Infrastructure Manifest (v. 1.0)—Ursula Pawlick-Deger, Arianna Ciula, and Miguel Vieira—Chapter 5—“Critical Studies of Tech Stacks: What Can Technologies Tell Us About a Lab Culture?”
Infrastructure Type Descriptiona

Control point for access to or useb

For example, identify the owner, regulator, manager, etc. as appropriate

Open Source, Open Access, or Public Resource/Utilityc Proprietaryc How heavily used?d Reliabilityd Satisfaction for Userd Ethical concerns (known or possible) Comments

Land infrastructure

For example, properties ceded, unceded, public, private, etc.

Include only principal land infrastructures.

Land in the United Kingdom (London) contributed to concept development and writing the chapter/introduction to the book. Discussions between authors were conducted both online and in-person in the Virginia Woolf Building on Kingsway, at King’s College London on the Strand campus in central London. King’s College London located in the City of Westminster, the city and borough of the United Kingdom’s Houses of Parliament and large portions of the British government. Not Applicable Not Applicable 10 10 10

Materials infrastructure

For example, notable common or rare extracted or other materials used in research, production, and communication.

Break down by notable materials used in devices or tools if appropriate.

Devices: personal laptop (MacBook), iPad, iPhone MacBook was owned by King’s College London Not Applicable Not Applicable 10 10 10 Ethnographic data including interviews had to be carefully transferred to a new MacBook once it was returned to KCL.

Energy infrastructure

For example, principal energy sources and infrastructure used in research, production, and communication

Not Applicable Not Applicable

Transportation infrastructure

For example, private or public transportation needed for daily or research trips

London underground and buses used for a daily commute in London. Easy access, although most of the work was conducted while working remotely from home. Not Applicable Not Applicable 6 8 8

Architectural infrastructure

For example, buildings, labs, rooms

Campus department buildings and offices at the King’s College London and living areas in London University and department Not Applicable Not Applicable 6 10 10

Civic, community, national, or regional infrastructure

For example, provided by cities, communities, governments, etc.

Not Applicable Not Applicable

Institutional infrastructure

For example, equipment, services, and “overhead” or “indirect cost recovery” items for grants to universities

Equipment, such as MacBook was provided by King’s College London and overheads were covered by the MSCA Horizon 2020, Europan Commission grant. University and department Not Applicable Not Applicable

Labor infrastructure

For example, type and amount of labor from collaborators, staff, research assistants; include any attributes that seem important, such as unrecognized, unpaid, low-paid, outsourced, or other attributes of labor

The member of King’s Digital Lab contributed to revising the list of tools and software. This was conducted over a couple of the lab’s meetings and a total of twelve people contributed to this process. Easy, as it was carried out as part of the lab’s meetings. Not Applicable Not Applicable 5 10 10

Research-content infrastructure

For example, physical libraries and archives, online research materials, shadow libraries, etc.

Common materials, such as digital and print literature sources. Some were purchased and some were publicly available online. Not Applicable Not Applicable 10 10 10

Tools infrastructure

For example, principal analog tools and digital tools, scripts, or protocols used for research, writing, communication, production (excluding high-performance computing, for which see below)

Python and Observable tool Not Applicable Not Applicable

Networked Platforms infrastructure

For example, major networked or cloud platforms used for research, storage, analysis, sharing, communication, publication—Google Drive, Dropbox, AWS, etc. (excluding high-performance computing, for which see below)

Not Applicable Not Applicable

High-performance computing infrastructure

Here defined expansively to include the use not just of supercomputers and computer clusters or grids but any high-performance computing infrastructure or special GPU and other processors exceeding the capabilities of an individual workstation, laptop, or server.

Not Applicable Not Applicable
Other infrastructure Not Applicable Not Applicable

This infrastructure manifest was completed by Ursula Pawlick-Deger, Arianna Ciula, and Miguel Vieira, and reports on Chapter 5 “Critical Studies of Tech Stacks: What Can Technologies Tell Us About a Lab Culture?”