Thursday, June 04, 2009

The one sentence thesis

Getting the PhD thesis down to 160 characters or less :)

What is the relationship between how people think about change and what they do to enact it?

This question is explored with reference to changing health professional practices where interpersonal interactions are increasingly mediated through computer and communication technologies.

The context of this study involves a youth counselling centre integrating emergent forms of computer and communication technologies (CCT's).

The methodology involves uncovering workstories of change. This will involve an exploration of how people think about change, what are the hopes or fears when integrating new technologies into their practice, and, as much as we think we are the designers or directors of our own practices, in what ways might the integration of CCTs be shaping our practices and/or shaping us?

Actor-network theory (ANT) has been chosen as a methodology as it lends itself to describing new practices particularly where practices change quickly. The theory emphasizes relationships held, dissolving and evolving; between objects and between people. This material-semiotic focus allows for the influence of both human and non-human actors to be considered.

I feel pressure to be able to articulate this in one sentence, and by implication, I'm not clearly enough focused if i cant do this.
I judge myself harshly embarrassed that I need more sentences.
It's ironic that I want 6 sentences when what I am studying involves txt messaging :)
Yet I'm overwhelmed in data, its spilling on the floors of the study, smothers my pinboard, my desk, the laptop, my ipod.
How to compress this?
Surely Einstein didnt know E=MC squared before he did the data analysis.
Maybe the one sentence thing denies the iterative shape inherent.
Maybe retrospectively its easier to say I studied ...
"Make it simple but not simpler than it needs to be." Einstein's understanding is not that brevity is good for its own sake, but because it keeps it as simple as needed. I need to put this in its wider context. I need to talk of the important contextual specific determinants. I need more words and I want a longer attention span from those asking.
:)

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