Volume 10 ƒ Issue5 ƒ Article 2
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Abstract
















David Ribes
Georgetown University
dr273@georgetown.edu

Thomas A. Finholt
University of Michigan
finholt@umich.edu

Designing e-infrastructure is work conducted today with an eye toward long-term sustainability. Participants in such development
projects find themselves caught with one foot in the demands of the present and the other in a desired future. In this paper we
seek to capture participants’ formulation of problems as they go about developing long-term information infrastructure.

Drawing from cross-case ethnographic studies of four US e-infrastructure projects for the earth and environmental sciences
(cyberinfrastructure), we trace nine tensions as they are framed and articulated by participants. To assist in understanding
participants' orientations we abstract three concerns – motivating contribution, aligning end goals, and designing for use – which
manifest themselves uniquely at each of the ‘scales of infrastructure': institutionalization, the organization of work, and enacting
technology. The concept of "the long now" helps us understand that participants seek to simultaneously address all three concerns
in long-term development endeavors.

Keywords: Long-term, Sustainability, Cyberinfrastructure, Science, eScience, Infrastructure, Communities, Ethnography, Grounded
Theory

Volume 10, Special Issue, pp. 375-398, May 2009
The Long Now of Technology Infrastructure:
Articulating Tensions in Development*
* Paul Edwards, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Steven Jackson, and Robin Williams were the guest editors.

Journal of the Association for Information Systems Vol. 10 Special Issue pp. 375-398 May 2009 376
The Long Now of Technology Infrastructure:
Articulating Tensions in Development
1. Introduction
Infrastructure is intended to last for the long term. In ideal conditions, infrastructure invisibly supports
the work of its users, while transparently revealing its functioning and breakdown to a support staff. It
is a stable, accessible, and reliable environment (Star and Ruhleder 1994). However, there is
something seemingly paradoxical in a long-term plan for information technology (IT). We think of IT as
changing at a rapid and ever increasing pace. Yesterday’s novel solutions quickly become today’s
staple resources and even more quickly become tomorrow’s relics. This is the challenge of
developing e-infrastructure: transitioning effectively from one-off applications, demos, and prototypes
to stable and usable informational facilities.

In order to reveal the difficulties encountered in design and implementation, we conducted a cross-
case analysis of the work of participants in four e-infrastructure endeavors. We focused on
participants' daily work as they went about the task of developing sustainable facilities. Our cases are
drawn from projects that seek to support the work of natural scientists, specifically of earth and
environmental researchers. In the United States such projects have come to be called
cyberinfrastructure (CI).1 CI projects often make claims of revolutionizing research, engendering a
paradigm shift or transforming scientific practice (Atkins 2003), yet many of these projects are still in
the early stages of planning and development (Lawrence 2006; Lee, Dourish and Mark 2006).
Whether the resources and work necessary for permanent implementation and adoption will
materialize remains unclear.

Our research has ethnographic goals. We seek to capture and convey the orientation of participants
as they go about the daily task of e-infrastructure design, development, and implementation.
Because efforts to systematically develop e-infrastructure for the sciences are relatively recent,
participants find themselves struggling to identify and articulate their challenges. We have focused on
participants’ formulations of problems as tensions; in this paper we trace nine such tensions.
Focusing on tensions reveals the conflicting goals, purposes, and motivations of participants. They
are not hidden; rather, as a form of sense-making, participants regularly discuss their problems as
tensions.

The problems participants articulate span much broader scales than technology development: they
speak of encountering difficulties in the spheres of science policy, funding, organizing work and
maintaining technical systems. Through our research we have developed the methodological concept
of scales of infrastructure to mirror the range of participants’ activities that we have observed. The
three scales are institutionalization, organizing work and technology enactment. They are what in
Grounded Theory are called sensitizing concepts (Glaser 1978), serving to remind the analyst to
follow participants’ activities (Latour 1987) as they work across received boundaries such as policy,
management and design.

We also identify three recurring concerns of participants. These concerns manifest themselves
repeatedly, but uniquely, at each scale: How can the perseverance of the infrastructure project be
ensured, in the face of changing technologies, emerging standards, and uncertain institutional
trajectories? How can the continued commitment of participants be secured over the timescales of
building and sustaining infrastructure? Finally, how should novel technologies be designed to
meaningfully support the work of users? Because studies of e-infrastructure are nascent, we do not
seek to advise on how to successfully plan and implement systems meant to be used for decades.
Therefore, rather than offering a programmatic response ("how to design for the long term" or “factors
in CI success”), we first seek to frame the difficulties actors encounter on the ground and, thus, begin

1 In this paper we will use the terms e-infrastructure and cyberinfrastructure somewhat interchangeably; this said, the
terms carry more specific implications that we will try to follow in usage. Cyberinfrastructure is an historically
American institutional configuration, primarily focusing on the sciences, and initially spearheaded by National Science
Foundaiton (Atkins 2003). E-infrastructure is a more generic term for information infrastructure (often including
spheres of public communication, commerce, or government) that has received stronger uptake in the European
Union.