Theme 4

 The article that I chose for this week’s assignment is ”Knowledge and networks: An experimental test of how network knowledge affects coordination” by Daniel Enemark, Mathew D. McCubbins, Nicholas Weller.

The motivation for the paper lies in a previous argument that adding connections to a network or changing the structure of existing connections in a network can support successful coordination. However, changing connections or network structure can also have negative effects and there is therefor a need to search for an alternative way to add connections when dealing with network coordination problems.

The article presents experimental evidence that a network doesn’t have to change structure to increase people’s knowledge and coordination, but that people quickly can coordinate over networks when they have the opportunity to observe the full network; a more complete view over the network leads to faster coordination.

By using an experimental method they are able to test how the design of a network affects the coordination and performance. Their study is built on two main theories – graph theory and game theory. One issue that is brought up is when performing experimental tasks there are obstacles to generalizability which means that no matter of how many tasks they run, they can’t be sure to demonstrate that the effects are universal. However, by using two different coordination forms and a broad range of network structures the range of environment helps in improving the generalization.

For this particular study the use of a experimental method is really helpful since the authors wants to observe how people interact and coordinate within certain networks. One thing that they didn’t consider in their study is the knowledge of different network structure that the subjects already possess. This may have an impact on the outcome of the study.

Qualitative methods are helpful when looking at certain behaviors, and in this case how people interact with a system. By only collecting data regarding how people for example think that they would act (a more quantitative method) would not only be less detailed but could also provide wrong information about what is really going on in the situation. What people think that they do and what they actually do are two completely different things.

For this week we also read the article “Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses” by Fernaeus, Y and Jacobsson, M. The article presents ActDress which is a form of physical programming using physical markings to be attached directly to a digital artifact. Examples could be using physical labels, clothing or other accessories for controlling physically embodied systems.

The motivation and purpose of the ActDress concept is to provide the end-user with their own control and programming language when it comes to electronic devices.

A question that I would like to discuss for next time is whether qualitative or quantitative methods are becoming more important in our digitalized world?