Indiana University School of Informatics
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Faculty Research Profiles

David Hakken

Faculty Title

Professor of Informatics

 

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Research Statement

Dr. Hakken comes to Informatics from a long career in cultural anthropology. For 30 years, he has been doing ethnographic field work on information in cyberspace. His research aims to understand how cultures shape automated information and communications technologies (AICTs) in use and are in turn shaped by them. While studying the cultural correlates of computing, he works to promote technologies that expand human capabilities rather than undermining them. At Indiana University, he also has an adjunct Professor of Anthropology.

Hakken's previous research sites include England, Scandinavia, and upstate New York. He recently worked on Open Computing (especially Free/Libre and Open Source Software, F/LOSS) and Knowledge Networking, comparing Nusantara (Island Southeast Asia) with the North Atlantic. His current work focuses on US/East Asian University linkages as a window on globalization. In addition to four grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, two from the Fulbright Program and one the Social Science Research Council, he has carried out research in/for the Resource Center for Independent Living, other not-for-profit organizations, and public social services.

His duties at the School of Informatics include directing the School's International Activities, chairing its Globalization Committee and Collquium Committee, and organizing conferences and workshops on the theme of globalizing Informatics. He has been on the Departmental Graduate Committee, the School of Informatics Structure Committee, and he co-led an effort to develop an IU Informatics Book Series.

 

While teaching Anthropology and Information Studies at the State University of New York Institute of Technology (SUNYIT), he also ran the Institute's Policy Center. He is past president of the Society for the Anthropology of Work of the American Anthropological Association and a past member of the AAA Board. He was the first recipient of the AAA's Textor Prize in Anticipatory Anthropology and the first at SUNYIT to get the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.

 

Besides several scholarly and popular articles, he has written four books on computing and co-edited another. His second Routledge Press book, The Knowledge Landscapes of Cyberspace, was published in October, 2003.

Dr. Hakken spent spring 2005, on his second Fulbright Research Fellowship, this time in Malaysia, where he studied FLOSS development and promotion. While there, he met with people interested in technology and regional culture, both within the IT and social science/research communities and made presentations on the following topics: "An 'Interesting' Dialectic: Some Preliminary Thoughts on Automated Information and Communication Technologies and Borneo Languages; Open Source Software: Difficult, but the Best Affordance for a Knowledge Society" "Building a Sustainable Free/Libre and Open Source Software network in Malaysia; Comparative Perspectives" "Cyberspace Ethnography and Intercultural Communication" "Challenges with Respect to Wider Use of Open Source Software; Building a Sustainable Free/Libre and Open Source Software network in Malaysia; Comparative Perspectives" "Cyberspace Ethnography and Building the Knowledge Society; Building a Knowledge Society" "The Ethnography of Information/Cyberspace and Grounding Mode 2 Anthropology outside the European World" "FLOSS and the Hadharization of Technology in Malaysia; AICTs and the resocialing of work" "Open Source as Cultural Practice: Social Informatics comes to the Malay World" "Open Source Software for Knowledge and Ethnography; and Social Informatics."

After returning to Indiana, Dr. Hakken has made or will make a number of presentations, including: (2005) “Technoscience Studies of Free/Libre and Open Source Computing: Methodological Perspectives from the Malaysian Case.” Presented to the annual Meeting, Society for Social Studies of Science, Pasadena. “Islam, Open Source, and Information/Communication Technologies: Social Informatics in the Malay World.” Presentation to the Honors Seminar, IUB Computer Science Department. “Globalizing Informatics: The Indiana Approach.” Presented to the World Summit on the Information Society, Tunis, Tunisia. “What Knowledge Society? Open Source Computing in the Malay World and Development of a Knowledge Theory of Value.” Presented to the Annual Meeting, American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC.

(2006) “Open Sourcing in Malaysia and the Social Informatics Research Agenda.” Presentation for the Colloquium Series, IU School of Informatics, Bloominton, IN. (with Lorinskas, John, Musaffer Ozakca, and Venkata Ratnadeep Suri) “A Tool Approach to Globalizing Ethnography of Information.” Presented to the IU School of Informatics Conference on Globalizing Informatics Research, Bloominton, IN. “The Value of an Evolutionary Conceptualization to Globalizing Informatics Research: An Anthropologist’s View.” Presented to the research seminar on "Globalization as Evolutionary Process: Modeling, Simulating, and Forecasting Global Change", International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Vienna, Austria. "Technocracy or Democracy: Justice and Emerging, Technology-enabled Global Governance Forms." Symposium on Technology, Knowledge, and Society, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. “F/LOSSing the Groves of Academe: What faculty are getting right, and wrong, about Free/Libre and Open Source Software .” Presentation of the ITEC Regional Conference, Indanapolis, IN. “Ethnography and Professional Ethics: Perspectives from the AAA.” Presentation for the annual conference on Ethnographic Praxis in Industry, Portland, OR. “Technocracy or Democracy: Justice and Emerging Global Governance Forms.” Presentation for the annual meeting, Society for Social Studies of Science, Vancouver, CN. "Islam Hadhari and Open Source Software in Malaysia: An Ethnographic Intervention That Failed to Gain Traction." Presentation for the annual meeting, American Anthropological Association, San Jose, CA.

 

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David Hakken

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