How to Build a Supercomputer: U.S. Research Infrastructure and the Documents That Mitigate the Uncertainties of Big Science

Abstract

In this article, I argue that technical reporting and documentation processes function to mitigate uncertainty and enable complex systems in the endeavor of big science. The argument draws on two years of field research investigating technical reporting and documentation processes at a federally funded supercomputing center dedicated to scientific research. A central question the study sought to answer was, “How does one build a new supercomputer?” One of the answers that emerged is that supercomputers are built by the genre assemblages of documents that mitigate financial, political, and technological uncertainties, and their attendant risks, that are inherent to technoscientific cutting-edge enterprises. Given their centrality, these genre assemblages function as essential infrastructure for the U.S. national laboratory system and for big science endeavors in general. In conclusion, this article argues that documentation that mitigates uncertainty serves an important infrastructural function for organizational life more generally.

“Don’t Tell Them What You Told Me”: Negotiating Paperwork in Mexico City

“…Researchers, officials, journalists, doctors, and others working with multiple documents use them to assemble their cases or to examine and evaluate an administrative procedure or application. Specific examples of how the meaning of documents is tied into collections of different text genres include processing immigrants for deportation, applying for maternity leave, writing a research grant, and filing for a patent (Bazerman, 1994; Masood & Nisar, 2021; Read, 2020; Tardy, 2003; Trimbur, 2020; Wissink, 2021), religious practices of undocumented (Vieira, 2011), keeping medical records (Opel & Hart-Davidson, 2019), and filling out reports in nursing homes and factories (Karlsson & Nikolaidou, 2016).…”