https://www.cairn.info/revue-hermes-la-revue-2015-3-page-159.htm?contenu=resume
A Researcher’s Commitment in the Age of Individual Digital Creation
This article dissects the how and why of a researcher’s commitment when s/he attempts to break away from the balancing act that sociologists have to perform in order to produce neutral descriptions of the logic obeyed by those involved in producing innovation in the field of connected objects, observe the codes, scenes and rituals used and map out the controversies that arise, while also trying not to indulge themselves in an overweening form of techno-critical discourse that is actually irrelevant to the concepts and the realities being analyzed. As connectedness and calculation become all-pervasive with Big Data and the “internet of things,” we believe there is a need to help bring a different connected world into being, based on communication-capable sensors and environmental measurement data. To counterbalance the paradigm of controversy, we suggest, now that a post-digital turning point is upon us, the need to explore the idea of counter-action, in the sense of “doing things differently,” as a way of furthering the power of expression built into the internet to the benefit of data-informed citizenship.