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Readings Week 11

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Sunday, November 18, 2012 by



One idea I gleaned from the Susan Leigh Star reading “The Ethnography of Infrastructure” is that an information infrastructure (with its associated platforms, hardware and devices) is not a culturally neutral framework.  Embedded within these infrastructures are cultural norms, ideas and values that are often overlooked as part of any given information system.  

Another idea gleaned from this reading is that any information processing unit, no matter how sophisticated its programming in processing information, will not work if such a unit, fails to take into account the infrastructural components of information devices (e.g. Hardware) within its epistemological paradigm for managing information.  

The TTC system is one example of an information system.  This system is composed of trains, subway stations, train tracks, buses, street cars, street car lines, street car rails and roadways.  Suppose the head of the ministry of transportation decides to acquire new bullet trains for the TTC subway system.  Though these trains are super fast and feature many passenger friendly accommodations such as improved seating arrangements, these trains might not be able to run on the current subway tracks in place within the Metro Toronto subway system.  For such a new technology to be successfully integrated within the Metro Toronto subway system would potentially require a subway system overall to build new electrically powered train tracks complete with overhead wiring to help facilitate the travel of these trains.  

Accordingly, issues of interoperability between older delivery systems and newer information processing units could result in an information system that may not work.  When you add cultural norms, ideas and values into this mix (Maybe Torontonians aren’t lukewarm to the idea of bullet trains because they think they are dangerous), then this could provide some perspective as to why some information systems fail to materialize in certain societies.    


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