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Hello, I’m Justin. I’m an editor and independent researcher, readily nerd-sniped by edge cases and emerging phenomena.

Justin Pickard, dithered

Operating from a home base in the haunted, flood-prone city of York, I use ethnographic methods to uncover hidden meanings and challenge dominant narratives. In my work life, I’ve sought out opportunities to pursue open-ended, exploratory research in different settings. I have:

  • Co-founded a research company: Partnered with public and private-sector clients to investigate the diverse contexts in which technologies are imagined, designed, used, and controlled.
  • Taught observational methods: Developed and delivered courses and training on ethnographic fieldwork, observational research, and qualitative methods for studying sociotechnical systems and online communities.
  • Facilitated workshops: Designed and led participatory workshops with diverse stakeholders, using creative, experimental, and collaborative techniques to explore complex issues.
  • Participated in collaborative prototyping: Joined an interdisciplinary team at MediaLab Matadero to conduct exploratory research and prototyping on artificial intelligence and human-machine intimacy.
  • Conducted long-term fieldwork: Carried out ethnographic research on the cultural politics of infrastructure in Gujarat, with implications for policymaking and urban planning.

These experiences (and others) instilled a deep appreciation for creative, cross-disciplinary inquiry. Today, I am happiest working with others to decipher complex or uncertain situations, with a particular focus on:

  • Appropriate technology: Low-tech, decentralised technologies, tailored to specific contexts and user needs.
  • Communities of practice: The dynamics of practical knowledge development and dissemination within groups.
  • Translocal processes: The interplay of local practices and global forces, and how this shapes technologies, policy, and the built environment.
  • Knowledge bases, repositories, and information retrieval: How people navigate and use information in everyday contexts.
  • Improvisation and contingency: How people adapt and innovate in real-time, responding to changing conditions through technology design and use.

Having recently tumbled into the gravity well of generative language models, I am also now trying to learn Python.

Log

Date Title Categories
15 Oct 2024 Organised Atoms in Cornwall workshops, geology, technology, heritage, tools, learning
15 Sep 2024 Latent futures in Cambridge talks, genai, archiving, prototypes, intimacy, latency, futures
21 Aug 2024 Procedural portraits (2): Empathy and innovation in ‘Eno’ authorship, creativity, empathy, prototypes, documentary, film
17 Aug 2024 Procedural portraits (1): Decoding ‘Eno’s’ generative structure authorship, creativity, archiving, databases, documentary, film
29 Jun 2024 Dearth quotes, genai, authorship, creativity, tools
23 Jun 2024 Logical piano: 2024-W25 weeknotes
17 Jun 2024 Barefoot and malleable quotes, computational thinking, genai
9 Jun 2024 Countless openings quotes, combinatorics, genai
25 May 2024 Deep play: 2024-W21 weeknotes
17 May 2024 Engrossed: 2024-W20 weeknotes
6 Jan 2024 Choices about what is salient context
20 Apr 2023 Binnacle meta

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