INFORMATION and SOCIAL REALITY Elliott Ayers Hauser A

MAKING CERTAIN: INFORMATION AND SOCIAL REALITY Elliott Ayers Hauser A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Information Science in the School of Information and Library Science. Chapel Hill 2019 Approved by: Geoffrey Bowker Melanie Feinberg Stephanie Haas Ryan Shaw Neal Thomas ©2019 Elliott Ayers Hauser ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Elliott Ayers Hauser: Making Certain: Information and Social Reality (Under the direction of Ryan Shaw) This dissertation identifies and explains the phenomenon of the production of certainty in information systems. I define this phenomenon pragmatically as instances where practices of justification end upon information systems or their contents. Cases where information systems seem able to produce social reality without reference to the external world indicate that these systems contain facts for determining truth, rather than propositions rendered true or false by the world outside the system. The No Fly list is offered as a running example that both clearly exemplifies the phenomenon and announces the stakes of my project. After an operationalization of key terms and a review of relevant literature, I articulate a research program aimed at characterizing the phenomenon, its major components, and its effects. Notable contributions of the dissertation include: • the identification of the production of certainty as a unitary, trans-disciplinary phenomenon; • the synthesis of a sociolinguistic method capable of unambiguously identifying a) the presence of this phenomenon and b) distinguishing the respective contributions of systemic and social factors to it; and • the development of a taxonomy of certainty that can distinguish between types of certainty production and/or certainty-producing systems. The analysis of certainty proposed and advanced here is a potential compliment to several existing methods of sociotechnical research. This is demonstrated by applying the analysis of certainty to the complex assemblage of computational timekeeping alongside a more traditional infrastructural inversion. Three subsystems, the tz database, Network Time Protocol, and International Atomic Time, are selected from the assemblage of computational timekeeping for analysis. Each system employs a distinct memory practice, in Bowker’s sense, which licenses the forgetting inherent in the production of the information it contains. The analysis of certainty expands upon the insights provided by infrastructural inversion to show how the production of certainty through modern computational timekeeping practices shapes the iii social reality of time. This analysis serves as an example for scholars who encounter the phenomenon of the production of certainty in information systems to use the proposed theoretical framework to more easily account for, understand, and engage with it in their work. The dissertation concludes by identifying other sites amenable to this kind of analysis, including the algorithmic assemblages commonly referred to as Artificial Intelligence. iv To Erin. Homewards! v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It has become increasingly clear to me while completing this work that is inextricably entangled in what Leigh Star called “intellectual infrastructure” In discussing her own intellectual infrastructure and its role in her scholarly journey, Star wrote that “the formation of this path was/is not accidental, however full of contingencies it may be.” In what follows I hope to celebrate the people who have create and maintain the intellectual infrastructure that has made my work possible. However contingent my path, their contributions are not accidental, and I am grateful for them. Ryan Shaw has been everything I could have asked for in an advisor and chair. I was fortunate that Ryan agreed to chair my committee so early within his career, when expedience might have suggested that my doctoral aspirations would be a distraction from the rigors of tenure and promotion. As it happened, Ryan gained tenure during this time, and in the process showed me that what counts in academic life goes far beyond just what counts for tenure. His many helpful suggestions of related literature have helped me situate my work within several ongoing conversations within and around information studies. The list of references in my meeting notes that I have yet to deeply engage (which remains regrettably long) will no doubt play this same role in my subsequent work. Melanie Feinberg is, in addition to being a strikingly original thinker, quite possibly the world’s greatest academic editor. She’s able to refine a document’s critical shortcomings into succinct and challenging questions for the writer to revise and re-present their key ideas around. Melanie does all of this while refraining from providing her own (probably superior) answers to the questions she raises, preserving the fertile space for thinking that academic writing provides. All of these skills are in addition to her considerable productivity and clarity as a scholar. That she possesses both sets of abilities in abundance and so willingly and generously shares them with her students and colleagues is a testament to her unique character. Though I have attempted to follow her exhortation to avoid relying on evaluative language in the dissertation itself, I have been unable to do so in acknowledging her contributions to my intellectual journey. vi Stephanie Haas was one of the first UNC professors I contacted when exploring this strange new field of ‘information science’ that I had discovered by accident. Her generosity in meeting with a prospective student grew into a years-long mentorship through both my masters and doctoral studies. Stephanie’s omnivorous curiosity has produced a quiet mastery over a disconcerting array of topics, especially within the study of language. As an advisor, she has never failed to listen deeply, probe expertly, and encouragingly share in my enthusiasm for my work. When I returned from my leave of absence, Ryan mentioned that there was a Communications scholar at UNC who was doing some interesting work on information systems. Neal Thomas has subsequently become an integral part, not only of my committee, but of the intellectual life of our corner of the university. Neal has provided an accessible introduction to a vast swath of Continental literature that I had avoided in the absence of a trusted guide. Neal has continued to be that trusted guide for me as I’ve gone deeper with several key thinkers he introduced me to in this dissertation and elsewhere, and is an ever-challenging discussant and collaborator. It was already a foregone conclusion that Geof Bowker’s thought would substantially shape the work of my dissertation when, in the spring of 2018, I reached out to ‘discuss my research’ with him. My hope was that the discussion would go well enough that he would agree to serve as the external member of my committee; to my delight and surprise, this is what occurred. In our subsequent discussions Geof has been a font of new ideas and connections, and an immense encouragement. His vision of engaged scholarship and the way in which he enacts it remains an inspiration for the kind of scholar I’d like to be. Other faculty beyond the five on my committee have played important roles in my intellectual development over time. I’m particularly grateful for an array of help, mentorship and support from Javed Mostafa, Brad Hemminger, Bob Losee, Barbara Wildemuth, Diane Kelley, Rob Capra, Sandra Hughes- Hassel, and the late Evelyn Daniel. Evelyn will be dearly missed by all of us who knew her. Faculty of other departments have provided intellectual challenge and diversity to my experience, especially Alan Nelson, Simon Blackburn, Lily Nguyen, Jan Prinz, Buck Goldstein, Kevin Guskiewicz, Matt Springer, and of course Neal Thomas. Through it all the SILS office staff have kept things running smoothly, and the indefatigable Lara Bailey has always had the answers to my questions and often the solutions to my problems when I needed them. The Organization Reading Group at UNC has been a crucial component of my experience since returning from my leave of absence. In addition to Ryan, Melanie, and Neal, Patrick Golden, Colin Post, vii Evelyn Daniel, Megan Winget, Debbie Maron, Andrew Rabkin, Evan Donahue, and others have made this group a wonderful weekly ritual for the past several years. Many others have made this long journey fun. John D. Martin III’s friendship has been a particularly welcome respite from the often solitary, arcane, invisible, and exhausting work of earning a dissertation. I’ve deeply enjoyed our formal collaborations, and even moreso our informal chats about things like the exquisite and illicit pleasure of spending time perfecting LATEX code instead of writing one’s dissertation. The Sociotech Writing Group, which grew out of the Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems 2019 Summer Research Institute at Rutgers University, has been an increasingly important source of support, inspiration, and intellectual engagement for me. In particular, I’d like to thank Karen Boyd, Stevie Chancellor, Mike DeVito, Michaelanne Dye, Sarah Gilbert, Koko Koltai, Jacob Thebault- Spieker, and the rest of my #accountabilibuddies for letting me be #random now and again. I hope to see you all in #wins-and-fails. Aaron Kirschenfeld was uniquely positioned to help me clarify the legal analogies I make in this text, and did some difficult work in helping me to trace the origins and precise meanings of legal terms that were rarely precisely defined in the field’s literature. Bjoern B. Brandenburg made an excellent LATEX template conforming to UNC’s thesis and dissertation guidelines available on GitHub. On April 14th, 2019, Phoebe Richardson Hauser entered the world and indelibly altered mine. Her influence on this work began some months before, when she provided an extraordinary motivation to write four chapters in the four months leading up to her birth. Since that time, my in-laws Angie and Bill and parents Eric and Donna have provided loving care and support for our young family and have watched Phoebe to allow me to complete my work.

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