digitalSTS goes on!

Thanks to sponsorship from the National Science Foundation we will have two digitalSTS workshops this year.

Yanni Loukassis and Laura Forlano have put together a specular Co-Design event at the Harvard Arboretum and the MetaLab. More details at digitalsts.wordpress.com

And we will be holding another workshop in advance of 4S in San Diego this year. Details are sparse at the moment, but stay tuned to hear more about this event.

after copenhagen

The digitalSTS workshop in Copenhagen was a blast. It got me, and my collaborator Janet Vertesi, really excited to keep the project going. Here is our report, and expect to hear more about this soon!

The folk at the University of Syracuse iSchool have been kind enough to invite me to speak on my new research. I'll be presenting my work entitled 'Flexibility relative to what? Change and the protean research infrastructure' which broadens argues that we, as analysts, have largely seen change to infrastructure as a matter of the sociotechnical (technologies of collaboration and data), this talk will also argue for the need to focus on institutional change (funding and regulatory regimes) and the almost completely ignored facet of phenomenotechncial change (change to objects of research, instruments and scientific practice).

I'll also be presenting research at the iConference, for the sociotechnical systems folk. I'll be focusing on my work on materiality and organizing.

A Busy Fall (2012 edition)

Many events this fall!

1- I will be presenting a keynote talk at the Innovation in Information Infrastructures (III) Workshop in Edinburgh, UK. This talk will focus on my recent research on organizing for ontological change.

2- I'll then head over to Copenhagen for a day long workshop on Digital STS that I am coorganizing with Janet Vertesi at the IT University of Copenhagen. The workshop is sponsored by the National Science Foundation's Sociotechnical RCN and by the Sloan Foundation. Our goal is bring together the heterogeneous threads of STS that are interested in digitality, networks, information, HCI, infrastructure, hacktivism and a whole lot more that is going on in our broad sphere!

3- At 4S itself (Society for Social Studies of Science - Copenhagen) I am coorganizing a double panel with Paul Edwards on 'Sociotemporalities: Infrastructure, Time and Space'. Details below:

263. Spatiotemporalities I - Infrastructure and the
Long Now
2:00 to 3:30 pm
Kilen: K146
Chair:
Geof Bowker, University of California-Irvine
Participants:
Data bite man: the work of sustaining a long-term study. David
Ribes, Georgetown University; Steven Jackson, University of
Michigan
Time to Degree: How Graduate Students Experience the Long
Term. R. Stuart Geiger, UC-Berkeley
Infrastructure cascades for interesting times. Ben Li, University
of Oulu
Discussant:
Eeva Furman, Finnish Environment Institute

292. Spatiotemporalities II: Space and
Infrastructures
4:00 to 5:30 pm
Kilen: K146
Chair:
Paul N. Edwards, University of Michigan
Participants:
Digital mappings in use: The non-representational use of spatial
infrastructure. Barry Brown, Mobile Life Centre, Stockholm
University
Global Dimensions: Water, Ships, & the Infrastructures of the
Panama Canal. Ashley Carse, Whittier College
Producing Space: The infrastructures of planetary exploration.
Janet Vertesi, Princeton University
Scaling Disaster: Simulating the Extent of the Deepwater
Horizon and the Fukushima Meltdowns. Paul N. Edwards,
University of Michigan

Whirlwind Tour

I seem to be on a bit of a whirlwind travel tour. For an STS audience I am presenting my historical ontology and infrastructure research at Northwestern University's Klopsteg lecture series on Science in Human Culture.

I'll then be heading to Arizona State University where I'll presenting the same research but with a policy slant in their Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes.

Finally I'll be attending the first all-hands meeting of the ecological NSF-Research Collaboration Network (RCN) meeting. I am on the advisory board. Should be interesting.

iConference 2012

My next trip will be to the iConference in Toronto.

This will be the first presentation of my new research thread focusing on historical ontology and phenomeno-technical change. This is really exciting for me, and there is more to come!

Historical Ontology and Infrastructure

ABSTRACT
We explore the relationship between long-term scientific
infrastructure and its changing objects of research. Specifically,
we focus on the historical changes in HIV disease during the life
of a longitudinal medical study that has been investigating it for
nearly thirty years. We ask: within the study of information
infrastructure and research-based organizations, what are the
things that inherently change, and how do such changes
reverberate through the structure and organization of
infrastructure? In applying the notion of historical ontology to
cyberinfrastructure, we present the groundwork for a broader
understanding of the sustainability of infrastructure within an
environment inherently in flux.

I am also co-organizing (with Jillian Wallis) a discussion panel of Monitoring, Modeling and Memory (MMM) Cyberinfrastructure scholars:

The State of Infrastructure Studies

Paul N. Edwards – What is Infrastructure Studies? (University of Michigan)
Geoffrey C. Bowker – When is Infrastructure? (University of Pittsburgh)
Ayse G. Buyuktur – Method in Infrastructure Studies (University of Michigan)
Steven J. Jackson – Maintenance and Repair (Cornell)
David Ribes – Units of Analysis: Beyond ‘the Project’ (Georgetown)
Jillian C. Wallis & Christine L. Borgman – Collaborative responsibility for scientific data (UCLA)