Tools for social analysis of technology

1. What is culture?--
Learned and shared behavior (including "verbal behavior"). Classic categories: Kinship, Economics, Education, Politics, Religion, Age--
Scales from nation to institution; boundry can be age, sex, ethnicity, disability, profession, etc.

3. Semiotic v.s. Materialist Analysis
--Pierce; trinity of signifier, symbol, signified--
Marx; material relations determine social system

4. Disciplines

Anthropology
functionalism (e.g. Malinowski; needs hierarchy and equilibrium)
structuralism (e.g. Levi-Strauss; mediation of opposites)
psychological anthro (e.g. Bateson & Mead; analog representation)
poststructuralism (e.g. Geertz; thick description)

Cultural Studies
discourse analysis
"cyborgology"

Sociology
symbolic interactionism (e.g. signifying class status by dressing down).

Human Factors Engineering (cognitive ergonomics; human-machine interaction).

Second Order Cybernetics