarily pass unnoticed, is dependent upon the operators’ working knowledge of the environment, its characteristics and contingencies, and their familiarity with the routine patterns of conduct and interaction that arise within certain locales. In short, the system’s use is embedded within practice and practical action. By driving analytic attention toward the endogenous and situated character of technology in action, ethnomethodology has had a significant impact on contemporary research and practice throughout a range of disciplines in both the human and physical sciences.