Infrastructures are the taken-for-granted systems that support our everyday activities. Examples include the water, railway or electricity systems. Susan Star observes that while infrastructure by definition is 'ready to hand' for most people, for others it becomes visible or is their foreground concern. Examples she give include a wheelchair user for whom a flight of stairs are a barrier rather than a barely noticed part of the environment, or the railway worker for whom the rails are the main concern or 'topic' for their everyday life (1999). It is with these observations that Star begins to build a picture of infrastructure that has social, technical and relational contingencies and dimensions.
Star was a social researcher who took her interests and skills deeply into Science and
Technology Studies (STS). She worked with key researchers in the field including Bruno Latour and extended both an observational, ethnographic approach and incisive theorisation based on that approach to how computer and information systems were used, especially in scientific research. Like Latour, close observation of actual work practice in the laboratory and an ability to theorise as to how the meanings and effects of everyday work practice extends into the realms of the social and political were key features of her work. The pairing of critical and
ethnographic work in information systems converged with several key PD practitioners. Star published with several other researchers whose work has been important in PD, especially Americans who were influenced by STS such as Lucy Suchman and Janette Blomberg. This work that privileges ethnography as an approach or method is central to the field of “Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), which shares much ground with PD in terms of
methods, approaches and key practitioners.
Susan Star and Karen Ruhleder published a key paper; “Steps toward an Ecology of
Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces” in 1996. This paper took as its subject an effort to build an information sharing network for scientists working on a particular species of microscopic nematode worm, c.elegens. Significantly, the project took place during the early 1990s: a distinctive moment in time when the internet was quite established as a research network but was at the cusp of the introduction of the world wide web as the
predominant protocol for sharing information. Conventions in how technology could be used by dispersed teams were very much in flux at that moment and though much has changed since, this study has maintained its relevance. Its proposition that the relatively limited and small-
scale artefact of an information system could be understood as an infrastructure has been an important contribution for PD and related areas.
In this study, Star and Ruhduler observe and analyse an information system used by around 1400 scientists in around 120 different laboratories around the world. The information system was intended to share and publish information about c.elegens that, because of its special characteristics, had been selected for special study by biologists. As an indication of its
importance, in the few years following the study in 1998, c.elegens became the first organism to have its full genome sequenced. It was against this background of additional attention and institutional pressure on an existing research community that the study was undertaken.
The authors start this very specific study with some very general observations. They point out the necessity for technologies used by dispersed groups to have two opposing characteristics. These technologies inevitably impose rigidities and must accord with specific rules but, nevertheless it is equally inevitable that local adaptations will arise that respond to local conditions. These local adaptations – essential if a system is to be adopted at all - must be negotiated between all the users if the system is to work. With this observation they point to the importance of standards, but with a caveat that standards themselves are contestable, saying “one person's standard is in fact another's chaos” (Star & Ruhleder 1996 p.3). Following on from this observation, the common conception of infrastructure as something that is fixed and invisible is questioned. Instead, Star and Ruhleder point out that infrastructures, like tools, come into being only through use, and in a specific situation. In conclusion, Star and Ruhduler propose that Information Systems become infrastructure in context and under specific
conditions of use, and that far from being a fixed array of objects, these systems are in a continuous exchange of cause and effect that alters both usage and infrastructure (Star & Ruhleder 1996)
This augment leads to a picture of infrastructure as a powerful development in itself, emerging from a resolution of conflicting needs and providing a connected and re-usable support structure for local practices. Nine characteristics or “dimensions” of infrastructure are identified in the paper 1. Some of these dimensions relate to people and their practices, some are related to the
1 The eight dimensions of infrastructure (Star & Ruhleder 1996; Neumann et al. 1996) • “Embeddedness”. This refers to infrastructures as “sunk into or inside of” other systems including social structures and technologies.
• “Transparency.” Infrastructure should support tasks seamlessly and be re-usable across related tasks.
• “Reach or scope” Infrastructure reaches beyond a single-use or single context
• “Learned as part of membership” People learn about the system by being intimately involved with it. New participants must acquire that knowledge to become part of its communities of practice.
• “Links with conventions of practice”. Infrastructure systems both shape and are shaped by everyday practice in the domain the system supports.
• “Embodiment of standards”. The quality of transparency is achieved through sharing common conventions with other tools and systems via. Standards.
• “Built on an installed base”. Infrastructure is not built on a clean slate. It “wrestles with the inertia of the installed base” , that is it inherits characteristics of existing work practices.
• “Becomes visible upon breakdown” The quality of transparency is disrupted when the system does not work.
visibility of the system to its users and some refer to characteristics that make the system useful and usable. These nine characteristics combine social and technical features and emphasise the situated nature of how technology is embedded into everyday practices.
Both the approach and results of Star and Ruhleder's have strong resonances with the Hublink project in terms of its observations and analysis of infrastructure. Moreover, it is extremely useful in showing how observing, describing and analysing a single case can be used to build theory and open up more general questions. The nine features of an infrastructure provide a good description of how a project like Hublink progresses from being a central object of design effort to and everyday tool embedded into daily work practice without focus of attention - unless something goes wrong. Star also takes on the themes of adoption and learning as a central theme of infrastructure, as well as the theme of improvised adaptation in different contexts – both echoing the models of situated action and communities of practice that, as we have seen, have attracted attention in theorising around PD. From a more general perspective, these nine dimensions of infrastructure provide a strong link with the foundational approaches of PD, do not address any kind of design practice. Nevertheless the article's conclusion points towards creative processes; stating that:
The competing requirements of openness and malleability, coupled with structure and navigability, create a fascinating design challenge -- even a new science. (Star & Ruhleder 1996 p32)
The themes have indeed gone on to have a long life among researchers as we shall see, and in particular found connection to the field of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), a research area within HCI which seeks to understand the use of computers for collaboration in holistic ways that unite social and computer sciences. Star herself went on to develop this work, first suggesting the verb 'infrastructuring' in the article “how to infrastructure” written with Geoffrey Bowker published in 2002. The uptake of the infrastructuring concept is expanded in the next section.