PhD Student in Information Science at University of Colorado Boulder
Infrastructures and Their Discontents: Implications for Ubicomp
Mainwaring S.D., Chang M.F., Anderson K. (2004) Infrastructures and Their Discontents: Implications for Ubicomp. In: Davies N., Mynatt E.D., Siio I. (eds) UbiComp 2004: Ubiquitous Computing. UbiComp 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3205. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30119-6_25The authors conduct an empirical ethnographic study of people for whom infrastructure, often invisible, had become visible. They focus on how the infrastructure is "perceived and conceived, emotionally understood, and interacted with from the first-person perspective of its users" (pg. 418). They sought out participants who had daily encounters with infrastructures due to a range of goals. They focused on four types of people: "homeschoolers, gated community dwellers, security seekers, and disconnectors ... Security seekers had joined a group to make their neighborhood safer, created a “safe room,” installed a home security system, or some combination of these. Disconnectors had stopped or almost stopped using the internet, TV, credit cards, or some combination." (pg. 420). They present their findings by participant category. They present challenges and opportunities to the design of ubiquitous computing services, which rely on multiple interconnected infrastructures.