Bietz et al JCSCW paper
Posted by archer on July 9, 2010
I just saw the new Bietz, Baumer, and Lee article, “Synergizing in Cyberinfrastructure Development” in JCSCW. See http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10606-010-9114-y
I’m kind of meh about their concept of synergy overall, but did find it usefully employed in the following paragraph (pg. 34):
Others have pointed to the tension between “emergence” and “intention” as being a key challenge in infrastructure development (Edwards et al. 2007; Ribes and Finholt 2007). The synergizing lens allows us to see how they need not be mutually exclusive. Because so much of the work of cyberinfrastructure development involves leveraging and aligning networks of relationships, developers are involved in ongoing decisions about with whom (or with which entities) to interact (leveraging), and how those relationships will work (aligning). GBMF, for example, is more concerned with whom the infrastructure will serve and how CAMERA will relate to other infrastructures than it is with exactly what the CAMERA artifacts will look like. At the same time, developers of cyberinfrastructure also have to manage intentionality from multiple sources and directions. This multiplicity of stakeholders is a key feature of infrastructures. The properties of an infrastructure emerge from the aggregation of multiple, ongoing synergizing-related decisions. Emergence is not accidental, but perhaps unpredictable because of the variety and complexity of intentions.
I think it is helpful to reconcile emergence and intentionality in that way, getting us past simplistic arguments of waiting for emergence or intentionally planning everything. I also find this interesting for my dissertation work on requirements analysis. Requirements are instances of intentionality, yet they are not the only effect of the software. How then do groups think about emergent properties when they are planning? And it is self-contradictory to try to make emergent affects be “requirements.” What do others think: are emergent properties essentially ones that are unpredictable? or can it sometimes be anticipated, given various intentional efforts that one hopes will assemble in a certain way?
