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    Machineries of Similarity and Difference

    AIDS from Its Research Infrastructures

    Part of Infrastructures

    Author David Ribes
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    Paperback
    $70.00 US
    The MIT Press
    On sale Apr 21, 2026 | 336 Pages | 9780262553599
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    An examination of three research infrastructures over three decades as they sought to support studies of HIV/AIDS across dramatic changes to the disease, the science, and its politics.

    In Machineries of Similarity and Difference, David Ribes theorizes interoperability, or how to make different things work together. For the last 30 years, standardization has been the dominant social scientific motif for understanding coordination and collaboration across time and space. But across those years much has changed, in part through computational and other technical advances, in part through a new orientation to the value of similarity and difference. Interoperation is an ascendent social form.

    To examine the production of equivalency, the author offers a book-length extended case study of three keystone research infrastructures that have been supporting investigations of AIDS for over 35 years—nearly since the beginning of the US epidemic, even before we knew of HIV. The book is thus an examination of historical epistemology and ontology with respect to research infrastructure, attending to the technical conflicts and social politics that play out within and across scientific arenas and social worlds.
    David Ribes is Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering and Director of the Data Ecologies Lab (deLAB) at the University of Washington.
    David Ribes View titles by David Ribes
    ENDORSEMENTS

    “In Ribes’ captivating book, the history of North American AIDS cohort studies, with all their statistical tedium, endless forms, and mundane paperwork emerges as an epic quest for interoperability.”
    —Lukas Engelmann, Professor, University of Edinburgh; author of Mapping AIDS: Visual Histories of an Enduring Epidemic

    “Ribes steadfastly resists data hype, debunking fantasies of a frictionless digital world and grounding us instead in the layers of material practices that make science possible. A great read!”
    —Nicole C. Nelson, Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin–Madison; author of Model Behavior
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    About

    An examination of three research infrastructures over three decades as they sought to support studies of HIV/AIDS across dramatic changes to the disease, the science, and its politics.

    In Machineries of Similarity and Difference, David Ribes theorizes interoperability, or how to make different things work together. For the last 30 years, standardization has been the dominant social scientific motif for understanding coordination and collaboration across time and space. But across those years much has changed, in part through computational and other technical advances, in part through a new orientation to the value of similarity and difference. Interoperation is an ascendent social form.

    To examine the production of equivalency, the author offers a book-length extended case study of three keystone research infrastructures that have been supporting investigations of AIDS for over 35 years—nearly since the beginning of the US epidemic, even before we knew of HIV. The book is thus an examination of historical epistemology and ontology with respect to research infrastructure, attending to the technical conflicts and social politics that play out within and across scientific arenas and social worlds.

    Author

    David Ribes is Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering and Director of the Data Ecologies Lab (deLAB) at the University of Washington.
    David Ribes View titles by David Ribes

    Praise

    ENDORSEMENTS

    “In Ribes’ captivating book, the history of North American AIDS cohort studies, with all their statistical tedium, endless forms, and mundane paperwork emerges as an epic quest for interoperability.”
    —Lukas Engelmann, Professor, University of Edinburgh; author of Mapping AIDS: Visual Histories of an Enduring Epidemic

    “Ribes steadfastly resists data hype, debunking fantasies of a frictionless digital world and grounding us instead in the layers of material practices that make science possible. A great read!”
    —Nicole C. Nelson, Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin–Madison; author of Model Behavior

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