Social Informatics

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Social Informatics

• Geoffrey C. Bowker
• http//weber.ucsd.edu/gbowker

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The world of information is messy
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And the cleanup wont be easy
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The Scientific Archive

• Data sharing and re-use in history
• scientific papers are no longer the sole lasting
  result of a scientific project
• the distributed database is becoming a new model
  form of scientific publication in its own right
• the negotiation of data standards is a central
  site for political and ethical work in this
  process

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The International Classification of Diseases

• Bootstrapping
• Data entry (motivation)
• Maintenance
• Change
• Learning from the community

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The Flora of North America

• Changing community attitudes
• The tail wagging the dog
• Career trajectories computer science vs botany
  (cf Sequoyah Project)
• The problem of evaluation

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Infrastructure is performative

• Differences between communities of practice are
  reified over time (viruses gastropod
  distribution)
• There is no single nesting of data objects into a
  normalized time and space

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A view from Europe
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A view from New Zealand
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Infrastructure is

• Performative (partially creates the world it
  subtends)
• Diffuse (no centralized update)

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Designing Collaboratories 1

• The database approach
• Interventions
• Ontologies are value-laden
• User communities are heterogeneous
• Language for talking about technical decisions
• Organizational and social context must be
  preserved
• narrative is essential for persistence and reuse

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Designing Collaboratories 2

• Data standards
• Interventions
• Understanding the realities of data sharing and
  access
• The chimera of the Universal Language vs the
  machinery of difference
• Standards are not exciting but they are
  fundamental to designing for public good

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And, in the end, the world you make is equal to
the infrastructure you design