互联网基础设施研究:元概念、路径与理论框架

An Infrastructure Study of the Internet: Meta-Concept, Approach and Theoretical Framework

新型基础设施建设重新激发了学者对基础设施的学术关注。人类学提供了一个鲜明的逻辑:透过作为实体的基础设施理解作为社会关系的基础设施。本文界定了作为元概念的基础设施,并认为互联网是其突出表征。通过在人、物以及两者关系上形成思考路径,本文提出了理解互联网基础设施研究的理论框架,用六组关键词来总结,分别是物质性与社会性、嵌入性与基底性、可见性与不可见性、历史性与空间性、关系性与公共性、象征性与情感性。本文进一步讨论了未来感、社会加速、基础设施鸿沟、数字废墟等现实议题。

The development of new infrastructure has drawn academic attention back to the old issue of infrastructure. Anthropology provides us with a heuristic perspective: to understand infrastructure as social relations through infrastructure as material entity. This paper begins by defining infrastructure as a meta-concept and argues that the internet is its prominent representation. In terms of people, things and the relationship between them, this paper develops a theoretical framework for an infrastructure study of the internet, by focusing on six pairs of notions, namely materiality/sociality, embeddedness/substrateness, visibility/invisibility, historicity/spatiality, relationality/publicness, and symbolism/affection. This paper further discusses the issues of realistic significance, such as futurity, social acceleration, infrastructural divide and digital ruins.