New Book: Information Infrastructure(s) (Cambridge, 2014)


Information Infrastructure(s): Boundaries, Ecologies, Multiplicity. Alessandro Mongili and Giuseppina Pellegrino (eds)

Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2014, november),  380 pages, hard cover[:]

313ssMOZjLL1 | Padova Science Technology and Innovation Studies Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2014, november),  380 pages, hard coverThis book marks an important contribution to the fascinating debate on the role that information infrastructures and boundary objects play in contemporary life, bringing to the fore the concern of how cooperation across different groups is enabled, but also constrained, by the material and immaterial objects connecting them. As such, the book itself is situated at the crossroads of various paths and genealogies, all focusing on the problem of the intersection between different levels of scale throughout devices, networks, and society. Information infrastructures allow, facilitate, mediate, saturate and influence people’s material and immaterial surroundings. They are often shaped and intertwined with networks of relations and distributed agency, sometimes enabling the existence of such networks, and being, in turn, produced by them. Such infrastructures are not static and immobile in time and space: rather, they require maintenance and repair, which becomes an important aspect of their use. They also define and cross more or less visible boundaries, shape and act as ecologies, and constitute themselves as multiple entities. The various chapters of this edited book question the role of information infrastructures in various settings from both a theoretical and an empirical viewpoint, reflecting the contributors’ interests in science and technology studies, organization studies, and information science, as well as mobilities and media studies.

Pa.S.T.I.S. riunisce dal 2008 le attività inerenti lo studio sociale dei media, della scienza, della tecnologia e dell’innovazione di un gruppo di ricercatori operanti presso la sezione di Sociologia del Dipartimento di Filosofia, Sociologia, Pedagogia e Psicologia Applicata (FISPPA) dell’Università di Padova.