Boundary Objects

A framework for cooperative cognition that preserves the sovereignty of Viewpoints is provided by the notion of boundary objects (Star & Griesemer, 1989).

How do scientific communities, for example, create lasting arrangements where they address systems of objects that are simultaneously local and global, common and specialized, shared and segregated?

The boundary object model assumes the fundamental ambiguity of objects (an idea taken directly from the Pragmatist notion that Meaning is given in use, not in antecedent characteristics) and the durability of arrangements to manage that ambiguity in cooperative ventures.

The durability implies the need to develop conventional or routine ways of working with the ambiguity; those conventions themselves may be seen as data structures from the design point of view, as material structures from the organizational point of view, or as working treaties from the political point of view.

⇒ Collaborative Link ⇒ TEDx Portland (Ward's talk)

⇒ Conventions and Routines

A number of concepts (collaboratories, network densification, infrastructural inversion, KDD, hybrid intelligence networks, strategic planning, and now boundary objects) have been identified in order to show that the sector of research this book deals with is a generative one. The question of how technology models society and society shapes technology, seamlessly, has become central to large-scale networked computing and the "webbed world" that now exists.

BOWKER, Geoffrey C., STAR, Susan Leigh, WILLIAM, Turner and LES, Gasser (eds.), 2014. Social Science, Technical Systems, and Cooperative Work: Beyond the Great Divide. New York: Psychology Press. ISBN 978-1-315-80584-9, p. xx and xvii