SIRIUS Researchers at Conference of Science and Technology Studies (4S) in Boston

From August 30th to September 2nd, Elena Parmiggiani from the Sirius team at NTNU will be attending the Annual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), in Boston, Mass, USA.

The conference is the most important international event for researchers in the field of Science and Technology Studies, one of the fields of expertise of the Sirius team at NTNU. This field focuses on the way social and technical aspects always mutually influence each other.

Elena will present her ongoing work with Eric Monteiro and Thomas Østerlie titled “Synthetic situations and algorithmic phenomena”, aimed at better understanding the evolution of work practices in the oil and gas industry in increasing digital settings (described theoretically as “synthetic situations”).

The presentation will focus on three case studies followed by the NTNU team, namely the surveillance of the drilling activity, the modelling of oil and gas reservoirs, and subsea environmental monitoring. Among other aspects, the presentation will focus on the role of noise in large datasets as productive source of information over time, that might turn out to have business value.

The presentation is part of a session which problematizes the active role of software and machines in different aspects of work and life, including genetics, healthcare, and the use of bots in social networks.

This is the complete abstract of Elena’s presentation: https://goo.gl/WXrpof

More details about the conference are available here: http://www.4sonline.org/meeting