Writings

Publications are linked to a .pdf file of a final draft or publication website.

Ribes, D. and G.C. Bowker, Between meaning and machine: learning to represent the knowledge of communities. Information and Organization, 2009 (pages & issue, forthcoming).

Geiger, S. and D.Ribes, The work of sustaining order in Wikipedia: The banning of a vandal. Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

Ribes, D. and T.A. Finholt, The long now of infrastructure: Articulating tensions in development. Journal for the Association of Information Systems (JAIS): Special issue on eInfrastructures, 2009. 10(5): p. 375-398.

Ribes, D. and T. A. Finholt (2008). 'Representing community: Knowing users in the face of changing constituencies.' Proceedings of the 2008 ACM conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

Ribes, David and Bowker, Geoffrey C. (2008) 'Organizing for Multidisciplinary Collaboration: The Case of GEON', in G.M. Olson, J.S. Olson and A. Zimmerman (eds), Science on the Internet (Cambridge: MIT Press).

Bowker, Geoffrey C., Baker, K.S., Millerand, Florence and Ribes, David (forthcoming) 'Towards Information Infrastructure Studies: Ways of Knowing in a Networked Environment', in J.D. Hunsinger, M. Allen and L. Klastrup (eds), International Handbook of Internet Research: Springer).

Ribes, David and Finholt, Thomas A. (2007) 'Tensions across the Scales: Planning Infrastructure for the Long-Term', Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA.

Ribes, David and Baker, K.S. (2007) 'Modes of Social Science Engagement in Community Infrastructure Design', in Steinfield, Brian T. Pentland, M. Ackerman and N. Contractor (eds), Proceedings of Third International Conference on Communities and Technology (London: Springer): 107-30.

Ribes, David and Finholt, Thomas A. (2007) 'Planning infrastructure for the long-term: Learning from cases in the natural sciences', Proceedings of the Third International Conference on e-Social Science, Ann Arbor, MI June 2006.

Khoo, Mick and Ribes, David (2005) 'Studying Digital Library Users in the Wild: Theories, Methods, and Analytical Approaches', in, D-Lib Magazine.

Ribes, David (2005) 'The Positions of the Social Scientist: Social and Technical Acts of Intervention', D-Lib Magazine 11/7/8 (July/August).

Ribes, David and Baker, K.S. (2006) 'Elements of Social Science Engagement in Information Infrastructure Design', ACM: The Proceedings of the 7th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, San Diego, CA, May 21-24.

Baker, K.S., Ribes, David, Millerand, Florence and Bowker, Geoffrey C. (2005) 'Interoperability Strategies for Scientific Cyberinfrastructure: Research Practice', in, Proceedings of the American Society for Information Systems and Technology.

Ribes, David, Baker, K.S., Millerand, Florence and Bowker, Geoffrey C. (2005) 'Comparative Interoperability Project: Configurations of Community, Technology, Organization', Proceedings of the Second ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries.

Baker, K.S, Bowker, G.C, Millerand, F., Ribes, D. (Spring 2005) “Continuing an Ethnographic Approach - Interoperability Strategies for Scientific Cyberinfrastructure: A Comparative Study” LTER Network Newsletter.

Book Reviews

Ribes, D. 2008. “The Matter of Users” Review of How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of users and technologies, Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch (eds.). Metascience 17(1).

Ribes, D. 2008. “Tying Internet Studies Together” Review of Sociology in the Age of the Internet, Allison Cavanagh. Metascience 17(2).

Dissertation

Ribes, David (2006) 'Universal Informatics: Building Cyberinfrastructure, Interoperating the Geosciences', in, Department of Sociology (Science Studies) (San Diego: University of California).

About the Dissertation

Under Preparation, Review or Revision

Ribes, David (under review) 'Automating the Arts: Building Digital Visualization Software for the Sciences and Engineering',

Ribes, David. (In Preparation). ‘The Will to Infrastructure: Generating the Push and the Pull to eScience’

CV

Updated May 2009

Click here: CV in .pdf and then follow the link that says 'click here' to download attachment.

Contact Information

David Ribes

Communication, Culture & Technology (CCT)
3520 Prospect St. NW, Suite 311
Washington, DC, 20057

• Phone: 202.687.4831


• Fax: 202.687.1720

E-mail: dr273 at georgetown.edu

This picture is here in case you see me. Feel free to say 'alo.

Dissertation

LINKS:

Abstract

David's dissertation traces development in the Cyberinfrastructure project GEON (the Geosciences Network) . GEON seeks to provide computing, visualization and data integration resources to the broader earth sciences. David's research focuses on the practical processes of work across distance, institutional difference and technical expertise in building an umbrella community infrastructure for the earth sciences. He shows how integrating -- or 'interoperating' -- the geosciences has involved much more than information technology R&D, it has also been a significant social and organizational undertaking. In building GEON members have had to navigate the multiple existing institutions of science and the diversity domain knowledges while simultaneously developing a distributed organization and information infrastructure. The primary method for data collection involved a three year multi-site ethnography including participant observation, interviews and document analysis. On several occasions David intervened on the GEON project providing formal feedback on social and organizational aspects of ongoing development.

Ribes Dissertation Abstract

Universal Informatics: Building Cyberinfrastructure, Interoperating the Geosciences

Sociology (Science Studies)

Comittee: Steven Epstein & Geoffrey Bowker (co-chairs); Andrew Lakoff; Chandra Mukerji; Susan Leigh Star

University of California, San Diego, 2006

The creation of cyberinfrastructure is an ambitious U.S. endeavour to build large-scale information infrastructure for the sciences. Dubbed ‘revolutionary’ by their advocates, cyberinfrastructure names the goal of building a unified information substrate to ‘interoperate the sciences’ and promote multidisciplinary research collaborations.

This dissertation is based on a three-year ethnography of one such emergent infrastructure project: GEON, the geosciences network. I identify, as a principal research object, the logic of interoperability: an emerging set of techniques and technologies which seek to preserve the specificities of heterogeneous sciences while linking them. In principle standardization offers the benefit of making possible communication, data sharing and integrated computing systems; however, in practice such projects often fail or generate substantial opposition.

I argue that the logic of interoperability seeks to blunt the politics of standardization while retaining its enabling properties. Rather than erasing disciplinary difference interoperability calls for the sciences to be known and mapped in order to make possible an automated crossing. In this vision, the specificity of the sciences are preserved while domains are linked through relations of mediation.

Drawing from research in Science and Technology Studies and the methodologies of actor-network theory and ethnomethodology, I trace the enactment of the logic of interoperability in GEON at three scales of action: institutional, organizational, and technical. At each scale I sustain a focus on the material and organizing practices of members as they work to interoperate the earth sciences. At the institutional scale there is a growing impetus and increasingly sophisticated skill-set for the arrangement of multidisciplinary collaborations of domain and computer science. At the organizational scale new methods for constructing large-scale umbrella infrastructures are being invented. At the technical scale a set of technologies of interoperability are under development which seek to automate translations of the data, language, concepts, and knowledge of science itself. Together these point to a mounting confluence of efforts at interoperability seeking a ‘revolution’ of science at all scales of action and positing a new model of governance for science.