Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, February 2003. / "December 2002." / Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves [263]-272). / In this thesis, I examine the current reorganization of office or information work in its technological, spatial, social and cultural aspects. Based on ethnographic and historical methods, I explore how information and communication technologies, and spatial designs combined with specific organizational visions shape the social organization and culture of work. Analyzing ideas as well as material configurations, design as well as use, and developments in offices as well as those beyond the office, I am particularly concerned with the new forms of life and cultural formations these developments produce. The 1990s saw a development towards more flexible, mobile and virtual ways of officing, such as non-territorial offices and remote work. Analyzing the alternative officing movement in the context of wider economic and cultural changes, I demonstrate the strategic role technology plays for the movement's vision of a less place-based definition of work. Suggesting an alternative intellectual origin for today's office concepts different from Taylorism, I opt for the concept of office landscaping, an influential German office concept developed after WW2 and inspired by cybernetics. Fieldwork in a present day innovative office design firm reveals a deep tension in its office designs between a more flexible and mobile organizational goal, and a more communicative and collaborative one - a tension that is exacerbated by technology. Further exploring the designers' own mobile and non-territorial office, I introduce the notion of placemaking to explain the observed friction in the mobile ways of the office. I also find a reconfigured power dynamic that is no longer based on space ownership, but rather on mobility and ownership of technology, or "techno-territory." / (cont.) Not only do I examine alternative office designs, I also investigate remote and technologically mediated work beyond the office among high-tech workers in the Silicon Valley region. My analysis suggests not only novel network-like social and professional structures but also hidden costs for individuals associated with these new formations. / Heinrich Joachim Schwarz. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 456-493). / This dissertation traces a transformation in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's governance of food markets during the second half of the 20th century. In response to new correlations between diet and risk of disease, anxieties about (over)abundant food supplies, and changing notions of personal versus collective responsibility in an affluent society, the FDA changed how it regulated food labeling. Following WWII, the agency developed a set of standard recipes with fixed common name labels (such as "peanut butter" or "tomato soup"), or "standards of identity," for all mass-produced foods. However, the appearance of new diet foods and public health concerns undermined this system. Beginning in the 1970s, the FDA shifted its policies. Rather than rely on standardized identities, the agency required companies to provide informative labels such as the ingredients panel, nutrition labels, and various science-based health claims. Agency officials believed that such information would enable consumers to make responsible health decisions through market purchases. Food labeling is explored as a regulatory assemblage that draws together a variety of political, legal, corporate, and technoscientific interests and practices. The five chapters are organized chronologically. The first two describe how a shift in focus among nutrition scientists from concern for the undernourished to a concern with overeating led to the introduction onto the market of engineered foods capitalizing off popular interest in diet and health. A middle chapter describes a series of institutional scandals that generated the political animus to change the FDA's system, and registered a broader "shock of recognition" that Americans' views about food and food politics had changed. The final two chapters describe the introduction of "Nutrition Information" labeling in the 1970s and the mandatory "Nutrition Facts" panel in the 1990s. By looking at the regulation of labels as a kind of public-private infrastructure for information, the turn to compositional labeling can be understood not merely as a shift in representation-from whole foods to foods as nutrients-but more broadly as a retooling of food markets to embed notions about personal responsibility for health into the ways that food was designed, marketed, and consumed. / by Xaq Zachary Frohlich. / Ph.D.in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS

Thesis (Ph. D. in History and Social Study of Science and Technology (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 409-429). / Guglielmo Marconi's trans-Atlantic wireless experiment in 1900 marked the beginning of a communication revolution that transformed the open space above the earth into channels of information flow. This dissertation grapples with the historical conditions that gave rise to such a transformation: the studies of radio-wave propagation and the treatments of radio interferences in early twentieth-century America and Western Europe. The part on propagation examines the debate between the surface diffraction theory and the atmospheric reflection theory for long waves, the development of the ionic refraction theory for short waves, the evidential quests for the existence of the ionosphere, and the studies of the geomagnetic effects on propagation. The part on interferences focuses on the engineering efforts toward the characterization of atmospheric noise and signal-intensity fluctuations, the policies of radio-channel allocation for fighting man-made interference, and the scientific research into electronic tube noise. By the mid-30s, the results from these endeavors had considerably improved the quality of radio communication. Characterizing Radio Channels builds a bridge between the history of science and the history of technology by inspecting an immaterial engineering entity--radio channels--whose control required significant scientific research. In the history of science, it contributes to an integrated study of electrical physics and geophysics. In the history of technology, it enriches radio history, epistemology of engineering knowledge, consumer studies, and the studies of technological policies. Combining both fields with the concept of radio channels enables a new understanding of the historical conditions that made the information society / (cont.) social factors that facilitated the modern research organizations in academia, industry, governments and the military. / by Chen-Pang Yeang. / Ph.D.in History and Social Study of Science and Technology (HASTS

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology, Management, and Policy Program, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-192). / This thesis presents a technology to complement taxation-based policy proposals aimed at addressing the digital copyright problem. The approach presented facilitates identification of intellectual property using expression fingerprints. Copyright law protects expression of content. Recognizing literary works for copyright protection requires identification of the expression of their content. The expression fingerprints described in this thesis use a novel set of linguistic features that capture both the content presented in documents and the manner of expression used in conveying this content. These fingerprints consist of both syntactic and semantic elements of language. Examples of the syntactic elements of expression include structures of embedding and embedded verb phrases. The semantic elements of expression consist of high-level, broad semantic categories. Syntactic and semantic elements of expression enable generation of models that correctly identify books and their paraphrases 82% of the time, providing a significant (approximately 18%) improvement over models that use tfidf-weighted keywords. The performance of models built with these features is also better than models created with standard features used in stylometry (e.g., function words), which yield an accuracy of 62%. In the non-digital world, copyright holders collect revenues by controlling distribution of their works. Current approaches to the digital copyright problem attempt to provide copyright holders with the same kind of control over distribution by employing Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems. / (cont.) However, DRM systems also enable copyright holders to control and limit fair use, to inhibit others' speech, and to collect private information about individual users of digital works. Digital tracking technologies enable alternate solutions to the digital copyright problem; some of these solutions can protect creative incentives of copyright holders in the absence of control over distribution of works. Expression fingerprints facilitate digital tracking even when literary works are DRM- and watermark-free, and even when they are paraphrased. As such, they enable metering popularity of works and make practicable solutions that encourage large-scale dissemination and unrestricted use of digital works and that protect the revenues of copyright holders, for example through taxation-based revenue collection and distribution systems, without imposing limits on distribution. / by Özlem Uzuner. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology and Policy Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 181-192). / This thesis focuses on the potential of strategic technology innovation and implementation in sustaining an aging society, and examines the need for a comprehensive national technology and innovation infrastructure in the U.S., capable of supporting the development and use of technologies by the aging population and their caregivers. The pervasiveness of population aging makes it a primary concern for nations around the world today. As the inadequacies of existing resources become apparent, policy makers .are now turning to technology and innovation to cope with the changing demographics. 'Technological innovations to accommodate the elderly have existed since centuries ago, and they been useful in extending the human capability beyond perceived limitations of aging. However, new technologies developed with the same objectives are not widely adopted and accepted by the aging population today. The thesis is divided into two complementary sections. / (cont.) The first examines three hypotheses for the slow penetration rates of new technologies for aging: 1) Useful, affordable and usable technologies are unavailable, 2) Professional carers that can play a catalytic role between technological innovation and implementation are not technologically educated and prepared to incorporate the technologies into elderly care, and 3) The dynamics of policy formation and agenda setting are not conducive to the design and implementation of "technology for aging" policies. The second section consists of two comparative studies to highlight the gaps within the existing "technologies for aging" industry infrastructure. A study of the domestic automobile and mobile telecommunications industry provides a national perspective, whereas a study of eleven industrialized nations engaged in technological innovations for the elderly provides an international perspective. The research shows that useful, affordable and usable technologies are available, but their diffusion is hindered by inadequate human capital development and an unconducive policy formation and agenda setting climate. / (cont.) The comparative studies further illuminate existing infrastructure gaps and also provide useful frameworks to facilitate the bridging of these gaps. By facilitating the development of a robust "technology for aging" infrastructure, policy makers can help to ensure that the U.S. is ready to meet the challenges of an aging population. / by Jasmin Lau. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology and Policy Program, 2003. / Leaf 110 blank. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-107). / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / After a decade of development, advanced telecommunications services (ATS) are widely available in many markets. This thesis is concerned with the impact of local competition and government regulation on the deployment of advanced telecommunications services for business in the United States. These services include packet switching, digital signal level (DS) technologies and synchronous optical network (SONET) – optical carrier (OC) transport. Increasingly, businesses are using these services for intra and extra network communications. Access to advanced telecommunication services is important for economic development. Government policy makers are interested in identifying what steps can be taken to accelerate the roll-out of services in their communities. Business and corporate users are often interested in services that are different from what the residential customers desire. This thesis focuses on a broader range of advanced services of interest to the business customers than most empirical research to date. It also provides a better and more insightful metric at a finer level of granularity to address these questions. The impacts of local business conditions, rivalry and regulations on the deployment of advanced telecommunication services are analyzed by means of econometric analysis. A rich data set has been constructed which identifies the competitive, regulatory and economic climates at each incumbent’s wire center in the United States. A qualitative response model is used to estimate how business characteristics of the communities and their regulatory environments affect the deployment of ATS. I conclude that local competition, federal subsidies, 271 approval, and high unbundled network element (UNE) price to book cost ratio have positive impacts on advanced telecommunication services deployment, while federal price cap regulation and location in a rural area have negative impacts. These findings have significant implications on government regulatory policies. The thesis recommends regulatory policies, which focus on services, such as rate-based rate-of-return regulation over price caps and encourages competitors’ entry, facilities-based competition and federal support to accelerate deployment of advanced telecommunications services. It concludes by encouraging governments and organizations to support more research, experimentation and better data collection to increase understanding of underlying socio-economic and regulatory factors affecting deployment of advanced telecommunications services. / by Guang-Lih Huang. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, June 2007. / "May 2007." / Includes bibliographical references (p. 284-308). / My research is about the particular effects of Vietnam's economic liberalization program (known as "doi moi") on the local food and market system in Hanoi. Doi moi policies, which began in the late 1980s, have instituted major changes in both the national system of agricultural production and in Hanoi's local system of marketplaces. The doi moi reforms have created many new opportunities in Hanoi, but they have also re-configured social relationships and market spaces along the food chain to present new kinds of risk for consumers. These include harmful chemicals, goods of uncertain quality, and sellers who operate outside of the moral obligations of the dominant system of personal relationships. These things have not yet been resolved through regulation and have therefore been left to consumers and sellers to work out among themselves. The competition between various actors to manage foodborne risk in the absence of state regulation has taken place amidst the state's campaign to re-order Hanoi's market system according to neoiberal ideals. / (cont.) This has made the local market system a site for the enactment of a symbolic politics of modernity in which discourses that are really about risk and political economy have been obscured by their expression as a debate about "tradition" and modernity." Beneath the discourse of modernization lies a range of hybrid market worlds as well as systemic issues related to the transition from a centrally planned economy to a free market system. / by Margaret A. Hiesinger / Ph.D.in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology and Policy Program, 2007. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 72-77). / Hurricane Katrina showed that the current methods for handling medical records are minimally resilient to large scale disasters. This research presents a preliminary model for measuring the resilience of medical records systems against public policy goals and uses the model to illuminate the current state of medical record resilience. From this analysis, three recommendations for how to make medical records more resilient are presented. The recommendations are: 1) Federal and state governments should use the preliminary resilience model introduced here as the basis for compliance requirements for electronic medical record technical architectures. 2) Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs) should consider offering services in disaster management to healthcare organizations. This will help RHIOs create sustainable business models. 3) Storage companies should consider developing distributed storage solutions based on Distributed Hash Table (DHT) technology for medical record storage. Distributed storage would alleviate public concerns over privacy with centralized storage of medical records. Empirical evidence is presented demonstrating the performance of DHT technology using a prototype medical record system. / by Robert Rudin. / S.M.

Thesis: Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2014. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages [255]-265). / This dissertation examines the distinctive and critical role that space exploration played in American foreign relations and national image making in the 1960s. Proposed by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, Project Apollo was established, in large part, as a means of demonstrating American power and promoting technocratic values in an international landscape defined by the Cold War, the collapse of colonialism, and the emergence of newly independent nations. While existing scholarship has gestured to this geopolitical context, it has tended to examine activity that takes place on American or lunar soil. This dissertation argues that the geopolitical context was not simply a backdrop but instead the main theater of Project Apollo. By embedding this familiar story back in its global context, this dissertation reinterprets the established narrative of Project Apollo in three significant ways. First, it places greater emphasis on the international stage and the relationship between the US and the world. Second, while the role of the Executive Branch remains essential to this story, this dissertation shifts the focus from engineers and managers, to key actors within the State Department and United States Information Agency, as well as foreign leaders and the world public. Finally, the role of Project Apollo in foreign relations, and public diplomacy in particular, becomes the defining feature of this investigation. By examining how US government elites promoted and disseminated information about space exploration to support American foreign relations interests, this dissertation offers a lens onto attempts to establish national power by fusing perceived values and strengths of science and technology- like rationality and progress- with the image of the nation's political system. These efforts, this dissertation demonstrates, were not only aimed at boosting American prestige, but were also strategic attempts to promote an idea of global unity and progress ushered in by American scientific and technological leadership. / by Teasel Muir-Harmony. / Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS)

Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 297-326). / This ethnography tracks a diverse set of practices I term "constructive biologies," by which I mean efforts in the post-genomic life sciences to understand how biology works by making new biological things. I examine five fields of constructive biology - synthetic biology, DIY (do-it-yourself) biology, hyperbolic crochet, sonocytology, and molecular gastronomy - investigating how they are enmeshed in sensory engagements that employ craftwork as a means of grasping biology. Synthetic biology is a community of bioengineers who aim to fabricate standardized biological systems using genetic components and manufacturing principles borrowed from engineering. DIY biology is a community of "biohackers" who appropriate synthetic biologists' terminologies, standards, and commitment to freely exchanging biomaterials in order to do hobbyist biological engineering in their homes. The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef is a distributed venture of thousands of women who are cooperatively fabricating a series of yarn and plastic coral reefs in order to build a material simulation of oceanic morphologies and evolutionary theories. Sonocytology, a technique in nanotechnology research, uses scanning probe microscopes to "listen to" cellular vibrations and "feel" the topologies of cells and cellular components. Molecular gastronomy is a movement in which practitioners - physical chemists and biochemists who study food, and chefs who apply their results - use biochemical principles and laboratory apparatuses to further cooking and the culinary arts. In analyzing these fields, I draw on histories of experimental biology, anthropological accounts of artisanship, science studies work on embodiment and tacit knowledge in scientific practice, and sensory ethnography. Based on data gathered from participant-observation and interviewing, I argue for thinking about making new biological things as a form of "crafting," an analytic that illuminates five aspects of contemporary biological manufacture: 1) sensory cultivation, 2) ongoing participation with biological media and forms, 3) the integration of making biological things and practitioners' selfmaking, 4) the embedding of social relations, interests, norms, and modes of exchange in built artifacts, and 5) the combination of making and knowing. In this study, I argue that both biology the substance and biology the discipline are currently being remade, and that increasingly, life scientists apprehend "life" through its manufacture. / by Hannah Sophia Roosth. / Ph.D.in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS