InfoTechSpace

I have read the articles and I'm not really sure that I get it. I understand the seamful computing thing in the context of a game, but thinking about Tom's post, I don't necessarily know if seamfulness and convenience are copasetic things in everyday life. Does everyone always have to be aware of the seams? There are people who tend to things like plumbing, electricity, roadways etc.

One of the articles that struck me negatively was The Ethnography of Infrastructure. I felt that the author started off very overbearing with “study the unstudied”, the idea that “study” valorizes “previously neglected people and things” begs the question “to whom?” That science must intervene for social justice to occur is really stretching what science can do. Science does not mobilize communities, leaders do, and a study in a drawer may earn scientist tenure, but for the people he studies it really means nothing. Second, Star’s discussed a system that biologists were not using where the difficulty was in the infrastructure. The thing that struck me is that there is an analyst for that, there are people who specialize in infrastructure, how many servers, type of cabling, desk tops, etc – a functional analyst, as opposed to a business analyst, who would have helped them design the specs for their system, interface and the like. I look at the failure of use to be a failure of hiring and budgeting, clearly the computer scientist was not an analyst which is likely why the infrastructure was over looked.

I really liked the Hertzian Space article because it had a lot of pictures in it. Critical technological practice is important; I wish it was important to me.