media archaeology, reanimating infrastructure, the souls of the dead
Infrastructure (noun): “the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.”[1][2] The word first appears in English in the early 20th century.
The first documented appearance of the term ‘infrastructure’ can be found in French; a Parisian newspaper article in 1875, referring to the “excavation of a railway”. Also in France in 1875: Charles Garnier’s completion of the Palais Garnier opera house, final legacy of Napoleon III’s transformation of Paris into a modern city through a program of vast structural transformation; signing of the Constitutional Laws of 1875 inaugurating the Third French Republic; the successful Metre Convention, treaty that set up an international body for coordinating metrology and the metric system. (Notably, it was also one year before Alexander Graham Bell’s fateful telephone call to his assistant Mr. Watson, April 10, 1876.)
Infrastructure derives from two Latin elements, infra- and structura[3].
Structure is the more familiar term. The Latin origin – structura[4] -- has two uses, one suited to construction (‘a fitting together, adaptation, adjustment’); the other suited to language (‘an arrangement, order’).
Infra-[5], as in ‘below’. From inferus: ‘low’, ‘lowest’, ‘of hell’, ‘vile’; also, ‘those below the dead’[6]. What lies beneath; what supports, invisible. What is forgotten, what is below (our structures, our feet, our notice). The original use of the term ‘infrastructure’ refers to the ‘subgrade’[7] beneath railway beds; the ground beneath our feet once it has been transformed by human labor. Not just ‘the stuff you can kick’, but the stuff that holds up all your stuff; the stuff that gives you a place to stand so that you can kick.
But what is infrastructure? To take the analog telephone and the Bell System as an exemplar of such a complex socio-cultural assemblage – as I do – clearly the long lines and digital switching stations, the microwave transmission towers and the undersea cables, the telephone poles and the copper wire are all classic examples of infrastructures. But what other ‘structures and facilities’ are necessary for the ‘operation of [this] enterprise’?
Well, certainly, there are the fleets of maintenance vehicles, the buckets of equipment, the safety apparel – and there are the lineworkers themselves, and their formal and informal knowledge, their methods of professional organization. There are the systems that maintain an understanding of the integrity of the network and the dispatchers that serve as an interface between these systems and the lineworkers distributed across the system. There are the training materials, the systems of apprenticeship and management, the diagrams, schematics and instructional texts that make these infrastructures intelligible. And then there are the tools for planning the maintenance and extension of networks – animations, simulations, and other formal systems. Where do ‘infrastructures’ leave off, and ‘media’ or ‘media practices’ begin?
Elements such as knowledge and techniques of older technologies continue within the technologies that supersede them. Telephone poles – emblematic telephone company infrastructure – owe their existence to an earlier form of technology, the telegraph. Alexander Graham Bell conceived of his invention as a continuity with that earlier concept: “the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid on to houses just like water and gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.”
My interest is in infrastructure, and infrastructural imaginaries – “ways of thinking about what infrastructures are, where they are located, who controls them, and what they do” (Parks, “Stuff You Can Kick”, 355). One path towards infrastructural intelligibility calls for developing and reading media with infrastructural dispositions (Parks 357). Vast yet dispersed socio-technical systems are difficult to visualize and comprehend, yet they are everywhere, holding up our way of life as the subgrade makes possible the railway line (and the railway line makes necessary the subgrade). Power, communication, transportation – taken-for-granted, yet critical to modern human existence.
Agriculture, energy, the extraction of natural resources – infrastructure provides the how-to for these technologies and practices that have extended the carrying capacity of planet earth and been central to the enframing of all nature as only ever standing-reserve (Heidegger, 14-21) – and now, through overuse or misuse, are threatening our species existentially, as well as threatening our ability to conceive of essence in any way other than through the enframing that enframes us as only ever an element of the standing-reserve (Heidegger 24-26).
Who controls our infrastructures? Who pays for them, and who benefits? What kind of resources, labor, techniques, practices are demanded to make our way of life possible?
[1] “infrastructure.” Oxford Living Dictionaries. 2017. Web.
[2] Unless noted otherwise, all definitions are from Oxford Living Dictionaries. OLD is used because the online Oxford English Dictionary costs $395.00/yr for an individual subscription, which is insane.
[3] “infrastructure.” Etymology. le Trésor de la langue française informatisé. Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales. 2017. www.cnrtl.fr/definition/infrastructure.
[4] “structura”. Latin Dictionary. 2017. Web and “structura”. Wikitionary.org. 2017. Web.
[5] “infra.” Latin Dictionary. 2017. Web, and “infra”. Wiktionary.org. 2017. Web.
[6] “inferus.” Latin Dictionary. 2017. Web, and “inferus”. Wiktionary.org. 2017. Web.
[7] Subgrade is what we call ‘native material’ (ie: earth, dirt, stones, mud; the ground) when it has been compacted, stabilized, processed. Literally the ground beneath our feet.
Works Cited:
Heidegger, Martin, and William Lovitt. The question concerning technology, and other essays. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
Parks, Lisa. “’Stuff You Can Kick’: Towards A Theory of Media Infrastructures”. Between the Humanities and the Digital. Ed. Patrik Svensson and David Theo Goldberg. ARTECA, 2015.