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sitions. Since we are dealing, then, with an agonistic field, there will be no pure reflection of a single position but rather dynamic tensions among multiple positions. And finally, since the classification system is not a pure reflection of such positions (an impossible aim in its own rightno classification system can reflect either the social or the natural world fully accurately) but also integrally a tool for exploring the real world, there is no simple prediction from how a given set of alliances or tensions leads invariably to a given classification used in a given way. |
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As sets of classification systems coalesce into working infrastructures they become integrated into information systems of all sorts. Thus we have argued throughout this book that information systems design should be informed by organizational and political analysis at this level. We are not offering this as an ex cathedra design principle. Rather, we havealong with many researchers in the field of social informaticsdemonstrated empirically that invisible organizational structures influence the design and use of systems: the question is not whether or not this occurs but rather how to recognize, learn from, and plan for the ineluctable presence of such features in working infrastructures. We have suggested one design aid herelong-term and detailed ethnographic and historical studies of information systems in useso that we can build up an analytic vocabulary appropriate to the task. |
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Working infrastructures contain multiple classification systems that are both invisible, in the senses above, and ubiquitous. The invisibility of infrastructure makes visualization or description difficult. The metaphors we reach for to describe infrastructure are ironic and somehow childish. We speak of "way down in the underwear," "underneath the system," or use up-down metaphors such as "runs under," or "runs on top of." Lakoff and Johnson (1980) write of metaphors we live by. Our infrastructural metaphors show how baffled we often are by these systems. They are like undergarments or tunnel dwellers. |
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Another set of metaphors often used in organizations speaks indirectly to the experience of infrastructure. These are the metaphors of texture omnipresent in human relationships. Texture metaphors speak to the densely patterned interaction of infrastructures and the experience of living in the "classification society." Texture speaks to the way that classifications and standards link the individual with larger processes and structures. These links generate both enabling-constraining patterns over a set of systems (texture) and developmental patterns for an individual operating within a given set (trajectory). |
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