Digital Anthropology
This MIT seminar from the Media Arts and Sciences program and Sloan School of Management treats digital devices as tools for studying human behavior rather than just gadgets. Students work through two strands: technology testbeds, where research-lab prototypes and pre-release corporate products are deployed into real organizations to observe the social fallout, and sociometrics, where digital artifacts are used to measure the complex social dynamics of groups. Readings and discussion draw on experimental sociology and anthropology methods applied to emerging media. The course materials on MIT OpenCourseWare include the syllabus, readings list, and assignment structure from the original Spring 2003 offering, free to access with no certificate attached. It suits anyone curious about how researchers turn gadgets into instruments for observing social life.