[Air-L] 4S Sydney: Invisible Infrastucture

[Caroline Sinders]

Is there a way to stream this in the US? I'd love to watch it.

On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 1:22 AM, Tim Jordan <T.R.Jordan at sussex.ac.uk> wrote:

> 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
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-- 
Caroline Sinders
interaction designer, researcher, artist
caroline-sinders.squarespace.com
713-203-0116