Genevieve Bell is a Senior Researcher within Intel Labs. She is currently running a three year research project focused on gaining a better understanding of the ways in which cultural practices in urban Asia are shaping people's relationships to new information and communication technologies. Bell has also conducted ethnographic research in a variety of consumer spaces, including malls, retail districts, and museums, within a range of different American households, and beyond the US, including a five-country, strategically situated, ethnographic study of European domestic spaces for several Intel product groups.

Prior to joining Intel in 1998, Bell taught anthropology and Native American Studies at Stanford University. Bell received her BA/MA in anthropology from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania in 1991. She earned a PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University in 1998. She is working on a book based on her fieldwork in Asia.

Talk title:
Inside Intel: Re-imagining computing for the 21st century.

Abstract:
The knowledge economy, the information society, ubiquitous computing, ambient displays, the digital home -- in reading the trade journals and mass media publications one might be forgiven for thinking that computational technology has finally transcended that ugly box on the desktop and become seamlessly woven into the fabric of our daily lives. For most of us living in the United States in the early 21st century, we know that transcendence is hardly complete and certainly not seamless. We struggle with new information and communication devices, attempting to manage their needs and our own, developing new forms of social etiquette, new ways of policing the boundaries between different spaces, places and relationships in our lives -- work, home, school, family, friends, clients, office, church.

In this talk, I want to reflect on the current trajectories for technology development and design. I want to do so from dual vantage points: as a researcher within a larger technology company and as a cultural anthropologist who has spent the last 3 years exploring the impact of cultural practices on people's relationships to new technologies in urban Asia. By taking a comparative perspective, I cast new light on the ways in which we 'imagine' technology, and the kinds of work it can and should do -- not just in a technical sense, but in a cultural one too. In so doing, the importance of gender, class and other cultural logics are thrown into stark relief.