Philippe Sormani
Biographic Data
| ID | 269387 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Philippe Sormani |
| GIVEN NAMES | Philippe |
| FAMILY NAME | Sormani |
| SIGNATURE | SORMANI P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Lausanne |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5890-899X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 99 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Dismantling and its (dis-)contents
Dismantling? Other D-words have found their way into academic discourse and beyond, repurposed or invented words such as deconstruction, différance or diffraction. In contrast, this essay draws its inspiration from an ethnographic description of the routine dismantling of an exhibition – its démontage, as referred to by local curators. Over a year and a half, the exhibition introduced a broader public to new forms of “artificial intelligence”, fr…
Drama at Work
Enabling ‘AI’? The situated production of commensurabilities
How can we examine so-called 'artificial intelligence' ('AI') without turning our backs on the STS tradition that questions both notions of artificiality and intelligence? This special issue attempts a step to the side: Instead of considering 'AI' as something that does or does not exist (and then taking a position on its benefits or harms), its ambition is to document, in an empirical and agnostic way, the performances that make, sometimes, 'AI'…
Interfacing AlphaGo
For decades, playing Go at a professional level has counted among those things that, in Dreyfus's words, 'computers still can't do'. This changed dramatically in early March 2016, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul, South Korea, when AlphaGo , the most sophisticated Go program at the time, beat Lee Sedol, an internationally top-ranked Go professional, by four games to one. A documentary movie has captured and crafted the unfolding drama and, sinc…
Reading and Reworking 'Studies of Work in the Sciences' (Parts I & Ii)
Just what are we doing when we're describing AI? Harvey Sacks, the commentator machine, and the descriptive politics of the new artificial intelligence
In dialogue with the work of Heather Love and colleagues, this article makes use of a peculiar 'descriptive assemblage' proposed by Harvey Sacks (1963) - that of the 'commentator machine' - to open up issues of 'descriptive politics' in the field of contemporary Artificial Intelligence (AI). We do so by reviewing the gameplay of Google DeepMind's AlphaGo - an algorithm designed to outperform human players at the game of Go - with a focus on the i…
Reflexive Ethnography as 'Data Science'? A Sociological Contribution to Praxeology
Introduction
Repair Work Ethnographies
Deconstructing Ethnography, Reconstructing Ethnomethodology? A Reflexive Note
Respecifying Lab Ethnography
Respecifying Lab Ethnography delivers the first ethnomethodological study of current experimental physics in action, describing the disciplinary orientation of lab work and exploring the discipline in its social order, formal stringency and skilful performance - in situ and in vivo. Drawing upon extensive participant observation, this book articulates and draws upon two major strands of ethnomethodological inquiry: reflexive ethnography and video…
Fun in Go
Les « Projets de coopération et d'innovation »
La présente contribution propose l’étude d’un dispositif de financement par projet particulier : les projets de coopération et d’innovation. Cette étude vise à analyser la manière dont les contraintes propres à ce type d’instrument sont légitimées par la Confédération et appréhendées par les chercheurs-enseignants financés par cet instrument. L’analyse menée montre les difficultés rencontrées par la Confédération à modifier les institutions acadé…
Denis Jérôme, David Pontille. Petite sociologie de la signalétique. Les coulisses des panneaux du métro
Petite sociologie de la signalétique est le titre de l’ouvrage récemment publié par Jérôme Denis et David Pontille dans la collection Sciences Sociales des Presses des Mines. Comme son sous-titre l’indique, l’ouvrage se propose d’explorer les coulisses des panneaux du métro à Paris, tout en faisant un détour par le « subway » de New York. L’expression métaphorique des « coulisses » pointe deux aspects qui ont tendance à échapper aux usagers quoti…
Driving and ‘Passengering
We spend ever‐increasing periods of our lives travelling in cars, yet quite what it is we do while travelling, aside from driving the vehicle itself, is largely overlooked. Drawing on analyses of video records of a series of quite ordinary episodes of car travel, in this paper we begin to document what happens during car journeys. The material concentrates on situations where people are travelling together in order to examine how social units suc…
Driving and ‘Passengering
We spend ever‐increasing periods of our lives travelling in cars, yet quite what it is we do while travelling, aside from driving the vehicle itself, is largely overlooked. Drawing on analyses of video records of a series of quite ordinary episodes of car travel, in this paper we begin to document what happens during car journeys. The material concentrates on situations where people are travelling together in order to examine how social units suc…
Respecifying Lab Ethnography
Respecifying Lab Ethnography delivers the first ethnomethodological study of current experimental physics in action, describing the disciplinary orientation of lab work and exploring the discipline in its social order, formal stringency and skilful performance - in situ and in vivo. Drawing upon extensive participant observation, this book articulates and draws upon two major strands of ethnomethodological inquiry: reflexive ethnography and video…
Just what are we doing when we're describing AI? Harvey Sacks, the commentator machine, and the descriptive politics of the new artificial intelligence
In dialogue with the work of Heather Love and colleagues, this article makes use of a peculiar 'descriptive assemblage' proposed by Harvey Sacks (1963) - that of the 'commentator machine' - to open up issues of 'descriptive politics' in the field of contemporary Artificial Intelligence (AI). We do so by reviewing the gameplay of Google DeepMind's AlphaGo - an algorithm designed to outperform human players at the game of Go - with a focus on the i…
Fun in Go
Enabling ‘AI’? The situated production of commensurabilities
How can we examine so-called 'artificial intelligence' ('AI') without turning our backs on the STS tradition that questions both notions of artificiality and intelligence? This special issue attempts a step to the side: Instead of considering 'AI' as something that does or does not exist (and then taking a position on its benefits or harms), its ambition is to document, in an empirical and agnostic way, the performances that make, sometimes, 'AI'…
Interfacing AlphaGo
For decades, playing Go at a professional level has counted among those things that, in Dreyfus's words, 'computers still can't do'. This changed dramatically in early March 2016, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul, South Korea, when AlphaGo , the most sophisticated Go program at the time, beat Lee Sedol, an internationally top-ranked Go professional, by four games to one. A documentary movie has captured and crafted the unfolding drama and, sinc…
Reflexive Ethnography as 'Data Science'? A Sociological Contribution to Praxeology
Driving and ‘Passengering
We spend ever‐increasing periods of our lives travelling in cars, yet quite what it is we do while travelling, aside from driving the vehicle itself, is largely overlooked. Drawing on analyses of video records of a series of quite ordinary episodes of car travel, in this paper we begin to document what happens during car journeys. The material concentrates on situations where people are travelling together in order to examine how social units suc…
Denis Jérôme, David Pontille. Petite sociologie de la signalétique. Les coulisses des panneaux du métro
Petite sociologie de la signalétique est le titre de l’ouvrage récemment publié par Jérôme Denis et David Pontille dans la collection Sciences Sociales des Presses des Mines. Comme son sous-titre l’indique, l’ouvrage se propose d’explorer les coulisses des panneaux du métro à Paris, tout en faisant un détour par le « subway » de New York. L’expression métaphorique des « coulisses » pointe deux aspects qui ont tendance à échapper aux usagers quoti…
Les « Projets de coopération et d'innovation »
La présente contribution propose l’étude d’un dispositif de financement par projet particulier : les projets de coopération et d’innovation. Cette étude vise à analyser la manière dont les contraintes propres à ce type d’instrument sont légitimées par la Confédération et appréhendées par les chercheurs-enseignants financés par cet instrument. L’analyse menée montre les difficultés rencontrées par la Confédération à modifier les institutions acadé…
Fun in Go
Respecifying Lab Ethnography
Respecifying Lab Ethnography delivers the first ethnomethodological study of current experimental physics in action, describing the disciplinary orientation of lab work and exploring the discipline in its social order, formal stringency and skilful performance - in situ and in vivo. Drawing upon extensive participant observation, this book articulates and draws upon two major strands of ethnomethodological inquiry: reflexive ethnography and video…
Deconstructing Ethnography, Reconstructing Ethnomethodology? A Reflexive Note
Repair Work Ethnographies
Introduction
Just what are we doing when we're describing AI? Harvey Sacks, the commentator machine, and the descriptive politics of the new artificial intelligence
In dialogue with the work of Heather Love and colleagues, this article makes use of a peculiar 'descriptive assemblage' proposed by Harvey Sacks (1963) - that of the 'commentator machine' - to open up issues of 'descriptive politics' in the field of contemporary Artificial Intelligence (AI). We do so by reviewing the gameplay of Google DeepMind's AlphaGo - an algorithm designed to outperform human players at the game of Go - with a focus on the i…
Reflexive Ethnography as 'Data Science'? A Sociological Contribution to Praxeology
Enabling ‘AI’? The situated production of commensurabilities
How can we examine so-called 'artificial intelligence' ('AI') without turning our backs on the STS tradition that questions both notions of artificiality and intelligence? This special issue attempts a step to the side: Instead of considering 'AI' as something that does or does not exist (and then taking a position on its benefits or harms), its ambition is to document, in an empirical and agnostic way, the performances that make, sometimes, 'AI'…
Interfacing AlphaGo
For decades, playing Go at a professional level has counted among those things that, in Dreyfus's words, 'computers still can't do'. This changed dramatically in early March 2016, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul, South Korea, when AlphaGo , the most sophisticated Go program at the time, beat Lee Sedol, an internationally top-ranked Go professional, by four games to one. A documentary movie has captured and crafted the unfolding drama and, sinc…
Reading and Reworking 'Studies of Work in the Sciences' (Parts I & Ii)
Dismantling and its (dis-)contents
Dismantling? Other D-words have found their way into academic discourse and beyond, repurposed or invented words such as deconstruction, différance or diffraction. In contrast, this essay draws its inspiration from an ethnographic description of the routine dismantling of an exhibition – its démontage, as referred to by local curators. Over a year and a half, the exhibition introduced a broader public to new forms of “artificial intelligence”, fr…
Drama at Work
Sociology (12 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Ethnography (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Anthropology (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI (4 works)