Thomas Finholt

The Long Now of Technology Infrastructure: Articulating Tensions in Development

Journal of the Association for Information Systems · 2009-05-01 · 310 citations

Designing e-infrastructure is work conducted today with an eye toward long-term sustainability. Participants in such development projects find themselves caught with one foot in the demands of the present and the other in a desired future. In this paper we seek to capture participants’ formulation of problems as they go about developing long-term information infrastructure. Drawing from cross-case ethnographic studies of four US e-infrastructure projects for the earth and environmental sciences…

Social Participation in Health 2.0

Computer · 2010-11-01 · 84 citations

Computer scientists are working with biomedical researchers, policy specialists, and medical practitioners to usher in a new era in healthcare. A recently convened panel of experts considered various research opportunities for technology-mediated social participation in Health 2.0.

Artifacts that organize: Delegation in the distributed organization

Information and Organization · 2012-11-05 · 69 citations

Tensions across the scales

2007-01-01 · 56 citations

In designing information infrastructure participants are planning for the long-term. The notion of infrastructure evokes images beyond 'a proof of concept,' a 'prototype' or an isolated 'application'; it is intended to be a persistent, ubiquitous and reliable environment. However, in implementing such projects participants confront multiple difficulties such as securing sustained funding, supporting maintenance and integrating new technologies.

Representing community

2008-11-08 · 33 citations

This paper traces the use of the concept 'community' by drawing attention to the ways in which it serves as an organizing principle within systems development. The data come from an ethnographic study of participants and their activities in the Water and Environmental Research Systems Network (WATERS). WATERS is a US National Science Foundation-funded observatory and cyberinfrastructure project intended to serve the heterogeneous scientific disciplines studying the water environment. We identify…