Infrastructure
Are most people aware of the infrastructures in their everyday lives? Why or why not?
No, most people aren't aware of infrastructure! It's designed to be invisible and usually only becomes visible when it stops working.
What is one example of Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) in the Wikipedia community?
Examples of Legitimate Peripheral Participation in the Wikipedia community:
1. Reading Wikipedia
2. Editing Wikipedia pages
According to Cavallo, when is audio description usually added to a piece of media?
According to Cavallo, audio description is usually added to a piece of media after the piece has been created.
What is a "sleep dealer"?
In the film Sleep Dealer, they are workers that control robots that have replaced them as unskilled labor on the other side of the border. They are called "sleep dealers" because they may collapse if they work long enough.
Name one community of practice we've read about and one infrastructure they use.
What is the relationship between classification and infrastructure?
Infrastructure turns classifications into reality. Categories become real as they are enacted through infrastructures.
According to Lave & Wenger, you become part of a new community through Legitimate Peripheral Participation in that community. In other words, you start particular forms of the practice that community is based around, and gain mastery (or not!) over time.
According to Ong, is buying pants instead of wearing a skirt to lab an example of multiplicity or fragmentation?
According to Ong, buying pants instead of wearing a skirt to lab is an example fragmentation.
In Sleep Dealer, how do Memo, his father, Luz, and Rudy demonstrate Massey's concept of a power geometry?
Power geometries mean that different groups and individuals have different levels of ability and mobility within global flows of people and resources. Each character in Sleep Dealer has their mobility restrained in a different way by different forces even though they are caught up in similar processes of capitalism and globalization.
Give an example of a power geometry created by Apartheid policies in South Africa.
1. Segregated neighborhoods - not everyone could live everywhere. This then led to defined commuting patterns, etc.
2. Passbooks - movement determined by your ID, only some people got checked.
3. Staying home because you couldn't attend the school you were meant to be in.
4. Etc.
What does it mean for infrastructure to be "built on an installed base"?
Infrastructure is built on other, older infrastructures and inherits their structures, strengths, and limitations.
According to Professor Irani, what is one example of how Amazon Mechanical Turk workers move from "newcomers" to "old timers"?
AMT workers move from newcomers to old timers by:
1. Advising newcomers on fair pay
2. Distributing information about requesters
3. Joining existing forums
4. Starting new forums
According to Ong, why do young Women of Color in physics engage in body projects?
According to Ong, young Women of Color in physics engage in body projects to present themselves as ordinary to their peers.
What is "time-space compression" and what issue does Massey take with the conventional view of it?
Time-space compression refers to the notion that with the advancing of technology, the internet, and globalization, place doesn't matter anymore because "everyone" and "everything" is so fast and mobile (153).
Massey complicates this by drawing our attention to how time and space are not compressed equally for everyone. Some people are in charge of this compression, some people are subject to it, and some are left out of it (155).
How do newcomers and old-timers in a community of practice encounter that community's infrastructure?
Newcomers encounter infrastructure as a target to be learned (through using it/observing others using it). Old-timers forget about the infrastructure as they become familiar with it and only notice it when it stops working.
What did Trevor Noah's mother and father do in order to go out in public together/as a family? Why?
Trevor Noah's mother pretended to be his nanny so she could go to the park with him. When his mother and father went out together, his mother pretended to be the family maid.
Why is the cognitive approach to learning insufficient to explain the practice of driving?
The cognitive approach to learning does not account for tacit knowledge, the knowledge that comes from watching and doing rather than formal learning. Driving requires tacit/embodied knowledge that cannot be obtained through a book or a lecture.
What is one layer of mediation present in traditional audio description practices?
Two layers of mediation present in traditional audio description:
1. The describer mediates between the media/performance and the listener.
2. Language mediates the translation of visual content into auditory content.
According to Massey, what is the dangerous consequence of associating a particular place with a "single, essential identity" constructed from an "introverted, inward-looking history" (157)?
According to Massey, associating a particular place with a "single, essential identity" constructed from an "introverted, inward-looking history" can lead to the feeling that a "place" must be protected/preserved, which can lead to reactionary nationalisms and obsession with "heritage" (157).
Both Bowker & Star and Ong talk about passing. What is passing and how does it appear in these readings?
Passing is "the act of establishing a false social identity through corporeal self-presentation, performance, and management of social interactions. The act of passing enables the actor to eschew discrimination associated with his or her original (usually marginal) group, and to enjoy, instead, benefits as a member of another (usually dominant) group" (Ong 603).
Ong: Young Women of Color in physics do their best to appear "ordinary" by fragmenting themselves and attempting to erase or hide their differences from their white, male peers.
Bowker & Star: someone who was light-skinned enough to pass for the next color category "up" would pass as that category (ex. white) in order to obtain that category's privileges (212-217).
Why are Bowker & Star interested in studying infrastructure instead of "heroic actors, social movements, or cultural mores" (34)?
Bowker & Star are interested in studying infrastructure as a causal force. In other words, they want us to pay attention to the way infrastructures dictates how and why we do what we do and act the way we act.
How do communities of practice mediate individuals?
Communities of practice mediate individuals because we gain our identities through our participation in certain practices.
In Ong's article, what are two of the ways young Women of Color in physics achieve multiplicity?
In Ong's article, young Women of Color in physics achieve multiplicity through stereotype manipulation and demonstrations of superiority.
What does De Certeau mean when he says New York City pedestrians "make use of spaces that can't be seen" (93)?
City pedestrians have tacit/tactical knowledge of the world they move through. They learn this knowledge through being in the world, not planning it. Therefore, planners or people with an aerial view couldn't see or describe these spaces, but neither can the pedestrians, as their knowledge is experiential.
In "A Global Sense of Place," Massey mentions numerous infrastructures that contribute to the "highly complex social differentiation" of time-space compression. Name one and how it contributes to that differentiation.
Food chains and grocery stores, colonization, patriarchy, flight patterns, email/internet cables, national borders, airports, etc.