Might it be possible for people to collaborate without knowing it? Like having different people at different nodes (plateaus?) in the infrastructure that remain invisible yet are indispensible to the functioning of the infrastructure and are necessary for someone else to do their job? I'm reminded here of Mary Gray's concept of 'Ghost Work', all those people employed by Amazon's Mechanical Turk et al. who tweak AI algorithms and do menial, behind-the-scenes labor to make it seem like AI functions seamlessly and smoothly.
I'm interested in exploring some examples of this kind of "repetitive infrastructure" that the author has experienced; and whether there is use to such monotony/normalization? Are there examples of infrastructure that become *better* through such repetition?
My own work is in science laboratories and how scientists communicate to build scientific theory. Certainly, repetition and "re-use with modifications" (Charles Goodwin 2018) are a key component of this process. The infrastructure scientists use (journals, email, University departments, banks of computers/servers) to achieve their goals are largely invisible to them and they often don't realize how the direction of their theory depends on the contingencies of infrastructure. Question: should the infrastructure be 'visible' or can it only do its work enabling productivity when it is invisible?