What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification -- the scaffolding of information infrastructures. In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis. The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.

https://www.reciis.icict.fiocruz.br/index.php/reciis/article/download/794/1436

Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

This article asks methodological questions about studying infrastructure with some of the tools and perspectives of ethnography. Infrastructure is both relational and ecological—it means different ...

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The Ethnography of Infrastructure

We analyze a large-scale custom software effort, the Worm Community System (WCS), a collaborative system designed for a geographically dispersed community of geneticists. There were complex challenges in creating this infrastructural tool, ranging from simple lack of resources to complex organizational and intellectual communication failures and tradeoffs. Despite high user satisfaction with the system and interface, and extensive user needs assessment, feedback, and analysis, many users experienced difficulties in signing on and use. The study was conducted during a time of unprecedented growth in the Internet and its utilities (1991–1994), and many respondents turned to the World Wide Web for their information exchange. Using Bateson's model of levels of learning, we analyze the levels of infrastructural complexity involved in system access and designer-user communication. We analyze the connection between systems development aimed at supporting specific forms of collaborative knowledge work, local orga...

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Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces

Interpretive research in information systems (IS) is now a well-established part of the field. However, there is a need for more material on how to carry out such work from inception to publication. I published a paper a decade ago (Walsham, 1995) which addressed the nature of interpretive IS case studies and methods for doing such research. The current paper extends this earlier contribution, with a widened scope of all interpretive research in IS, and through further material on carrying out fieldwork, using theory and analysing data. In addition, new topics are discussed on constructing and justifying a research contribution, and on ethical issues and tensions in the conduct of interpretive work. The primary target audience for the paper is less-experienced IS researchers, but I hope that the paper will also stimulate reflection for the more-experienced IS researcher and be of relevance to interpretive researchers in other social science fields.

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Doing interpretive research

Giant strides in information technology at the turn of the century may have unleashed unreachable goals. With the invention of groupware, people expect to communicate easily with each other and accomplish difficult work even though they are remotely located or rarely overlap in time. Major corporations launch global teams, expecting that technology will make "virtual collocation" possible. Federal research money encourages global science through the establishment of "collaboratories." We review over 10 years of field and laboratory investigations of collocated and noncollocated synchronous group collaborations. In particular, we compare collocated work with remote work as it is possible today and comment on the promise of remote work tomorrow. We focus on the sociotechnical conditions required for effective distance work and bring together the results with four key concepts: common ground, coupling of work, collaboration readiness, and collaboration technology readiness. Groups with high common ground and loosely coupled work, with readiness both for collaboration and collaboration technology, have a chance at succeeding with remote work. Deviations from each of these create strain on the relationships among teammates and require changes in the work or processes of collaboration to succeed. Often they do not succeed because distance still matters.

Distance matters

This paper analyzes the initial phases of a large-scale custom software effort, the Worm Community System (WCS), a collaborative system designed for a geographically dispersed community of geneticists. Despite high user satisfaction with the system and interface, and extensive user feedback and analysis, many users experienced difficulties in signing on and use, ranging from simple lack of resources to complex organizational and intellectual trade-offs. Using Bateson's levels of learning, we characterize these as levels of infrastructural complexity which challenge both users and developers. Usage problems may result from different perceptions of this complexity in different organizational contexts.

Steps towards an ecology of infrastructure: complex problems in design and access for large-scale collaborative systems

The use of remote communication technologies to carry out daily work is becoming increasingly common, and their use in certain settings is already commonplace. Yet, in spite of the fact that significant sums are being spent on the acquisition of technologies to support distributed work, we are only beginning to understand the intricacies of these interactions. This paper identifies and analyzes one particular limitation of video-based teleconferencing, the impact of an audio and video delay on distributed communication. It offers a detailed microanalysis of one distributed team's use of videoconferencing to support remote teamwork. We explore through this analysis the impact which technology-generated delays may have on shared meaning-making between remote participants. We draw conclusions about the significance of our findings for understanding talk, interaction and collaboration across remote links, and conclude with recommendations for designers, users and implementers.

Co-Constructing Non-Mutual Realities: Delay-Generated Trouble in Distributed Interaction

The venues in which we carry out our fieldwork increasingly intertwine real and virtual activities as participants move materials and interactions online. This change in the nature of the field sit...

The Virtual Ethnographer: Fieldwork in Distributed Electronic Environments

Organizations increasingly carry out their work by relying on complex, distributed activities supported by a wide range of technologies for synchronous and asynchronous communication and collaboration. How do we capture complex, distributed activities? What tools do we use in settings where even a team of trained ethnographers could not comprehend, much less record, all the interplays between team members, the subtleties of a look or tone, the shifts in orientation to people or objects in the workspace? In this paper, we explore the use of video-based Interaction Analysis to extend the ability of traditional ethnographic methods for data collection and analysis. We draw on a study of a distributed organization’s use of remote meeting technologies to illustrate how this approach contributes to the depth of insights to be garnered from workplace ethnography.

/pdf/capturing-complex-distributed-activities-video-based-5e57b4nv53.pdf

Karen Ruhleder

Papers

Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces

Steps towards an ecology of infrastructure: complex problems in design and access for large-scale collaborative systems

Co-Constructing Non-Mutual Realities: Delay-Generated Trouble in Distributed Interaction

The Virtual Ethnographer: Fieldwork in Distributed Electronic Environments

Capturing complex, distributed activities: video-based interaction analysis as a component of workplace ethnography