Geoffrey C. Bowker

This was a truly eye-opening read. One does not think that you are going to be finding a particularly engaging read when it comes to classification, and at some points it honestly isn't. But Bowker and Star do address the fact that their method at bottom is one that can be at time down right boring. The book picks up though in its analyses from the ICD to tuberculosis lit. reviews and cultural classifications of apartheid in a way that makes it that you have to feel on a personal level the effects of the classification that they are pointing out. So what is the point? Classification, whether we like it or not, is something that we do. And we have been doing it misguidedly. By not looking at the preexisting structures around us we miss the nuances that reveal so much about ourselves. The biggest thing is that, however much faith and lack of thought we give to them - they are guiding every aspect of our lives. This alone makes the book a worthwhile read. But what Bowker and Star really do is go into the ethical/political implications of these structures and try to find a way by which we could better organize the world so as to fully assimilate the "monster" and the "cyborg" as realities that we can't just push to the wayside. It is about embracing our multiplicities. Now, I do have a quesiton. Some of the new vocabulary that Bowker and Star propose to make this change is simply not there and so they themselves don't offer much of a starting point. They simply say that it is needed. But being aware of the problem can be just as important as trying to solve it and so as a descriptive analysis one should not expect from them a grand unifying theory.… (altro)

After a spectacular start with a discussion of infrastructure (and particularly classification as infrastructure), its pervasiveness, and its power to shape our lives and perceptions, this book switches tack and moves with little rigor between anecdotes, exceptions, and colorful but superficial terms. The end result is a mish-mash of observations that do little to advance the theoretical arguments further; I had to remind myself of the clarity and power of the first few chapters to realize there is much valuable content in the book.… (altro)