What Would Margaret Mead Say?

Cultural anthropology is more than the study of aboriginal peoples. Architecture is about more than buildings and cities. Software development is more than programming. Software developers need a deeper grounding in design and a better understanding of other disciplines if they are to improve the current state of the practice. This Frito Friday will include a talk by David West and Jenny Quillien on how cultural anthropology and other disciplines can improve software design.

Networks underlie societies and architecture as much as they are part of computer systems. David West & Jenny Quillien link diverse disciplines in this discussion of a paper they are preparing for Onward/OOPSLA, the annual conference of object-oriented design software developers.

They range from the architectural theories of Christopher Alexander’s Nature of Order to cultural anthropology and Peter Csermely’s analysis of network structures in Weak Links. Dave & Jenny argue these should influence the future of software development via Agile Software Development. It should be a lively discussion as they say, “We intend to be pretty interesting and definitely provocative.”

Jenny Quillien is a research associate with the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe. She worked with Alexander on his book and authored Delight’s Muse: on Christopher Alexander’s The Nature of Order. Dave West, who has been a professor at NMHU, the College of Santa Fe, and the University of St. Paul in Minnesota, is currently teaching software design for NMHU through Santa Fe Complex.