Hi, That is indeed an interesting question. The answer would be pretty much determined by what the individual wishes to research, and the particular focus they wish to take. I see absolutely no reason, in theory, a social scientist should have to know perl, grep or other scripting languages. If they do it may enable them to take their research in a different direction. I use an Apple Powerbook with MacOSX installed, but I never have to use UNIX for my day to day work and my research. Having said that, I have a good knowledge of UNIX and can use grep and javascript if I have to. I could also use perl but would rather jump of a bridge into a swiftly flowing river first. My technical background has enabled me to understand the reasons why certain things function the way they do on the Internet and use some of this knowledge in explicating my findings from a sociotechnical point of view. Obviously, there will be some tools/software etc that people need to use because of the direction they wish to take their research and they may have been developed for command line use only because that is all the original developer needed. I guess that would be one of the factors others have to consider when adopting the tool. Can they learn how to use it? Or is there a better tool available that still meets budgetary constraints. In other words if you only know how to use a spade, is there any point in hiring a mechanical digger that you don't know how to operate to dig that drain you promised you would do 6 months ago. Or do you pay a commercial operator to come in and do it for you? Or take a course in mechanical digger operation? Andrew -- email: andrewwenn@mac.com internet: http://homepage.mac.com/andrewwenn/ On 06/06/2005, at 3:22 PM, Elizabeth Van Couvering wrote:
This comment raises I think an interesting issue, to what extent ought we to be familiar with computer science as Internet researchers? In other words, should we know the basics of programming, of UNIX, of html, etc.?
My own knowledge is pretty patchy - I did two semesters of algorithms (in Pascal as I recall) about 15 years ago in college; I can hand-code a website with basic HTML and CSS but no scripting; I used to be able to write AppleScripts; and I can navigate up and down a unix system (I basically know the 'ls' command and the 'cd' command). I know what a webserver does and can read log files. And owing to my research I now know something about how search engines function :-) That's it, though -- perl and python are strangers to me, I can't gzip or untar things, and as for the grep commands in AtlasTi... well, let's just say I'm probably not using the program to its full extent.
Still, I know more than most of the other people I know who are studying new media. But is that right? Should I know more, should they know more? Do you think there is a minimum level of technical competence that you need?
Elizabeth
2) I am a social scientist, as I (maybe wrongly) thought were most of the people on this list. I am familiar with UNIX, which already seems to be kind of a rarity among social scientists. Most of us aren't and, I might add, shouldn't.
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