One of the great scientific theories is about the mundane, everyday observation that things fall to the earth, not away from it, or sideways to it. Starting from a very concrete and particular observation a theory was induced, then amplified and refined to cover not just apples, but falling bodies of all sorts. Lest you object that only the natural sciences can derived such a theory, let me remind you that Sack’s powerful theory of turn taking in conversation was formulated in the same manner.

To say that what happens among people trying to educate themselves about an unexpected and surprising elevator is unimportant because it SEEMS unimportant is a metaphysical position, not a scientific one. If there is anything common (one might even say lawful) about education into technology (which is education in the large), then it is to be found anywhere and everywhere people must go about educating themselves and those around them.

There are no small phenomena…

And, speaking of elevators, there are those in Einstein’s thought experiments that inspired his theory of relativity. A good illustration of the rule that it isn’t what catches people’s attention, it’s what they do with it.

John, one can then say that we can also have anthropology of bedrooms, anthropology of alleys, anthropology of ladders, anthropology of roofs, anthropology of curbs, anthropology of benches, etc. There’s also “fleeting togetherness” in them.

There are those among us who believe that writing about elevators and the behavior of people in them debases anthropology. I respectfully disagree. Here we have a piece that Max Weber, no less, was interested in “fleeting togetherness” as a social phenomenon and pays careful attention to the disruption of established habits by an unfamiliar set of controls. I find myself wondering how differently Erving Goffman’s take on this situation would have been from Weber’s. Would there be more concern about the habitual masks that people adopt in elevators and how these may come off a bit when the elevator doesn’t behave like an elevator should? My wandering thoughts throw up a memory of an essay by Walker Percy, inspired by a train accident on a New York commuter line and how different the world looks, he imagines, to a survivor who escaped without a scratch. And then–of course–the elevator in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, equipped with precognition, that tries to tell the hero, “You really don’t want to go there.” Which brings me to Claire’s recommendation, an essay by Latour that is all about what is involved in substituting non-human for human beings and then realizing that they have, in a sense, minds of their own. There is lots of good stuff to think about here.

And then I think, too, of the people I met at EPIC and the conversations I read on AnthroDesign. Noticing things like what goes on in new kinds of elevators is a way in which growing numbers of anthropologists are making a living. I don’t see anything to despise here.

http://consumerist.com/2010/11/most-close-door-buttons-are-just-there-to-make-you-feel-better.html

As a unit of analysis, the term and concept of “community” has come in to question and I was mostly trying to take a look at what I presumed to be a shared experience for many SM readers; and to point to a contemporary instantiation of this ephemeral, yet significant, social form. From your “good grief” and Adam’s introduction asking that I post on my Cyborganic work, I will stick to research, rather than commentary, in future.