Towards a sedimentology of information infrastructures

a geological approach for understanding the city

Vlad Niculescu-Dincă

pp. 455-472

in: Mariarosaria Taddeo (ed), Landscaping cyber deterrence, Philosophy & Technology 31 (3), 2018.

Abstract

Drawing primarily on ethnographic research performed in a city in Romania, this paper provides a thick description of police practices and information systems in that municipality. It shows various ways in which technologies mediate policing practitioners' perceptions, decisions and actions. Bringing some additional material from a case in the Dutch police in which they build risk profiles predicated on real-time data from a sensor network, the paper highlights new phenomena with ethical implications emerging at the intersection of information infrastructures and policing practices. In particular, it shows a solidifying effect of technologically mediated suspicion, a sedimentation process in technological infrastructures and the formation of pockets of prejudice in the layers of software code. To adequately account for these phenomena and others, the paper provides a set of arguments and conditions for a sedimentology of infrastructures. At the same time, it offers the first steps in a larger research project that would adapt and test the limits of a geological vocabulary and approach to understand smart urban environments.