A trichordal temporal approach to digital coordination: the sociomaterial mangling of the CERN grid

This paper develops a sociomaterial perspective on dig ital coordination. It extends Pickering’s mangle of practice by using a trichordal approach to temporal em ergence. We provide new understanding as to how the nonhuman and human agencies involved in coordination are embedded in the past, present, and future. We draw on an in-depth field study conducted between 2006 and 2010 of the development, introduction, and use of a computing grid infrastructure by the CERN partic le physics community. Three coordination tensions are identified at different temporal dimensions, namely obtaining adequate transparency in the present, modeling a future infrastructure, and the historical disciplining of social and material inertias. We propose and develop the concept of digital coordination, and contribut e a trichordal temporal approach to understanding the development and use of digital infrastructure as being or ientated to the past and future while emerging in the present.