How current infrastructures shape future democracy: Notes on orphans and belonging in politics of information (technology)

The paper departs from studies of information infrastructure and classification (Bowker and Star, 1999; Star and Griesemer, 1989 amongst others) to frame consequences of classification and ordering with reference to democracy, inclusion and exclusion through politics of information and especially ICTs.

In a society defined as ‘knowledge-centred’, politics of information (and infrastructures) is crucial to observe and trace the material and immaterial boundaries between ‘having’ and ‘having-nots’, going beyond the classical debate on the ‘digital divide’.

The paper argues from a theoretical perspective and through exemplary cases in the literature, that current infrastructures shape future democracy in a peculiar way, namely because of processes of inclusion and exclusion of categories, individuals, groups, and practices on different bases. In this sense, the way infrastructures are imagined (discursive technological frames), designed (inscription of global and local politics) and used (by naïve or advanced users) embed visions of current and future social assets, criteria of inclusion/exclusion, politics of belonging and orphanages resulting from the categorization of otherness. Specific attention will be devoted to cumulative effects of inter-and cross-categorizations across different infrastructures, which control and constrain people’s everyday lives as well as attitudes, trust towards the future, chances for empowerment and envisage of self and collective improvement.