Project Abstract

Pegasus is a project with three year’s funding (a total of GBP 236,994) from the ESPRC. It aims to examine the use of Grid technology by the UK particle physics community - GridPP, which has been under development and in operation for a number of years, driven by the need to analyse the unprecedented amount of data (some 15 Petabytes per year) that will be produced by the LHC (large hadron collider) experiments currently under construction at CERN and which is due to begin operation in 2007(Hlistova, 2004). To process this data GridPP envisages requiring 100,000 computers forming its associated grids, spread across the globe and incorporating a number of grid infrastructures of which GridPP, from the UK, is one (Faulkner, Lowe et al. 2006).

The Pegasus project involves particle physicists at UCL, and social scientists in the Information Systems department at the LSE. From the lens of social constructivism (Berger and Luckmann 1966), we consider the GridPP as an emergent property of the actions of UK particle physicists doing their science (Latour 1999), as much as the outcome of an objective or rational design process. So in addition to looking at the systematic design and management of their Grids, we explore how particle physicists improvise and bricolage as they develop and use (or fail to use) this technology (Ciborra 2002). To achieve this, the research first separates the construction of Grid technologies from the particle physics research they achieve, and then reconnects them, to reveal both actions to do particle physics research and actions of doing particle physics within its analysis. The research hence explores how Grids are constitutive of scientific work (Latour 1987) and become imbricated (Sassen 2002) in the working practices of particle physicists.

Our research draws upon established and emerging literature in IT/IS and related disciplines, including, works on infrastructures and their role as a constitutive element of organizations of various types (Star and Ruhleder 1996; Ciborra 2000; Hanseth 2000; Ciborra 2002); sensemaking, learning and organising (Weick 1995), improvisation and bricolage (Ciborra 2002), plans and situated actions (Suchman 2007), the practise lens for studying technology (Orlikowski 2000). In return, the research aims to achieve an enhanced understanding of the integration and mutual construction of technology and science, as mediated through scientific, social, and political practices.

Research findings will be disseminated not only to the academic communities of information systems and e-science, but also to the general scientific communities, the industry, the general public, and educational institutes.

References

P. Berger and T. Luckmann, The social construction of reality. London: Penguin  Books, 1966.

Ciborra, C. (2000). From Control to Drift: The dynamics of Corporate Information Infrastructure. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

C. Ciborra, The Labyrinths of Information: Challenging the Wisdom of Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Faulkner, P., L. Lowe, et al. (2006). "GridPP: development of the UK computing Grid for particle physics." Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics. 32: N1-N20.

J. Hlistova, "How is the Particle Physics Community Shaping the Grid in the UK?," in Department of Information Systems. London: London School of Economics, 2004, pp. 38.

M. Hammersley and P. Atkinson, Ethnography: principles and practice., 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1995.

Hanseth, O. and K. Braa (2000). Who's in Control: Designers, Managers - or Technology? Infrastructures at Norsk Hydro. From Control to Drift. C. Ciborra. Oxford, Oxford University: 125-147.

K. Knorr-Cetina, Epistemic Cultures: How the sciences make knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

B. Latour, Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

B. Latour, Science In Action. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

S. Sassen, "Global Networks: Linked Cities," Taylor & Francis, Inc., 2002.

Star, S. L. and K. Ruhleder (1996). "Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces." Information Systems Research 7(1): 111-135.

L. Suchman, Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions 2nd expanded edition. New York and Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. 2007

K. Weick, Sensemaking in Organisations. London: Sage Publications, 1995.

W. Orlikowski, Using Technology and Constituting Structures: A Practice Lens for Studying Technology in Organizations," Organization Science, 11, 4, 2000: 404-428.

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