Adolfo Estalella

As part of the Prototyping cultures conference that Alberto Corsín and I organized last November 2010 in Madrid, Chris Kelty launch the challenge to the participants asking what it would mean to prototype the prototyping conference. And so he invited all the presenters to elaborate in advance a ‘prototype’ of their presentation. The invitation materialized in very diverse ways depending on each of the presenters. Chris maintained an intense email exchange with George Marcus that was the basis for the presentation of Marcus. Alex Wilkie decided to send a part of his PhD dissertation while we tried to get Medialab people and attendants to the conference involved in the experiment proposing a few questions for them… The result of this process (and after being later reworked) was published in the ARC Studio (Anthropology Research of the Contemporary) as an ARC Episode that you can read: Prototyping prototyping ARC episode no. 3. (PDF version, 7 MB). Besides that, the videos of the presentations were published by Medialab-Prado, you can follow their link from the website of the conference. (incluiding the video of our presentation) We contributed with two pieces, The prototype: a sociology in abeyance and Prototyping relationships: on techno-political hospitality.

Me incorporé a la organización del primer encuentro de la Red de Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia y la Tecnología del Estado Español (eSCTS). El título de la convocatoria es ‘Haciendo visible lo invisible’: Para el primer encuentro de la red proponemos una reflexión colectiva bajo el lema ‘Haciendo visible lo invisible’, una figura con la que nos preguntamos por el valor de este: ¿Qué es lo que nuestros trabajos sacan a la luz? ¿Qué es lo que aportan las diversas aproximaciones de los estudios sociales de la ciencia? ¿Qué es lo que dejan de lado, oscur ecen e invisibilizan? Con este lema pretendemos plantear un doble ejercicio en el que por un lado discutamos aquello que estos estudios aportan como aproximación teórica al análisis social, y por otro visibilicemos este ámbito de investigación debatiendo la relevancia de los estudios sociales de la ciencia y la tecnología, la diversidad de aproximaciones en ellos, así como las posibilidades que se abren para mantener fructíferos diálogos con diversas disciplinas.
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‘e-Research’: desafíos y oportunidades para las ciencias sociales es el título del artículo que escribo junto a Elisenda Ardévol en la revista Convergencia, editada por la Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, el resumen a continuación: La incorporación progresiva de Internet y las tecnologías digitales a las prácticas investigadoras de los científicos sociales va acompañada de toda una serie de expectativas de revolución de la ciencia. Sin celebrar acríticamente estos discursos ni minimizarlos, y siguiendo la tradición de análisis de los estudios sociales de la ciencia y la tecnología, argumentamos que a través de las expectativas se abren espacios para la intervención y transformación de las prácticas epistémicas de la investigación social; un proceso que denominamos e-research. Más allá de facilitar o automatizar tareas, la incorporación de estas tecnologías plantea toda una serie de problemáticas metodológicas y epistémicas. Discutimos algunas de las que surgen con la utilización de Internet como una herramienta de investigación y concluimos que si bien las tecnologías digitales ofrecen la posibilidad de reformular los métodos de la investigación social, esto exige de los investigadores una práctica reflexiva que problematice permanentemente la incorporación de estas tecnologías. Para citarlo: Estalella, A., & Ardévol, E. (2011). ‘e-Research’: desafíos y oportunidades para las ciencias sociales. Convergencia, 18(55), 87-111.

A two-day conference organised by the Spanish National Research Council, Madrid. 4-5 November 2010

Prototypes have acquired certain prominence and visibility in recent times. Software development is perhaps the case in point, where the release of non-stable versions of programmes has become commonplace, as is famously the case in free and open source software. Developers are here known for releasing beta or work-in-progress versions of their programmes, as an invitation or call for others to contribute their own developments and closures.

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Después de un largo proceso editorial, la Revista Chilena de Antropología Visual publica parte de las ponencias que se presentaron en el simposio ‘La mediación tecnológica en la práctica etnográfica’  que organizamos en el X Congreso de Antropología de la FAAEE. Hay que agardecer el esfuerzo de los responsables de la revista, que tras el desastre del terremoto en Chile han logrado seguir con la publicación y sacar adelante el número. El artículo que escribo en colaboración con Elisenda Ardévol se titula Internet: instrumento de investigación y campo de estudio para la antropología visual, más abajo el resumen: 

Internet ha pasado de ser un objeto de estudio para algunos antropólogos a convertirse en un instrumento para el trabajo de campo de otros, a partir de dos aproximaciones distintas: la primera concibe Internet como una herramienta de investigación para aplicar determinadas técnicas (entrevistas, cuestionarios, etc.); la segunda plantea Internet como un campo de estudio. En ambos casos, la mediación tecnológica en el trabajo de campo antropológico abre numerosas posibilidades y plantea otras tantas cuestiones metodológicas,  parecidas a las que ya ha enfrentado la antropología visual en relación al uso de las tecnologías audiovisuales. Este artículo pretende, en primer lugar, explicitar problemáticas metodológicas comunes y reflexiones compartidas entre los etnógrafos de Internet y los antropólogos visuales; y en segundo lugar, discutir las oportunidades que Internet representa para la investigación de la cultura visual.

I attended my first EASA conference, it was great! many friend and new interesting people I met. This is the abstract of my presentation at the Digital Anthropology workshop: Based on 18 months of fieldwork focused on the study of intensive bloggers in Spain this paper discusses how expectations are enacted in the everyday material practices of a group of individuals that expect to transform society (mass media, science and politics) through their blogging practice. Drawing on the concept of inscription (Latour, 1999) I describe how blogs and bloggers interactions are materially inscribed (in the form of statistics of visitors, for instance) in a massive way by blog technological infrastructures. I highlight how present facts are materialized in graphics of visitors and lists of incoming links and expectations of the future are materially enacted when exceptional facts take place (an unusual wave of visitors, v.g.). I then argue that the inscription of the present is the condition of possibility for the performance of future expectations through an infrastructure that take part in the everyday enacting of hope among bloggers. (photo by Édgar Gómez)

Fieldwork is going really well, and after six months, we have many idea that we want to share with more people working in close areas, so with Alberto Corsin, I am co-organizing a workshop under the title: Prototyping cultures: social experimentation, do-it-yourself science and beta-knowledge. You can read the abstract below.

Prototypes have acquired certain prominence and visibility in recent times. Software development is perhaps the case in point, where the release of non-stable versions of programmes has become commonplace, as is famously the case in free and open source software. Developers are here known for releasing beta or work-in-progress versions of their programmes, as an invitation or call for others to contribute their own developments and closures. An important feature of prototyping in this case is the incorporation of failure as a legitimate and very often empirical realisation.

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Se celebró el primer encuentro estatal de ANT, y presenté una comunicación titulada: ‘Presente inscrito, esperanzas de revolución. Dinámica material de la esperanza en el bloguear apasionado’; parte del material en el que estoy trabajando actualmente. Hay una reseña del encuentro a cargo de Francisco Tirado, y más abajo el resumen de mi intervención.

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I received the result of the review process of one article on e-research that I submit last year to a journal. It has been ten months since then. There is another paper going through a long and problematic review process that has lasted more than 18 months for now so the option is to publish the pre-print in advance but… this journals has not explicit politics on pre-prints so, it is time to start to ask for explicit politicis that allow publishing pre-prints in advance. I wrote on it last year on Mediacciones and I recover this post now. (re-published post) I have come across the issue of preprints in the last days after publishing some of my full and long abstracts in Mediacciones. By preprint I refer to “un-refereed author version of the article” (Oxford Journals) or “draft of a scientific paper that has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal (Wikipedia). I have been discussing with Anne Beaulieu whether it is a good practice to publish preprints and draft works on line. I am not sure which one is the best, however, I am inclined to publish any work in progress from the very beginning (as ideas, drafts, working papers, etc.).

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I will be presenting (dios mediante) a paper in the next conference of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST), Practicing science and technology, performing the social. I will discuss a part of my PhD dissertations currently under work. Here it is the abstract:

This paper discusses the material dynamic of expectations among a collective of intensive bloggers in Spain and how they are enacted in the everyday blogging practice with the participation of the blog material infrastructure. I will argue that expectations on the power of blogs for transforming society are based in the massive material inscription of blog/blogger interactions. Empirical data has been produced during 18 months of fieldwork focused on the study of intensive bloggers, a collective defined by recognizing themselves as bloggers, blogging everyday, and being deeply involved in the construction of the Blogosphere in Spain. Empirical data has been obtained in three different contexts: the Internet, face to face events and bloggers meetings and interviews (online and face to face).

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