Infrastructures+(Wilcox)

Like Heidegger’s hammer, infrastructures are invisible bundles of technologies and protocols on which a practice or set of practices rely, until they break down. Star (1999) tacitly acknowledges this the Heideggerian antecedent to the theorization of infrastructure by her first order characterization of it as “invisible,” and “ready-to-hand” (p. 380). Yet Star goes on to offer a number of clarifications and supplements to this view, complicating the simple notions of infrastructure as neutral background. According to Star, infrastructure possess the following properties:


 * // It possesses **“Embeddedness**,” in that it is “sunk into and inside of other structures, social arrangements, and technologies…”; //
 * // It has **“Transparency**,” in that “it does not have to reinvented each time or assembled for each task, but invisibly supports those tasks // …”;
 * // Spatial or temporal “**reach or scope”** beyond a single event or site; //
 * // It is “**learned as a part of membership”** to a community of practice; //
 * // It depends upon **“links with conventions of practice“** and “both shapes and is shaped by the conventions of a community of practice”; //
 * // It produces the “**embodiment of standards…**tak[ing] on transparency by plugging into other infrastructures and tools in a standardized fashion”; //
 * // It is “**built on an installed base”** and “wrestles with the inertia” of this base (for example, “optical fibers run along old railroad lines”); //
 * // It **“becomes visible upon breakdown”**; //
 * // It “**is fixed in modular increments, not all at once or globally**”; // (p. 381-82)

Infrastructure, then, is always a set of relations, as according to Star “[one] person's infrastructure is another person's topic, or difficulty…infrastructure is a fundamentally relational concept, becoming real infrastructure in relation to organized practices" (p. 380). More broadly, this point of view is influenced by Bateson: “what can be studied is always a relationship or an infinite regress of relationships. Never a ‘thing’” (1978, p. 249).

Taking this distinction between thing and relation further, infrastructure is not a noun; it’s a verb signifying a practice or process. If we can ‘structure’ a set of elements, we can also ‘(infra)structure’ them, meaning to embed, imbue with taken-for-grantedness, make invisible, and integrate with our conventions. As Star points out in a series of methodological tips for studying them, infrastructures are inscribed with master narratives, which seem to “[speak] unconsciously from the presumed center of things” (p. 384). Such inscriptions are the results of decisions made in the course of standardization work, undertaken at strategic points in the ‘infrastructuring’ process and can, with difficulty, be traced and identified.

Some philosophers of technology have implicitly concerned themselves with the politics of infrastructures. Feenberg (2006 [1999]) calls attention to the ‘infrastructuring’ process by identifying technical codes as sites of political and legislative work (following Winner [1986]). Borgmann’s critique of the “device paradigm” and articulation of its antidotes, the “focal thing” and “focal practice,” can also be read as a political critique of the “infrastructuring” process in relation to the relative invisibility, inaccessibility, and engagement of artifacts.

In the human and social sciences, infrastructure has been used as a trope by virtue of its commonplace meaning or viewed as a problematic that is not nearly as neutral and frictionless as its meaning suggests. For example, Dourish and Bell found infrastructure to be a useful trope in imagining space as infrastructure for embodied, ubiquitous computing (2007). Meanwhile, in the context of ecological sustainability, Shove, Chappells, and van Vliet (2005) identify the “infrastructures of provision” that enable and constrain the supply of populations with water, energy, goods, food, and other taken-for-granted necessities and luxuries as crucial sites for further inquiry and innovation. Given the ambiguity of the term and the number of crises related in some way to the characteristics of one infrastructure or another—or to the deteriorating condition of “Infrastructure” in general—infrastructure, as trope and problematic, will likely enjoy continued attention as trope, problematic, or object of inquiry for some time.

References:

Bateson, G. (1978). //Steps to an ecology of mind.// New York: Ballantine.

Borgmann, A. (1984). //Technology and the character of contemporary life//. Chicago; University of Chicago Press.

Dourish, P. and G. Bell. (2007). The infrastructure of experience and the experience of infrastructure: Meaning and structure in everyday encounters with space. //Environment and Planning B: Planning and Desig//n, 34(3), 414-430.

Feenberg, A. (2006). //Questioning technology//. London: Routledge

Heidegger, M. (2004). //The question concerning technology, and other essays//. (Lovitt, W., Trans.). New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Star, S. L. (1999). The ethnography of infrastructure. The American Behavioral Scientist, 43(3), 377-391.

Vliet, B., Chappells, H., & Shove, E. (2005). //Infrastructures of consumption: Environmental// // innovation in the utility industries. // London: Earthscan.

Winner, L. (1986). //The whale and the reactor: a search for limits in an age of high// // technology //. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.