Vital Systems Security

One of the things I would like to do more on the blog is to introduce the work of various people we know and run into who are doing work related to vital systems security. I wanted to start by introducing a PhD student I met in Finland last year named Antti Silvast. Antti, who has a background in engineering, is working on the question of electric system reliability, particularly against the background of deregulation and increasing concerns about critical infrastructure protection. As will be immediately evident, Antti’s work is very much connected to concerns that have been central to the collaboration.

Read on for a description of Antti’s work that he sent along.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here is an interesting piece on infrastructure repair and maintenance by Stephen Graham and Nigel Thrift.

ABSTRACT: This article seeks to demonstrate the centrality of maintenance and repair to an understanding of modern societies and, particularly, cities. Arguing that repair and maintenance activities present a kind of ‘missing link’ in social theory, which is usually overlooked or forgotten, the article begins by recalling Heidegger’s concept of material things as being ‘ready to hand’. The main elements of practices of repair and maintenance are then elaborated on so as to help establish the argument that, by focusing on failure and breakdown in technical artefacts and systems, their vital contribution can be brought to the fore. The article then moves on to suggest that prevailing cultural constructions, and imaginations, of the ‘infrastructure’ that sustains modern societies, actively work to push repair and maintenance activities beyond the attention of social science. To exemplify these arguments, the article explores in detail some of the repair and maintenance activities that sustain, first, the nexus between computer communications and electricity and, second, the system of automobility. The article concludes by excavating a politics of repair and maintenance in modern cities and societies.

During my trip to Finland last year I met a graduate student named Antti Silvast who is working on electricity and regulation, with many themes that intersect ours. A central concern in his work is how different norms — security, efficiency, social welfare — are being incorporated in regimes of regulation. Interestingly, the work also has a distinctive “federal” dimension, concerning the relationship between EU regulation and country-level regulation. Also interesting tie-ins with themes around reflexive modernization (although as Antti pointed out to me when I was in Finland, one has to be a little careful with such language in European debates, due to the reception of Beck). Antti has a good position for observation with direct contact with many of those on the Finnish side making policy and regulatory standards in this area. What follows is a short description he sent of his own work.

Read the rest of this entry »