Office workers still rely on their bodies to communicate with each other, despite many decades of technology use. This Pecha Kucha explores how and in what ways office work involves people’s bodies and this “bodywork” plays in productivity. I argue that technology is now able to emulate some effects of bodywork.
Sam Ladner is a sociologist who researches the intersection of work, technology, and organizations. She is a senior researcher at Microsoft in the Applications and Services Group, where she studies emerging productivity practices. She is also the author of Practical Ethnography: A Guide To Doing Ethnography in The Private Sector. sladner@microsoft.com | @sladner on Twitter
References
Geertz, C. (2000). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Nardi, B., & Whittaker, S. (2002). Face-to-Face Communication in Distributed Work. In P. J. Hinds & S. Kiesler (Eds.), Distributed Work (pp. 89–113). Boston: MIT Press.
Olson, J., Teasely, S., Covi, L., & Olson, G. (2002). The (Currently) Unique Advantages of Collocated Work. In P. Hinds & S. Kiesler (Eds.), Distributed Work (pp. 113–135). Boston: MIT Press.
Stahl, G. (2006). Group Cognition: Computer Support for Building Collaborative Knowledge. Cambridge: MIT Press.
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