Paper short abstract:

Our contribution focuses on the discrepancy that arises between the narratives of major crises and collapses of digital infrastructures dominated by a discourse of constant securitization and the everyday maintenance work that is and must be done on the ground.

Paper long abstract:

Our contribution focuses on the discrepancy between the narratives of major crises and collapses of digital infrastructures dominated by a discourse of constant securitization and the everyday maintenance work that is and must be done on the ground. Using an Austrian example in the domain of cybersecurity in logistics, we show that on the practical level, everyday disruptions and fragilities are prevalent and appear to stand in contrast to the securitization of digital infrastructures – a dominant discourse on the meso and macro level. This points to the need to include the ‘banality’, the notorious and continuous maintenance work into theories about socio-technical infrastructures and securitization. It is not only the major breakdown that makes individual components of infrastructures visible (which – so the common claim – usually should work smoothly). To the practitioners it is notoriously visible in their daily work through regularly occurring small breakdowns and glitches. This points to the need to consider infrastructures essentially as ‘fragile’ assemblages that require permanent attention, care, maintenance and cooperation from different actors. Due to its interconnectivity, socio-technical digital infrastructures have always been vulnerable, because it requires cooperation among many different elements. However, such a shift in conceptualization also means that we need to rethink our notions of how we understand “vulnerability”, “failure”, “disruption” and “normality” of functioning infrastructures. What can a logic of fragility look like that dispenses with an ideal notion of “functioning” and yet pays sufficient attention to what is considered notorious maintenance work in a fragile logic?