tracey’s first term
“infrastructural amnesia”.
I was just re-reading tracey’s post and I love that word. Infrastructural amnesia gets 1 hit (her blog) on google. None for infrastructure amnesia. Way better word than picoinfrascture ;-) (pico is way too trendy - see “pico local”). I’m not sure if it would mean amnesia about the creation and reasons of the infrastructure or amnesia about disappeared infrastructure. Probably better if it just refers to a societies collective forgetting around the subject of infrastructure.
I think that means you can claim it, T. Unless you got it from those books you’ve been reading. Probably should publish it
September 12th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Aw shucks I can never remember when and if I do invent stuff! I will have to go through some textes to see! I have read many textes about infrastructural inversion or foregrounding infrastructures as methods to counter the idea infrastructural amnesia but i can’t remember if i read that concept or not. And yes when i use it i am referring to “a society’s collective forgetting around the subject of infrastructure”.
September 13th, 2007 at 3:22 am
I wonder if “amnesia” is a central part of every abstraction process, like science, technological development or infrastructure building. A process in which mediations are rendered invisible.
September 13th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Or once socially embedded and taken for granted it just becomes the norm and we forget something exists. With infrastructure, what is most fascinating to me is the fact that these are such obviously megga material enterprises that just somehow slip into the background.
September 13th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Into the backgroung of what, and more importantly maybe, of who? Is there people in the background? What do they have to say?
September 15th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Hi, Michael. I am coming to Montreal to spend this coming week there. I think it’s my turn to buy you a bowl of soup. Any chance you are free on Wednesday or Thursday ?
Best, Jon
September 15th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
great! I’ll email you tomorrow.
September 16th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Thinking about “infrastructural amnesia” vs Bowker and Star’s “infrastrutural invesion” — what’s the difference? They argue that as categories of things become normal we become unable to see them, and unable to change them because systems become so complex that no one person can predict or administer policy. They also have a pretty wide view of infrastructure: it is embedded, transparent, has large reach or scope, is learned (this applies to intellectual infrastructure); links to other conventions (or systems); is built on an installed base; and (most importantly) becomes visible only when it breaks down (p. 35).
Here in London the water company is replacing all the 19th century water mains, at great expense and amid public frustration. But the rationale behind the replacement is that, invisibly, these old mains have been leaking 40 per cent of the water they pump. If people could have SEEN that waste, would the pipe replacement have happened earlier? Now the pipes — old and new — are in the foreground again. Amnesia overcome?
September 19th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Hey Alison! I know the term infrastructural inversion, i guess you would have to overcome amnesia before you could invert!
Et Stéphane, i think in the background of our social structures, when i think of my hunter gatherer friends in Sarawak, they are extremely aware of their infrastructure at a very young age, from the spirit world of the forest, the animals, the biological elements, etc. They are taught the system, the cycles and time and live according to these from a very young age. Without this knowledge they cannot survive. They are intimately aware of their place in that space and have a particular forest dwellers world view almost entirely disconnected from the cash economy. We on the other hand as a society, and the we i speak of are urban dweller societies, rely on a massive infrastructure that we barely acknowledge. The Penan know their vulnerabilities as they know their infrastructure, we believe we are invulnerable and we do not even conceive of the infrastructure not being there nor do we know its ability to sustain us and when it will be maxed out. We have forgotten that our lives are connected to these. A collective amnesia until there is a calamity such as a war, disaster, falling bridge that directly targets how we live. This is when there is infrastructural inversion, suddenly the infrastructure as a system appears, when destroyed or strained. The infrastructure is our habitat and i think we need to conceive of it as such.