Das Big Data Game: Zur spielerischen Konstitution kollaborativer Wissensproduktion in der Hochenergiephysik am CERN

This article looks at how games and play contribute to the big data-driven production of knowledge in HighEnergy Physics, with a particular focus on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), where the author has been conducting anthropological fieldwork since 2014. The ludic (playful) aspect of knowledge production is analyzed here in three different dimensions: the Symbolic, the Ontological, and the Epistemic. The first one points towards CERN as place where a cosmological game of probability is played with the help of Monte-Carlo simulations. The second one can be seen in the agonistic infrastructures of competing experimental collaborations. The third dimension unfolds in ludic platforms, such as online Challenges and citizen science games, which contribute to the development of machine learning algorithms, whose function is necessary in order to process the huge amount of data gathered from experimental events. Following Clifford Geertz, CERN itself is characterized as a site of deep play, a concept that contributes to understanding wider social and cultural orders through the analysis of ludic collective phenomena. The article also engages with Peter Galison’s idea of the trading zone, proposing to comprehend it in the age of big data as a Playground. Thus the author hopes to contribute to a wider discussion in the historiographical and social study of science and technology, as well as in cultural anthropology, by recognizing the ludic in science as a central element of understanding collaborative knowledge production.