Making time on Mars / Zara Mirmalek.

9780262358217 (electronic bk.)
0262358212 (electronic bk.)
9780262043854
0262043858

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2020]

©2020.

English

1 online resource.

QB641 .M544 2020eb

331.7/61559923

"Making Time on Mars is a book about people, robots, processes and intuitions working together to make time on Mars. In early 2004, for over ninety days NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers mission set their daily work activities on Earth according to "Mars time" clocks. Two local Mars times, one for each of the two Mars rovers, drove work timelines for all mission members. A successful mission that resulted in new discoveries and scientific knowledge, it is a fascinating case of how time and work relationships are produced through cultural features shaped by everyday work activities, organizational infrastructure, and social and historical context. Though time is an organizing principle in most workplaces, it is not traditionally a particularly exciting part of daily work. But, within the context of a mission to Mars, familiar time and work relationships are rendered strange, and strangely familiar. This book is based on empirical data collected during a one-year ethnographic field study conducted at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory by the author, who was a mission member, and included working on Earth according to Mars time. An interdisciplinary disciplinary lens (anthropology, communication, history, organization studies, and science and technology studies) is used to examine organizing and conducting robotic science exploration on Mars. The book includes chapters on the historical context of the MER workplace (NASA and JPL); MER team people, robots, and workspace; the primary technology (time) for organizing co-located and remote workgroups; context on the limitations of the time/work relationship; professional identity and human-robot relationships that shaped working according to Mars time. The book's intent is to give the public a closer look, and a broader view, on a project that was publicly funded and with goals that included producing knowledge about natural work that would benefit all. It is also the intent to show, through the cultural production of Mars time for remote telerobotic science work, how contemporary and historical human-technology relationships inform assumptions about clock time as an unalterable, natural phenomenon. The organizational relationship between clock time and work, while still operational, is outdated. Organizational and societal values shape people's choices (and consequences of those choices) at work that include formally addressing problematic technology, holding institutions or individuals responsible for breakdowns, developing informal workarounds, and taking on additional work to support the technology that was intended to support people. These values and choices constitute some of the cultural norms that are part of the socio-technical infrastructure supporting space science and exploration. These relationships warrant examination and experimentation to uncouple what is natural about time from what can be changed in order for technology to support rather than drive human temporality at work"-- Provided by publisher.

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