Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work

“Balsamo’s passionate concerns with pedagogy, gender equality, and imagining new futures enliven every page… I drew much from Balsamo’s energy and enthusiasm in inviting us to revisit a collection of some of the most ingenious experiments in the history of digital technology–wonderfully original inventions of an extraordinarily creative generation that we have already come to take for granted, or even forgotten.” –Bonnie Nardi “American Studies”

“The argument pursued throughout the book is coherent and sustained. It makes a valuable intervention in thinking about design and design processes, technocultures and technological innovation. If you want a taster, try the website – http: //designingculture.net.”– “European Journal of Communication”

“This is an erudite yet accessible cross-disciplinary text that makes a substantial contribution to the field of cultural studies, and also serves as a welcome and timely call to arms not only for scholars and scientists in the humanities and technology, but also for those engaged in educational policy, institutional strategy and innovation.”–Helen Keegan “Times Higher Education”

“Designing Culture is a tour de force, offering a unique vision of the possibilities for a contemporary cultural studies. Refusing to separate research from pedagogy, technology from culture, or innovation from imagination, Anne Balsamo maps the concrete complexities of specific design processes, and opens up new ways of thinking about–and teaching–technocultures in relation to broader socio-political fields. Her book is required reading for anyone working with contemporary cultures.”–Lawrence Grossberg, author of Cultural Studies in the Future Tense

“Designing Culture is a road map to the technological imagination, provided by one of our best theorists and practitioners. Anne Balsamo’s architecture of the future rests solidly on her own experiments, inventions, theoretical engagements, pedagogical innovations, and interactive hermeneutics. This is cultural theory at its best, brilliant, bold, and daring.”–Cathy N. Davidson, Duke University

“In this sweeping expansion of the classic innovation literature, Anne Balsamo portrays both the necessity and the challenge of cultivating the technological imagination in all of us. Her experiences as a researcher and designer who has worked across cultural domains–as a humanist in the academy, as a research scientist in an industrial innovation center, and as an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley–give her a unique ability to foster conversations among diverse groups of thinkers who want to engage with issues of culture and technological innovation. Balsamo not only describes ways to take culture seriously in the design of new technologies but also elaborates why it is ethically imperative to do so. Her insights into expanding the traditional considerations of socio-technical design to consider issues of culture are coming at a critical time. This is a great book that should be read by anyone interested in creating new technologies of imagination–for enhancing learning in the twenty-first century and creating expressive cultural platforms for the future.”–John Seely Brown, former Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and Director of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)