Doctoral Dissertation Research: Technological Citizenship through Hackerspaces

新学院大学的博士生Jason Euren将在Miriam Ticktin博士的指导下，对公民和技术的新交叉点进行社会科学研究。他的研究重点将是“黑客空间”，这是一种社区运营的实体设施，人们在这里见面、共享资源，并从事技术项目。这些设施提供先进的实验室设备、工程机械和计算机等资源。通过黑客空间的参与，普通公民有机会接触到他们原本无法接触到的复杂技术系统，通常是为了解决公众关注的问题（比如自然灾害后监测环境危害）。Euren试图理解这种日益增长的现象的本质、实践和影响。他将检验这一假设，即它构成了一种新的公民身份，他称之为技术公民。研究人员将在三个黑客空间进行为期9个月的人种学实地研究，这些空间都位于旧金山湾区。通过参与观察、访谈和媒体分析，他将收集有关技术、用户、技术活动和政治参与的数据。这项研究很重要，因为黑客空间在世界范围内是一种日益增长的现象。他们提出了一种新的公民挪用技术设备和过程作为政治策略，一种似乎跨越国界的新型公民。因此，本研究的结果将有助于在国家和全球背景下将公民身份与技术之间不断变化的关系理论化。资助这项研究也支持了研究生的教育。

New School University doctoral student, Jason Euren, with the supervision of Dr. Miriam Ticktin, will undertake social science research on new intersections of citizenship and technology. The focus of his research will be "hackerspaces," which are community-operated, physical facilities, where people meet, share resources, and pursue technical projects. These facilities provide such resources as advanced laboratory equipment, engineering machinery, and computers. Through hackerspace participation, ordinary citizens are given access to complex, technical systems they would not otherwise have, often for the purpose of addressing issues of public concern (such as monitoring environmental hazards after a natural disaster). Euren seeks to understand the nature, practice, and effect of this growing phenomenon. He will test the hypothesis that it constitutes a new kind of citizenship, which he terms technological citizenship. The researcher will carry out nine months of ethnographic field research in three hackerspaces, all located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through participant observation, interviews, and media analysis, he will collect data on the technologies, users, technological activities, and political engagement.The research is important because hackerspaces are a growing phenomenon throughout the world. They suggest a new civic appropriation of technological devices and processes as political strategies, a new kind of citizenship that appears to be crossing national boundaries. Thus findings from this research will contribute to theorizing the changing relationships between citizenship and technology in both national and global contexts. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.