[Air-L] 4S Sydney: Invisible Infrastucture

[Tim Jordan]

Sally Wyatt and I are running this open panel stream for 4s, Sydney August 2018. Hope it's of interest to some of you.
Tim

23. The invisible aspects of infrastructure

Sally Wyatt, Maastricht University; Tim Jordan, Sussex University
Infrastructure has long been of interest to STS scholars with different types (transport and communication) studied from different perspectives (historical, economic, ethnographic). One standard definition is that infrastructures are only noticed when they do not work. But, much infrastructure is very present; it’s hard to miss road and rail networks, and digital networks depend on massive investments in cables, satellites and servers. In this panel, we focus on the ‘invisible’ aspects of infrastructure, such as the work of maintenance done under the cover of darkness. Clinical research and testing often relies on the work of people and organisms not visible to patients. Knowledge work depends not only on classification (in labs, databases, libraries) but also on the work of technicians, software engineers and information professionals. But this is the point: what work is visible to whom, when and where? This is particularly the issue with the rise of the ‘gig economy’ in which the infrastructure of the internet becomes embedded within what are seemingly separate platforms.
This panel aims to open up discussion about the invisible aspects of contemporary infrastructures of knowledge, consumption and production, by bringing together insights from STS about socio-technical ensembles together with ideas from (Marxist) sociology and political economy. Scholars are invited to reflect on the meaning of hidden infrastructures and the extent to which STS can recover the significance of infrastructure that has disappeared, because it is taken for granted, as in debates around the ‘post-digital’ that posit the internet as being ‘taken for granted’.

Tim Jordan,
Professor of Digital Cultures,
Head of School of Media, Film and Music
University of Sussex