Coding Places: Software Practice in a South American City

摘要

Coding Places is an ethnographic attempt to understand the nature of globalization, and in particular the nature of globalized software development. Yuri Takhteyev challenges popular op-ed pronouncements, such as "distance is dead" and "the world is flat" and placeless. In fact, he argues that in order to understand the phenomenon of globalization we must pay close attention to local place. The studied local place in the book is Rio de Janeiro, a city widely known for its beaches and soccer but also as a "wrong" place for high-tech work. Takhteyev argues that "we have much to gain from looking at software development in this unlikely place ... so we can learn a lot about place and its persisting importance in today's 'knowledge economy'" (p. 2). He draws from Anthony Giddens's theory of structuration to lay the theoretical foundation of his book, specifically the notion of "worlds of practice"-"systems of activities comprised of people, ideas, and material objects, linked simultaneously by shared meanings and joint projects" (p. 2).