Systematics as Cyberscience: Computers, Change, and Continuity in Science (Hardcover)

Christine Hine

  • 出版商: MIT
  • 出版日期: 2008-01-04
  • 售價: $1,050
  • 語言: 英文
  • 頁數: 320
  • 裝訂: Hardcover
  • ISBN: 026208371X
  • ISBN-13: 9780262083713
  • 相關分類: Computer-networks
  • 立即出貨(限量) (庫存=2)

商品描述

The use of information and communication technology in scientific research has been hailed as the means to a new larger-scale, more efficient, and cost-effective science. But although scientists increasingly use computers in their work and institutions have made massive investments in technology, we still have little idea how computing affects the way scientists work and the kind of knowledge they produce. In Systematics as Cyberscience, Christine Hine explores these questions by examining the developing use of information and communication technology in one discipline, systematics (which focuses on the classification and naming of organisms and exploration of evolutionary relationships). Her sociological study of the ways that biologists working in this field have engaged with new technology is an account of how one of the oldest branches of science transformed itself into one of the newest and became a cyberscience.

Combining an ethnographic approach with historical review and textual analysis, Hine investigates the emergence of a virtual culture in systematics and how that new culture is entwined with the field's existing practices and priorities. Hine examines the policy perspective on technological change, the material culture of systematics (and how the virtual culture aligns with it), communication practices with new technology, and the complex dynamics of change and continuity on the institutional level. New technologies have stimulated reflection on the future of systematics and prompted calls for radical transformation, but the outcomes are thoroughly rooted in the heritage of the discipline. Hine argues that to understand the impact of information and communication technology in science we need to take account of the many complex and conflicting pressures that contemporary scientists navigate. The results of technological developments are rarely unambiguous gains in efficiency, and are highly discipline-specific.

商品描述(中文翻譯)

在科學研究中使用資訊和通訊技術被譽為實現更大規模、更高效率和更具成本效益的科學手段。然而,儘管科學家在工作中越來越多地使用電腦,機構也大量投資於技術,我們對於計算如何影響科學家的工作方式和他們所產生的知識仍知之甚少。在《系統學作為網絡科學》一書中,克里斯汀·海恩通過研究一個學科系統學(專注於生物分類和命名以及演化關係的探索)中資訊和通訊技術的發展,探討了這些問題。她的社會學研究闡述了在這一領域工作的生物學家如何與新技術互動,以及這個學科如何從最古老的科學分支之一轉變為最新的網絡科學。

海恩結合了民族誌方法、歷史回顧和文本分析,研究了系統學中虛擬文化的出現,以及這種新文化如何與該領域現有的實踐和優先事項相結合。海恩探討了技術變革的政策觀點,系統學的物質文化(以及虛擬文化如何與之相符),新技術的溝通實踐,以及機構層面上變革和連續性的複雜動態。新技術激發了對系統學未來的思考,並引發了對根本性轉變的呼籲,但結果在很大程度上仍根植於這一學科的傳統。海恩認為,要理解資訊和通訊技術在科學中的影響,我們需要考慮當代科學家所面臨的許多複雜和相互衝突的壓力。技術發展的結果很少是明確的效率提升,而且高度依賴於學科的特定性。