CHS: Small: The Farm as Lab: Information Technology Innovation in Computational Agriculture

这项研究整合了两个目标：调查、记录和传播关于替代农业创新的知识，并将其传播给以人为中心的计算社区；支持使用系统设计方法开发新技术的替代农业创新实践，这些技术建立在和扩展已经在各种实验农场发生的事情之上。为了应对人口增长、粮食需求增长、饮食变化和气候变化，近年来农业中信息通信技术的使用激增。实验农场延续了许多有助于定义创客运动的潜在社会技术结构，但迄今为止，它们尚未被理解或支持。这些结构包括日益强大的终端用户技术、知识渊博和充满激情的从业者网络、与计算机科学相关的调查目标以及对其社区的高效益。该项目的一个主要阶段将进行民族志实地调查，这依赖于参与者观察、文化和技术文物分析以及在两个研究地点进行的半结构化访谈的结合。其中一篇将考察台湾采用信息技术的替代农业实践，以揭示农民如何在日常基础上进行实验性创新。另一个将集中在印第安纳州的农业实验，以了解和记录农民、政策制定者和技术专家如何使用技术来解决粮食生产和可持续性方面的关键挑战，以及农业技术导向的举措如何培养未来的高科技、高技能农民。研究的另一个阶段将结合文献、话语和口述历史分析，分析来自两个实地地点的政府的政策材料，以确定促进或削弱旨在支持农业创新的努力的一致性和不一致性。民族志工作、口述历史和话语分析将被纳入共同设计研讨会，这些研讨会将根据参与式设计原则提供信息。他们将测试有前途的农业技术突破、挑战和在人种学合作中确定的策略，并将采取“设计冲刺”的形式，这是一种高度结构化的过程，广泛用于美国科技行业，用于与利益相关者回答关键问题，其特点是绘制问题地形、识别风险和机会、概念生成、原型设计、评估和测试。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This research integrates two goals: to survey, document, and disseminate knowledge about innovation in alternative agriculture to the human-centered computing community, and to support alternative-agricultural innovation practices using system design approaches to develop novel technologies that build on and extend what is already happening on a diversity of experimental farms. In response to population increases, growing food demand, changing diets, and climate change, recent years have seen a surge in the use of information communication technologies in agriculture. Experimental farms carry forward many of the same underlying sociotechnical structures that helped to define the maker movement, but as yet they are not yet understood or supported. These structures include increasingly powerful end-user technologies, networks of knowledgeable and passionate practitioners, inquiry objectives relevant to computer science, and high benefit for their communities.A major phase of the project will conduct ethnographic fieldwork that relies on a combination of participant observation, analysis of cultural and technological artifacts, and semi-structured interviews conducted within each of two research sites. One will examine alternative, IT-enabled farming practices in Taiwan to reveal how farmers experimentally innovate on a day-to-day basis. The other will focus on agricultural experiments in Indiana to understand and document how farmers, policymakers, and technologists use technology to address critical challenges in food production and sustainability and how agriculture-technology-oriented initiatives cultivate high-tech, high-skilled farmers of the future. Another phase of the research will combine documentary, discourse, and oral history analysis of policy materials from governments of both field sites to identify alignments and misalignments that either facilitate or undercut efforts intended to support agricultural innovation. The ethnographic work, oral histories and discourse analyses will be inputs into co-design workshops that will be informed by principles of participatory design. They will test promising agriculture technology breakthroughs, challenges, and tactics identified in the ethnographic engagements, and will take the form of "design sprints," a highly structured process widely used in the US tech industry for answering crucial questions with stakeholders, characterized by mapping the problem terrain, identifying risks and opportunities, concept generation, prototyping, evaluation and testing.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.