[Air-l] Re: e-science, the grid, and supercomputers

Christine Hine Christine.Hine at btinternet.com
Mon Sep 29 02:05:32 PDT 2003


Since we're all declaring interests in e-science (and I too was at the
Oxford symposium)....

I've been studying the use of information and communication technologies
in scientific research for some time now. I'm interested in the detail
of how these technologies get integrated into working practices, and
also how they get designed - in the past I combined ethnographic work
with developers of computer systems for geneticists, with ethnography in
a laboratory where these systems were used. But, getting to the point of
e-science, I'm very interested in how high profile initiatives like grid
computing cut across the existing work in the field, bringing some kinds
of (often technology-driven) problems to the fore and marginalising
others. Funny how when the interesting, novel and high tech stuff comes
to the foreground, the ongoing mundane and routine computing work starts
to get taken for granted, as if it always works perfectly! Currently I'm
looking at the field of biological systematics (or taxonomy), looking at
both the policy-level pronouncements which focus on particular uses of
ICTs and at the working practices on the ground that use ICTs, whether
in high profile initiatives or in more mundane work of simply getting
the job done. The aim is to have some kind of map of what is going on,
in order to explore what I'm thinking of as the shaping of cyberscience.

The developments that I'm seeing in systematics are not grid computing
but do fit within some people's definitions of e-science...... I'm
certainly seeing that none of these terms are being used innocently and
it's important not to buy into these terms uncritically. I'd be really
interested to hear from anyone who has thoughts on the birth and growth
of e-science, grid science etc at the policy level.

Christine

Christine Hine
Department of Sociology
University of Surrey
Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK
http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/christine_hine.htm





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