Seeing Work: Constructing Visions of Work in and through Data

Abstract

My dissertation research explores the role technologies play in shaping how work practices are seen, imagined, and valued. I focus on how data remnants and traces, the technological residue left in the wake of human-computer interactions, become anchors that orient the construction of seeing work within an organization. To examine this, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork at a high tech firm and focus on efforts to reinvent an email client. I explore how seeing work in and through trace data paints increasingly narrow and modular portraits of work, reframing the contours and potential of vision and visibility in the workplace.