Reviewed by:

• The Stuff of Bits: An Essay on the Materialities of Information by Paul Dourish
• Marlene Manoff (bio)

In The Stuff of Bits, Paul Dourish surveys the material turn across a range of disciplines with particular attention to what he calls “the materialities of information.” He highlights the imperative to work across traditional scholarly boundaries in order to address the entanglement of social, cultural, and material factors involved in the transmission of information. Whereas most materialist analyses of the digital environment tend to focus on hardware and large-scale computer infrastructure, Dourish concentrates his analysis on software design and development. He acknowledges that software is more malleable than metal or plastic, but maintains that developers nevertheless must contend with multiple material constraints which this volume proceeds to elaborate.

Dourish is particularly concerned with the ways in which the digital representations that encode so much of contemporary life are constrained by aspects of their materiality. He provides four case studies that address emulation, spreadsheets, databases, and network protocols from the perspective of how they function as mechanisms for representation. The first case study, devoted to processes of digital emulation, attempts to explode the notion of the immateriality of the virtual. Dourish builds an interesting case for virtualization as rematerialization. He explains how we might understand emulation as not so much “a move away from the material, . . . but rather a new material foundation for digital experience” (p. 68).

The second case study describes what Dourish calls “spreadsheet events” in order to analyze how the materialities of spreadsheets shape the ways in which people work with them. He discusses the granularity and transportability of spreadsheet grids and describes how and why some things are manipulable by spreadsheet and others not. He provides insight into the ways in which spreadsheet formats come with “commitments to particular structures that create not only a way of seeing data but also a way of working with them” (p. 100). I read this as a prelude to what I expected to be an elaboration of the larger implications of institutional reliance upon spreadsheets, or a discussion of how spreadsheets shape organizational thinking or how they help to promote certain kinds of evidence gathering and solutions. But [End Page 955] the emphasis in this volume is on describing the evolution and specific materialities of technical processes, rather than on illuminating the ways in which dependence upon these materialities shapes larger social arrangements.

The third case study provides a detailed accounting of what databases are and how they work. As databases, even more than spreadsheets, underpin much of contemporary life, Dourish is concerned with the evolution of database structures that ultimately determine who and what gets to be represented. Dourish covers database formats and the relational model, alternatives to the relational model, the materiality of relational data processing, and the move to big data. He describes the properties that “are significant in the rise of NoSQL databases and related new approaches” including “granularity, associativity, multiplicity, and convergence” (p. 128).

The fourth case study traces the history and materialization of internet routing protocols and network topologies. This enables Dourish to show that network centralization or decentralization is a function of the entanglement of material and institutional factors. In so doing, he provides insight into how the “politics of network address space allocation and the dynamics of routing table growth and exchange are dual aspects of the same material configurations” (p. 155). He makes a convincing case for seeing the Internet as “not so much a network of networks as a network of institutions” (p. 152).

The wealth of technical detail Dourish provides raises two important questions. What does it mean for a computer scientist to write himself into the interdisciplinary materialist literature? And what kind of technical expertise is required to opine on digital technology? In a volume that describes itself as an attempt “to bridge” the domains of cultural practice and technological operation (p. 205), not much text is devoted to teasing out the social and cultural impacts of densely described technological processes. Thus, while Dourish reflects at some length...

审核人：

• 零碎的东西：保罗·杜里什（Paul Dourish）的信息重要性论文
• 玛琳·玛诺夫（生物）

保罗·杜里什（Paul Dourish）在《点点的东西》（The Stuff of Bits）中调查了跨学科的材料转变，并特别关注他所谓的“信息的重要性”。他强调了跨越传统学术界的工作势在必行，以解决信息传播所涉及的社会，文化和物质因素的纠缠。尽管大多数对数字环境的唯物主义分析倾向于集中在硬件和大型计算机基础结构上，但杜里斯将其分析重点放在软件设计和开发上。他承认软件比金属或塑料更具延展性，但他坚持认为，开发人员仍必须应对多种材料限制，而这在本书中将继续详述。

杜里斯（Dourish）特别关注编码如此多的当代生活的数字表示受到其实质性方面的限制的方式。他提供了四个案例研究，分别从仿真，电子表格，数据库和网络协议作为表示机制的角度出发。第一个案例研究致力于数字仿真的过程，试图突破虚拟的非物质性的概念。Dourish建立了一个有趣的案例，说明虚拟化是重新实现。他解释了我们如何将仿真理解为“从材料上移开”。。。而是为数字体验提供新的物质基础”（第68页）。

第二个案例研究描述了Dourish所谓的“电子表格事件”，以便分析电子表格的重要性如何影响人们使用电子表格的方式。他讨论了电子表格网格的粒度和可移植性，并描述了如何以及为什么某些事情可由电子表格处理，而另一些则不能。他提供了有关电子表格格式与“对特定结构的承诺，这些结构不仅创建了一种查看数据的方式，而且还创建了一种使用它们的方式”的见解（第100页）。我读此书是作为我期望阐述机构对电子表格的更大影响的序言，或者讨论电子表格如何塑造组织思维或它们如何促进某些类型的证据收集和解决方案。但是[结束页955]本卷的重点是描述技术过程的演变和特定的实质，而不是阐明依靠这些实质来形成较大的社会安排的方式。

第三个案例研究详细说明了什么是数据库以及它们如何工作。随着数据库（甚至比电子表格更重要）支撑着当代生活，Dourish关心的是数据库结构的演变，这些结构最终决定了代表谁和代表什么。Dourish涵盖了数据库格式和关系模型，关系模型的替代方案，关系数据处理的重要性以及向大数据的迁移。他描述了“在NoSQL数据库和相关新方法的兴起中非常重要的属性”，包括“粒度，关联性，多样性和收敛性”（第128页）。

第四个案例研究追溯了Internet路由协议和网络拓扑的历史和实现。这使Dourish能够证明网络的集中化或分散化是物质和制度因素纠缠的函数。通过这样做，他可以洞悉“网络地址空间分配的政治以及路由表增长和交换的动态是相同材料配置的双重方面”（第155页）。他提出了令人信服的理由，认为互联网“与其说是机构网络，不如说是网络网络”（第152页）。

Dourish提供的大量技术细节提出了两个重要问题。计算机科学家将自己写进跨学科唯物主义文学意味着什么？掌握数字技术需要什么样的技术专长？在将自己描述为试图“弥合”文化实践和技术操作领域的尝试的卷中（第205页），没有太多的文字专门用来说明密集描述的技术过程的社会和文化影响。因此，尽管杜里斯有所反映...