PUBLICACIÓN DE UNA VEZ COLEGIO DE ABOGADOS DE COSTA RICA

As we have seen, for a number of writers in PD such as Karasti and Wolf and Pipek,

infrastructuring is explicitly linked to sustainability. For them, it is the constellation of material and social resources that provide the support essential for the long-term maintenance and relevance of a software project. Other researchers in PD reach a similar conclusion using different terms of reference. Some researchers have raised this concern by asking the questions about how a project ends. What happens to a research project when the researcher exits? or when a project comes to the end of its institutional support?

Iversen and Dindler (2014) point out that few studies in PD have looked at the life of projects after their 'end'. While acknowledging the implicit support for sustainability in the mutual learning outcomes of PD, they address the need to examine more explicitly how to create the preconditions for sustainability. Iversen and Dindler suggest dividing the notion of

sustainability into four different aspects: Maintaining, Scaling, Replicating and Evolving. Maintaining, for Iversen and Dindler, is very much a matter of ownership by the stakeholders. They point out that this is essential for 'stability', which should be the minimum goal for a PD project. However, they rightly point out that 'evolving' is also necessary. This argument converges with the contention coming from the infrastructuring and meta-design perspectives that we have already looked at, that without the possibility to evolve and continuously customise, an application will quickly become out of date and therefore not fit for purpose. Iversen and Dindler's work also overlaps with Wolf and Pipek's in their conclusion that what is really required for sustainability is for a new set of relationships between different parties to emerge that can support the ongoing nature of a project. They explicitly point towards the idea of 'infrastructuring' as a way of describing these networks. (Iversen & Dindler 2014).

The issues of replicating and scaling that are also included in Iversen and Dindlers criteria are new elements for sustainability in our discussions. The implication in the inclusion of these criteria is that sustainability is helped by dissemination and wider adoption. Iversen and Dindler describe in general and quite limited terms how replication and scaling may benefit sustainabilty by indicating the desirability of systems or ideas crossing contexts or becoming more widely used in an organisation (Iversen & Dindler 2014). Though not developed by these authors, the

identification of replication and scaling as matters of sustainability are quite astute when applied to the FLOSS context. In FLOSS, it is a fundamental principle that the more widely a project is adopted and information about it disseminated, the more likely it is that an active community will grow and thus start to provide maintenance, documentation, support and further

developments leading to overall 'success' in terms of quality, sustainability and broad applicability. In the case of Hublink, we had the ambition to replicate the project for other organisations but lacked the resources to do it. This potential replication was part of a plan for sustainability that did not, in this case, come to fruition.

Bjorvinsson et al make a contrasting argument to that of Iversen and Dindler. They suggest that rather than planning for a project’s 'end', the project itself should be seen as open and

unconstrained. Therefore, the building in of the kinds of ongoing activities by users that we have looked at under the banners of 'appropriation' used by Wulf and Pipek, 'design after design' used by Pelle Ehn et al, or evolution, used by Iversen and Dindler, are essential precisely because they transcend the need for a finite end point to a project and create a more open ended collaboration (Bjögvinsson et al. 2012).

While Iversen and Dindler refer to the mutual learning outcomes of PD as having an implicit relationship to sustainability, others are more explicit about the need for learning and the design process in general to have an active role in building sustainability. Suzanne Bødker notes,

“What one does in a project is not only for the project, but should place the organization in a position where the experiences can be used, by the organization on its own, further on in time, and in particular with respect to the future

development of the technology (tailorability, etc.)” (Bødker 1996 p.220)

Gärtner andWagner (1996) also contend that for participatory design projects to be successful designers need to:

“Not only to analyze existing actor networks but ultimately to redesign them in ways that help establish and maintain participatory structures”.

(Gartner & Wagner 1996 p.212)

Some writers, mostly coming from a very practical point of view, recognise the fragility of projects and the networks that sustain them. Referring to the community context, Merkel et al (2005) point out that while groups may find they are able to take advantage of their social networks to build and make use of technologies very effectively, these networks are transient and the support is easily lost.

The Hublink project shows that, as an infrastructure, it is all of the things discussed in this section. It is a beneficiary of the capabilities and capacities built up from the design process including mutual learning and trust. Its sustainability is dependent on a network of human and technical components and needs to incorporate constant change. It is also, however, extremely fragile. We go on to discuss the specific context of community informatics and its fragility in the next section.

3.3

Community Informatics

3.3.1 Introduction

In the previous section we have seen how the idea of infrastructure can be transformed from a fixed, material entity into an active, process-based and social concept via the idea of

“infrastructuring”. In this section we further explore possible dimensions and requirements of infrastructuring through the field of Community Informatics. This enables us to focus in on the characteristics of this specific field. This focus both contextualises the Hublink project and allows us to be more concrete about what infrastructuring might mean in practice and in context.

Work in Community Informatics (CI) is relevant to the Hublink in two ways. Firstly and most importantly for this thesis, CI and related work is able to draw out the specific characteristics of not-for-profit, grassroots and campaigning organisations. This helps us to understand the context within which Hublink was developed and and shapes the theory and practice of the whole endeavour. Secondly, as mentioned above, CI pays particular attention to the issues of 'bottom up' empowerment and sustainability. We have already investigated these topics from the point of view of infrastructuring and a general approach to technology However, CI is concerned with these issues when the objective is social and political, operating with tight constraints and backed by values determined by the aims of the communities served.

As we shall see, CI is a research discipline that is strongly rooted in practice while taking a strong and explicit political stance. The literature is characterised by overriding commitment to community objectives and deals with the real-life problems of grassroots organisations. For me, writing in CI has a refreshingly honest quality, and is able to deal with issues such as trust and longevity of relationships, tensions between theory and practice, failures and shortcomings. In this respect, I find echoes in the experience of working on Hublink, in which it has been a challenge to surface these often hidden or tacit qualities that fully bring experience to research, and find an appropriate style and format for the task.

I suggest that the characteristics of CI can be grouped under three main headings – constraints, values and local connection, and each of these three themes can be used to connect CI with the wider discussion of PD and infrastructuring, and the specific discussion of Hublink.