Infrostructure(s): Administering Information

This Article, Infrostructure(s): Administering Information, considers how authoritative entities generate, manage, and produce informational structures, facilities, and architectures that support market creation and creative economy decision-making between private parties and entities. The term infrostructure, as opposed to other terms, such as infostructure and infosphere, suggests that infrostructures play vital roles in modern democratic life including producing new information resources, facilitating private transactions between private parties, and building the administrative state. This Article is divided into two parts. Part I discusses how information regulation is mediated through information forms and information systems with a focus on the materialities of information forms and systems.

Part I then turns to how the infrostructure is built through three legal acts: (1) the act of instantiation, in which law culls certain information from a broader universe of social information to produce authoritative information; (2) the act of relation, in which law produces and reproduces social relations in information; and (3) the act of meaning, in which law considers the legal effects of instantiation and representation. Part II will demonstrate how the project of infrostructure helps us to present a new story of administrative legitimation, by re-reading diverse areas including administrative law, intellectual property law and constitutional law. Specifically, Part II examines how infrostructure supports three different accounts of administrative legitimation: structural legitimation, expertise legitimation, and cultural legitimation.