The Ethnography of Infrastructure by Susan Leigh Star

“The ecological effect of studying boring things (infrastructure, in this case) is in some ways similar. The ecology of the distributed high-tech workplace, home, or school is profoundly impacted by the relatively unstudied infrastructure that permeates all its functions. Study a city and neglect its sewers and power supplies (as many have), and you miss essential aspects of distributional justice and planning power (Latour & Hermant, 1998 ). Study an information system and neglect its standards, wires, and settings, and you miss equally essential aspects of aesthetics, justice, and change. Perhaps if we stopped thinking of computers as information highways and began to think of them more modestly as symbolic sewers, this realm would open up a bit.”

-Susan Leigh Star