Infrastructure and vocation: field, calling and computation in ecology

Authors:
Steven J. Jackson;Sarah Barbrow
Affiliations:
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA;University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year:
2013

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Abstract

HCI studies of computational change in the sciences have made important design and analytic contributions, to other fields of science and to HCI itself. But some of the longer-term effects and complexities of infrastructural change in the sciences aren't easily captured under short-term, design- or artifact-centered accounts. Drawing on extended ethnographic study of computational development in ecology, this paper explores the relationship between new computational infrastructure and the nature of ecology as a vocation: roughly, the deeply held sense of what it means to 'be' an ecologist, and to 'do' ecology. We analyze in particular the nature of the field and field work as a central site of ecological practice and identity; how new computational developments are remediating this crucial relation; and the emergent vocational values that new and more computationally-intensive forms of ecology may give rise to.