![Sample our Communication Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, 2013 & 2014 volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5927/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Information-Science2.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Bridging third wave HCI with infrastructure studies, this paper examines the relationship between infrastructural visibility, breakdown, and experience through an existentialist lens. We present and theorize a state of infrastructural functionality – which we term ‘hyper-functionality’ – that renders infrastructure visible because of its experiential effects on end-users, not necessarily because of malfunction. We introduce this term through the presentation of a story from the life of one of the authors in which an infrastructural assemblage behaved unexpectedly, giving rise to the experience of the absurd – a feeling of alienation from oneself and the technological assemblages that constitute one’s daily world. We explore the applicability of hyper-functionality for the interpretation and theorization of larger-scale scenarios by using it to interpret reactions to the role that social media – Facebook in particular – played in the troubled United States presidential election in 2016. We contend that the existentialist-tinted lens of hyper-functionality constitutes a novel and meaningful way of analyzing the human experience of the mundane in relation to infrastructures, thus forming the basis for a humanistic infrastructure studies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 We use ‘objectival’ in its grammatical sense: of, relating to, or constituting an object esp. in grammar.
2 The essays in Gitelman’s edited volume, Raw Data is an Oxymoron (Citation2013) provide additional coverage of this onto-epistemological problem.
3 We take a cue from the media theorist John Durham Peters (Citation2015), who argued for the inclusion of geological, hydrological, and climatological elements in the definition of ‘media.’
4 Each of us resides within differently constructed habitèles; differently motivating and rationalizing social imaginaries. The authors write from one in particular: that of the relatively affluent and techno-centric social imaginary of Southern California. We acknowledge that ours is not a specifically generalizable position. However, we also believe the constructs and frameworks described in this paper to be generalizable in the broadest sense: while we (the authors) refer to ourselves and tell stories through and by means of the pronoun ‘we,’ it is not our intention to homogenize, patronize, or colonize. Humans depend on things (Hodder, Citation2011). Humans create infrastructures or durable material grammars. The specifics of these infrastructures – individual habitèles – vary from individual to individual, culture to culture, society to society. But the human relationship to things pervades.
5 In the words of John Lennon, ‘life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans’ (Lennon, Citation1980).
6 At first glance, it is possible to argue that the GPS portion of this particular object constellation was, in fact, broken. However, when viewed from the perspective of the user, the infrastructure was not broken, simply confounding. It functioned just as it was designed to given the GPS data to which it had access. Regardless of the backend issues – blackboxed from the perspective of the user – the message appeared on the user’s smart phone. In so appearing, the infrastructural assemblage effected the type of communication it was designed to effect: the communication just so happened to demonstrate an emergent functionality of the infrastructural system, one symptom of which, was the construction of a negative emotional state.
7 The prefix ‘hyper- ‘is rooted in the Greek ‘ὑπέρ’ (hupér) meaning ‘over, beyond, over much, above measure.’
8 Similar effects were seen in the United Kingdom: https://www.politico.eu/article/cambridge-analytica-chris-wylie-brexit-trump-britain-data-protection-privacy-facebook/.
9 Birds follow the speed limit, too: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/8/130821-birds-road-speed-limit-traffic-evolution-animals/.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
John S. Seberger
John S. Seberger is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Informatics at University of California at Irvine. He is a former Graduate Fellow of the Intel Science and Technology Center for Social Computing and holds a PhD in Information and Computer Sciencefrom UCI.
Geoffrey C. Bowker
Geoffrey C. Bowker is Donald Bren Chair at the School of Information and Computer Sciences, University of California at Irvine, where he directs the Evoke Laboratory, which explores new forms of knowledge expression. Recent positions include Professor and Senior Scholar in Cyberscholarship at the University of Pittsburgh School and Executive Director, Center for Science, Technology and Society, Santa Clara. Together with Leigh Star he wrote Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences; his most recent books are Memory practices in the sciences and (with Stefan Timmermans, Adele Clark and Ellen Balka) Boundary objects and beyond: Working with Leigh Star. He is currently work on big data policy and on scientific cyberinfrastructure; as well as completing a book on social readings of data and databases. He is a founding member of the Council for Big Data, Ethics and Society.