This article draws on ethnographic research in three rural places in the Western United States to understand how rural workers incorporate the Internet into their work practices. We find two key, divergent types of work in rural areas that leverage the Internet: (1) telework and (2) work to market and sell goods and services online. We consider why these two forms of Internet-enabled work are pursued by different segments of the rural population, attending to the socio-demographic variation within and between these two broad categories. Some key differences include whether workers are urban transplants or rural-originating, in “white-collar” or “blue-collar” occupations, and whether they are men or women. We argue that deficit framings that focus on inadequate infrastructure or absent skills are insufficient to understand such patterns of differentiated use. Instead a sociocultural explanation is needed: one that draws connections between work cultures, occupational values, skills, and practices.

Recent interest in ethical AI has brought a slew of values, including fairness, into conversations about technology design. Research in the area of algorithmic fairness tends to be rooted in questions of distribution that can be subject to precise formalism and technical implementation. We seek to expand this conversation to include the experiences of people subject to algorithmic classification and decision-making. By examining tweets about the "Twitter algorithm" we consider the wide range of concerns and desires Twitter users express. We find a concern with fairness (narrowly construed) is present, particularly in the ways users complain that the platform enacts a political bias against conservatives. However, we find another important category of concern, evident in attempts to exert control over the algorithm. Twitter users who seek control do so for a variety of reasons, many well justified. We argue for the need for better and clearer definitions of what constitutes legitimate and illegitimate control over algorithmic processes and to consider support for users who wish to enact their own collective choices.

We present a microsociology of Minecraft play based on ethnographic observations of a 40-hour co-located Minecraft camp for 28 low-income and minority children in July 2015, supplemented by usage statistics and follow-up interviews. We consider the equity challenges presented by (1) Minecraft itself and the ecosystem supporting it; (2) the multiplayer server we used, which was founded on principles of "connected learning"; and (3) our own attempts to promote equity by providing scheduled access to the game in a computer lab. We were partially successful in overcoming players' at-home computer access limitations and improving their computer/technical literacy. Still, we found that language literacy, parental abilities and involvement, racial and gender identities, and diverging interests set our campers apart from others on the server. Overall, the in-game invisibility of our campers worked against the equity aims of connected learning and point to broader patterns of bias in games like Minecraft and other communities of/for children.

In this paper, we revisit a study that has become canonical in ICTD, economist Robert Jensen's study of mobile phone use in fishing markets in north Kerala. Jensen found that the use of mobile phones to share market price information made fish markets more efficient while also improving producer and consumer welfare. Based on our own ethnographic case study in the region, our goal is to understand the geographic and political-economic conditions in which Jensen's findings hold and to examine questions of generalizability. We show that what makes the fish trade in north Kerala a special case is, in part, due to its coastal geography and prevalent credit relationships that provided fishers the flexibility to optimize profits by selling at different markets. However, we also found that those working in various roles in Kerala's fishing industry emphasized more broadly the use of phones in maintaining trade relations, facilitating coordination, and protecting themselves during times of risk, vulnerability, or emergency. We suggest that parsimonious models, such as Jensen's, can generate blind spots, which are problematic when such studies are used to draw broader conclusions about policy and technology design.

Much of the previous research in context-aware computing has sought to find a workable definition of context and to develop systems that could detect and interpret contextual characteristics of an user environment. However, less time has been spent studying the usability of these types of systems. This was the goal of our project. E-graffiti is a context-aware application that detects the user's location on a college campus and displays text notes to the user based on their location. Additionally, it allows them to create notes that they can associate with a specific location. We released E-graffiti to 57 students who were using laptops that could access the campus wireless network. Their use of E-graffiti was logged in a remote database and they were also required to fill out a questionnaire towards the end of the semester. The lessons learned from the evaluation of E-graffiti point to themes other designers of ubiquitous and context-aware applications may need to address in designing their own systems. Some of the issues that emerged in the evaluation stage included difficulties with a misleading conceptual model, lack of use due to the reliance on explicit user input, the need for a highly relevant contextual focus, and the potential benefits of rapid, ongoing prototype development in tandem with user evaluation.