From Server Farm to Data Table
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00:00
TabelleServerPerspektiveProgrammiergerätAbstraktionsebeneInternetworkingUnrundheitStabComputeranimationVorlesung/Konferenz
01:10
MenütechnikDistributionenraumÜberlagerung <Mathematik>Datennetz
01:46
Selbst organisierendes SystemCASE <Informatik>Arithmetisches MittelInternetworkingIndexberechnungDifferenteSoftwareQuick-SortBitOnline-KatalogAnwendungsspezifischer ProzessorElektronischer Programmführer
02:13
Wurm <Informatik>SoftwarePhysikalische TheorieDifferenteArithmetisches MittelIndexberechnungOnline-KatalogBitTelekommunikationMAPMehrrechnersystemVorlesung/Konferenz
02:46
Web SiteAntwortfunktionInternetworkingQuick-Sort
03:27
Mobiles InternetKonvexe HülleOffene MengeTelekommunikationMenütechnikWurm <Informatik>SoftwareQuick-SortKontextbezogenes SystemBitrateProzess <Informatik>FunktionalBasis <Mathematik>Physikalisches SystemMereologieInternetworkingRechenschieberUrbild <Mathematik>Vorlesung/Konferenz
04:01
RechnernetzProjektive EbeneVerschlingungShape <Informatik>SoftwareVerschiebungsoperatorGebäude <Mathematik>Computeranimation
04:31
RechnernetzWort <Informatik>SoftwarePunktVerschiebungsoperatorBildgebendes VerfahrenMetropolitan area networkGebäude <Mathematik>Minkowski-MetrikHochdruckComputeranimation
05:16
URLHackerARM <Computerarchitektur>VisualisierungRechter WinkelVorlesung/Konferenz
05:42
Quick-SortArithmetisches MittelCodecAbenteuerspielKontextbezogenes SystemPunktRelativitätstheorieSoftwareentwicklerURLWeb SiteWort <Informatik>Computeranimation
06:56
Digitale PhotographieProjektive EbeneRechenzentrumLeistung <Physik>Quick-SortEinsMereologieHackerBrennen <Datenverarbeitung>VerschiebungsoperatorGamecontrollerBildgebendes VerfahrenVorlesung/Konferenz
07:38
VerschiebungsoperatorVisualisierungLeistung <Physik>GamecontrollerProjektive EbeneEntscheidungstheorieMereologieQuick-SortZentrische StreckungSatellitensystemHochdruckBildgebendes VerfahrenSchreiben <Datenverarbeitung>EinsMinkowski-MetrikPerspektiveSchnittmengeMathematikBelegleserComputeranimation
08:36
Selbst organisierendes SystemRechenzentrumEinsQuick-SortGoogolGrundsätze ordnungsmäßiger DatenverarbeitungPerspektiveExogene VariableDivergente ReiheBrowserMultiplikationInterface <Schaltung>Projektive EbenePRINCE2SoundverarbeitungSichtenkonzeptHochdruckSelbstrepräsentationShape <Informatik>Normalvektor
09:13
RechenzentrumKonstruktor <Informatik>RöhrenflächeExogene VariableGoogolBildgebendes VerfahrenSatellitensystemOrthogonalitätPunktMultiplikationBrowserProjektive EbeneAutorisierungDivergente ReiheMultiplikationsoperatorFreewareInternetworkingTesselationDifferenteBitrateTouchscreenVorlesung/Konferenz
10:27
GoogolDifferenteGrundsätze ordnungsmäßiger DatenverarbeitungMultiplikationsoperatorRechenzentrumQuick-SortHill-DifferentialgleichungVorlesung/Konferenz
10:55
EnergiedichteSolitärspielPunktwolkeQuick-SortGoogolNormalvektorHackerRechter WinkelBitRechenzentrumEnergiedichteSystemplattformFacebookBitrateShape <Informatik>Computeranimation
12:27
RuhmasseProdukt <Mathematik>Netz <Graphische Darstellung>Rechter WinkelSoftwareindustrieComputeranimation
13:00
FacebookTeilmengeWeb logHybridrechnerPunktwolkeSystemprogrammierungSoftwareindustrieRechter WinkelMereologieSpieltheorieMAPSchreib-Lese-KopfPhysikalismusPhysikalisches SystemHilfesystemQuick-SortThreadComputeranimation
13:48
ThreadQuick-SortThreadPhysikalisches SystemComputeranimation
14:23
RechenzentrumDigitale PhotographieFacebookDienst <Informatik>Projektive EbeneArithmetische FolgeQuick-SortWurzel <Mathematik>TelekommunikationElektronischer FingerabdruckElektronischer ProgrammführerServerVorlesung/Konferenz
15:30
Quick-SortKontextbezogenes SystemRechter WinkelTransformation <Mathematik>TelekommunikationGemeinsamer SpeicherFacebookProzess <Informatik>RandwertOrdnung <Mathematik>KonditionszahlArithmetisches MittelMultiplikationsoperatorVorlesung/Konferenz
16:32
Wurm <Informatik>Finite-Elemente-MethodeNormierter RaumDigitaltechnikWhiteboardRandwertAggregatzustandMultiplikationsoperatorKonditionszahlSchlussregelWeb SiteVorlesung/Konferenz
17:27
Kategorie <Mathematik>AggregatzustandWasserdampftafelWhiteboardSuite <Programmpaket>Operations ResearchOrganic ComputingTermGarbentheorieCodeMAPProdukt <Mathematik>DampfProgrammierumgebungLokales MinimumGesetz <Mathematik>DualitätstheorieIRIS-TEingebettetes SystemPlastikkarteMarketinginformationssystemWeb SiteKategorie <Mathematik>DigitaltechnikMAPProgrammierumgebungRuhmasseAggregatzustandKonzentrizitätQuick-SortHyperbelverfahrenEinfügungsdämpfungProgramm/QuellcodeXMLVorlesung/Konferenz
18:24
Produkt <Mathematik>Quick-SortRechter WinkelHardwareNeuroinformatikMAPWeb SiteAggregatzustandObjekt <Kategorie>DatensatzGewicht <Ausgleichsrechnung>EindeutigkeitSoftwareVorlesung/Konferenz
18:57
NeuroinformatikObjekt <Kategorie>DifferenteGrundraumSoftwarePackprogrammArbeit <Physik>Quick-SortAggregatzustandSelbst organisierendes SystemEindeutigkeitMehrschichten-PerzeptronProgrammierumgebungVorlesung/Konferenz
20:00
Wurm <Informatik>Quelle <Physik>MultiplikationsoperatorProjektive EbeneNeunzehnVorlesung/Konferenz
20:31
ThreadLastMultiplikationsoperatorSpeicherbereichsnetzwerkWellenpaketQuick-SortMAPEinsFlächeninhaltThread
21:12
ThreadRechter WinkelPhysikalisches SystemSoftwareComputerspielProgrammierumgebungMultiplikationsoperatorVorlesung/Konferenz
21:57
Wurm <Informatik>InternetworkingMultiplikationsoperatorGruppenoperationHilfesystemVorlesung/Konferenz
22:39
Wurm <Informatik>SoftwareBitPackprogrammFitnessfunktionInternetworkingUmwandlungsenthalpieVorlesung/Konferenz
23:23
TermRechter WinkelArithmetisches MittelPackprogrammSpeicherbereichsnetzwerkArbeit <Physik>Quick-SortBitrateGefrierenMehrschichten-PerzeptronGüte der AnpassungWellenpaketVorlesung/Konferenz
24:16
Reelle ZahlPunktwolkeQuick-SortMapping <Computergraphik>InternetworkingMAPSystemplattformSpieltheorieBitWeb SiteDatenverwaltungÄußere Algebra eines ModulsProjektive EbeneQuellcodeFormation <Mathematik>Arithmetisches MittelExogene VariableFlächeninhalt
25:45
MultiplikationsoperatorMinkowski-MetrikÜberlagerung <Mathematik>Vorlesung/Konferenz
26:11
InternetworkingRechter WinkelStreaming <Kommunikationstechnik>Demoszene <Programmierung>TelekommunikationMaskierung <Informatik>Vorlesung/Konferenz
27:12
Quick-SortInternetworkingDatensatzKontextbezogenes SystemTabelleMultiplikationsoperatorProjektive EbeneUrbild <Mathematik>Prozess <Informatik>MAPSystemplattformDifferenteInteraktives FernsehenOffene MengeWeb SiteInformationRuhmasseCulling <Computergraphik>FlächeninhaltMailing-ListeEndliche ModelltheorieRechter WinkelHidden-Markov-ModellBandmatrixVorlesung/Konferenz
30:11
Wurm <Informatik>DifferenteQuick-SortTermVorlesung/Konferenz
30:50
DatenfeldArithmetisches MittelFormale SpracheBridge <Kommunikationstechnik>BitrateSoundverarbeitungMultiplikationsoperatorSoftwareWeb SiteTermSoftware EngineeringDatenverarbeitungssystemZirkel <Instrument>BaumechanikRuhmasseDifferenteDatennetzRechter WinkelVorlesung/KonferenzBesprechung/Interview
32:03
MedianwertKartesische AbgeschlossenheitHypermediaUnrundheitVorlesung/KonferenzJSON
Transkript: Englisch(automatisch erzeugt)
00:14
guest today is Ingrid Burrington. I tried to find something out about her and on her website she really describes her personality and what she does in a very fluid way. So
00:22
you could say she's an artist, she's also a writer, maybe she could also say she's a programmer, she's an academic. I feel like it very much depends on the perspective that you have if you wanted to describe what it is she does and I think that also translates very well to the talk she's going to give today. So it's going to be
00:41
about internet infrastructure which is a rather abstract concept and our talk will be about how to think about abstract concepts and how to visualize them and now I ask you for a very warm round of applause for Ingrid. Wish you a lot of fun. Thank you. Thank you so much for that introduction. It's always funny hearing how people think
01:03
what it is they think you do when you are not entirely sure yourself. Thank you so much to all of the staff and volunteers. This has been fantastic and thank you all for coming. I mean picking me over interplanetary colonization is like it's a pretty bold move.
01:22
So my name is Ingrid. I guess broadly I tend to tell people that I'm an artist and a writer and I think the reason that I was invited to give a talk here is because of this book that I wrote. It's called Networks of New York. This is the cover from an edition that was released this past summer by a real press that has distribution and things that I don't
01:45
understand. The first edition of it which was a self-published book that I made looked like this. I wrote and conceived of a lot of it while I was a resident at iBeam which is an art and technology organization in New York and I have a couple of copies of
02:01
this with me in case anyone, I didn't know if zine trades were a thing at this conference but if you are into that sort of thing, maybe not, okay. So I kind of think of the book as like fairly self-explanatory. It's a guide to finding the internet on the street and what that kind of means is it's a catalogue of illustrations and short summaries of different
02:20
kind of quotidian indicators of bits of network infrastructure that you might see in New York City, stuff that you would probably easily walk past if you weren't kind of bothering to look for it. In theory you could have this book and see something like this on a sidewalk and pull out your book and say I wonder what that is and it appears to be some fiber optic
02:43
cables owned by level 3 communications which is a large telecommunications company. Now you know that. I don't know if I necessarily need to explain to people who one voluntarily come to this conference and two voluntarily came to this talk that internet infrastructure is cool as shit but I mean how many people here like have gone to see a submarine cable
03:05
landing site for fun? How many people understand the impulse to do that? Okay, alright, so I'm with my people. This is great. So I'm not gonna go too deep into like why this stuff kind of is like inherently kind of compelling. The thing that I guess the
03:22
book does maybe aside from maybe getting people who wouldn't otherwise care to be into it is it is sort of this sideways way to introduce them to a lot of aspects of sort of the history and political context of network infrastructure and how that kind of comes back to the internet that we use on a day-to-day basis, right? Like who are all these companies that own all of these cables and conduits and what sort
03:43
of is the bureaucratic process of getting to lay fiber in New York City and also some of the like networked systems that are part of making a city function that aren't necessarily thought of as internet infrastructure but are networked so surveillance systems kind of come into play there. I'm trying to remember what the next slide is on this.
04:01
Oh, I wasn't originally going to talk about this but I forgot that I noted it in my abstract so I'm going to try and do it briefly and then move on. So I don't know how many people here are vaguely familiar with this magazine cover? Alright, like one or two, great. So 20 years ago in December of 1996, Wired magazine back when they would do weird
04:22
shit, commissioned science fiction writer Neil Stevenson to write an essay about fiber optic link around the globe which was this kind of major submarine cable project that kind of represented a shift in network infrastructure like or in the building and kind of financing of network infrastructure kind of related to the first bubble and he wrote a 42,000 word essay
04:45
and they published it in its entirety. Weirdly you can't find images of the actual print spreads online anymore which kind of misses the point like there was some incredible photography in it and the thing that happens when you are a nice young lady working on things related to network
05:03
infrastructure and you tell someone and there may be a man that you're doing that they say oh have you read that Neil Stevenson essay and the thing is like we all have anyone who is working in this space in the last five to seven years has hit this essay and it's partly because it's incredibly important and very valuable but I wanted to kind of I guess mention
05:23
it because I think that it's it has shaped the ways that people kind of the ways that I think visual culture thinks about and relates to this stuff in a way that I always feel a little itchy about like I think it's a really valuable and you know amazing text but there's something about it that I never really kind of grokked and I think it's partly this idea that Stevenson
05:41
evokes a lot called the hacker tourist right and his exact definition of what a hacker tourist is is someone who will travel to exotic locations in search of sites and sensations that would only be of interest to a geek so there's a lot to unpack there right because exotic to whom
06:01
right like under what context are we talking about exoticizing anything and sort of sights and sounds of interest to a geek sort of and this to be fair in 1996 there's kind of a very particular narrative that he's looking at in a very particular subculture but at this point I don't know when I when I read a lot of that text there's an element of like the reason that this Neil Stevenson thinks that you should find this interesting is because it's stuff
06:24
that white people in developed countries don't have to do the heavy lifting over and generally can afford to take for granted and like I don't know there's sort of like a conqueror braggadocio to the whole thing which is kind of I guess like cyberpunk in essence but it's something that I guess I've been trying to figure out where to position myself in relation
06:43
to that which is the main reason I guess I bring it up I guess I take a very anti-heroic approach to this stuff giving people the means to go have adventures themselves rather than the sort of behold I went on an adventure and then I wrote 42,000 words about it and aren't I the cleverest boy in the world just isn't that compelling to me I guess you know rather than a hacker tourist I guess I'd rather be a hacker pilgrim but I think there's something
07:06
interesting about the fact that there has been this sort of uptick in the last few years in interest both kind of in the art world and I think kind of just in visual culture in finding better kind of images to represent the networked world we live in beyond sort of like
07:21
stock photos of like ones and zeros and I think some of the appeal of going to and like kind of re-fetishizing the data center and fetishizing the submarine cable landing and these sort of like big heavy industry projects has to do partly with the fact it is really cool but also because it's part of there's been sort of this shift in like power and control over those
07:44
things and also the kinds of and the decisions about who gets to make those visuals also has to do with kind of how certain institutions want to position themselves in history I did a project earlier this year at a gallery in Berlin where I made large-scale lenticular
08:00
prints of satellite imagery for people who aren't familiar with what a lenticular print is it's basically like a really lo-fi hologram like there's sort of a trick of the light that you create with slit-scanned images and when you flip them they change I brought a couple tiny ones but this room is too big to pass them around so if you want to see them up close you can later so the images were satellite imagery of places that were kind of related to
08:22
or affected by sort of the satellite perspective writ large because the fact that we can like look at the world from space is really weird especially considering that how much of like the ability to do that was classified until really not that long ago one set of prints in this in this series were of google data centers and this is to get you an idea of how the
08:45
lenticular print effect works you get it I assume you get it now one of the reasons that google data centers seemed relevant to include in this sort of representation of some of the kind of landscapes related to this god's eye view from nowhere is that more than
09:00
any other company google has sort of shaped and normalized that perspective I said that to a friend who used to work at NASA and he got really mad at me and I was like sorry dude they made the interface but I think you know the the fact that like this stuff is kind of something that you can just pull up in a browser is largely their responsibility the other reason that I included google data centers in this project is because of a rumor that I have heard for
09:26
years from multiple people and that I don't really know if it's true I almost feel like the fact that it could be true is like mostly what I find interesting about it and the rumor was basically that google removes their own data centers from their satellite imagery and like it's totally
09:41
conceivable that they could because they remove and censor and blur out other things all the time at the requests of governments right this is the only example I've seen where it seemed like that could be what was going on this particular image is from a series of screenshots that I tiled together in 2016 and this is from USGS ortho imagery that's like free and publicly available
10:04
from 2014 so they had like two years to update their data from the construction of this particular data center and maybe they just didn't because like the earth is big and they're really busy because they're google there's lots of like reasons the only other person I know who has specifically mentioned this or seen and has screenshots that kind of reflect this point was
10:23
Andrew Bloom who's the author of Tubes which is another really great book on internet infrastructure that everyone's going to tell you to read the difference is that Andrew Bloom is actually a really nice guy um god someone here probably knows Steven Saint Christ I'm getting in trouble
10:42
um but this other thing that's sort of funny that's happened is basically google has kind of gotten ahead of this in a way like in 2016 it is remarkably trivially easy to find a google data center on google earth um which like as someone who spent a lot of time a few years ago trying to find this stuff like I'm a little bit angry because I'm like you
11:04
don't know how hard it was back in my day we walked uphill in the snow both ways just to find a data center um and google's kind of effort to get ahead of this narrative I think has to do with a few things right um one of them is that around 2012 um Greenpeace got really into
11:21
this campaign where they were calling out large cloud companies for using coal energy for powering their giant energy consuming data centers and they were kind of challenging them on sort of their like environmental impacts and it was a fairly effective campaign and since then a lot of at least the very large like platforms so Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft have really made an
11:46
effort to invest in green energy which doesn't really account for like all of the like mom and pop normal data centers or places like Equinix who like aren't household names to most people um they might be the people here which is nice um so I think that one of one thing was sort of a PR effort like you're going to talk about our data centers we're going to get ahead
12:04
of you and present them on our terms and they're going to be great and they're going to look great and you can't get mad at us um another thing I think that kind of shaped that was like when did it even kind of get ahead of the hacker tourists right like they not wanting to make these things like making sure that they were kind of like approachable and like
12:22
interesting like in and of themselves and not something sort of like exotic and like hidden right um and the thing that I don't know the thing that hasn't I feel like I haven't seen this super well articulated in many places but it's been kind of like gnawing at my brain a lot is that a weird thing that is kind of a weird byproduct of these companies
12:40
trying to go green is also that they're kind of further inculcating themselves as parallel sovereigns right like they run their own power grids they don't have to answer to anybody right if amazon's building their own wind farms like there's something really like literal about building a fiefdom when you like have your own fucking wind farm that I find really fascinating um and you know the software industry has become a heavy industry right
13:05
like I don't think 20 years ago like 20 years ago it was like a surprise when a small upstart telco wanted to get into the cable business I don't think 20 years ago the idea of a software company getting in on the game ever would have really been conceivable um so and I think that
13:21
this matters in part because I think there's a kind of historical narrative that is being constructed um or that has always been constructed but in this effort by companies to kind of dive in and help contribute to defining that system something new is happening um and it matters right who tells these histories as you know patron saint of cyborg feminism Donna Haraway
13:43
has once put it you know it matters which stories tell stories which systems systematize systems um and I like looking at the sort of grimy low level head like physical parts of like kind of history and of built systems because they're sort of where like the loose threads of history
14:01
happen you kind of tug on them and find something that you weren't expecting and it takes you down a path that you didn't really expect to go on um and I think that I don't know for me an architectural and kind of geography based approach um is kind of important because technology itself tends to want to amore itself from geography and from history and as a consequence
14:21
kind of also from politics and accountability um this is a story that I always have fun telling a few last year um I went on a tour of a Facebook data center for a story I wrote for the Atlantic and before they take you into um the room with all the blinky lights and the servers they have this hallway with a timeline of the history of human communications and it has
14:44
these stock photos and these and so you can see it starts you know there's a tour guide and it starts with these like handprints on cave walls um and it ends you can see behind our very kind tour guide it ends with a Facebook like um and this sort of timeline progress bar that is
15:03
suddenly going up very sharply um and I remember uh we were leaving uh Sam Cronick the my friend who was my photographer for this project uh kind of was like well you know I guess I guess caves were kind of like the first Facebook walls
15:21
and like you could think that if you wanted to and I think if you kind of need to believe that if you're going to be building Facebook like if you want to be able to sleep at night maybe you just kind of have to convince yourself that you're literally building the apotheosis of human communication um and I don't think and to be fair like I don't know it's not entirely
15:43
Facebook's fault that this is sort of how they're approaching history another funny thing that I noticed during this like walkthrough and timeline was that all of these major technical innovations were treated sort of without any historical context like it was kind of just like the printing press great books like no mention of the reformation or like kind of transformations and social upheaval in Europe it was just like sharing is cool books right um and that
16:07
that desire to kind of pretend that technology kind of emerges from cool guys having neat ideas ensconced away from like the political realities of the world is like a very silicon valley approach to technology history it's kind of you know if we think of like armchair
16:24
historians these are maybe more the beanbag chair historians of xerox park it's an extremely specific joke I appreciate that um there isn't a lot I mean silicon valley tends to be remembered more as kind of an ideological condition from which there is no escape than as a geography with like actual you know suburbs and borders and boundaries and there's not a lot in that
16:45
landscape as someone who's spent a fair amount of time there that really reminds you that it actually you know got its name for being a manufacturing region that you know it was actually making silicon chips that got it that name um this is one of the few reminders of that
17:00
legacy um it's a commemorative plaque on charleston road in palo alto california and it's where in 1959 fairchild semiconductor created the first commercially practicable integrated circuit um this is the parking lot that those plaques look out onto this is this is what a lot of the valley looks like um this is a document uh called a restrictive
17:23
covenant it's issued by the state of california's water quality control board and it basically lists all of the things that you can't do at the site where the first commercially practicable integrated circuit was created you can't build a school or a daycare center or a hospital you can't do a lot of things and the main reason that you can't
17:44
do that is because the groundwater underneath the property has been really deeply contaminated with solvents used in semiconductor manufacture um and it's unclear whether it was fairchild or a later tenant who's largely responsible for this but they've both kind of had to contribute
18:00
to the cleanup and the idea that sort of this like landmark of technology innovation sits atop a bedrock of toxic waste you know in so insert joke about silicon valley's toxic culture here um this isn't actually very unusual right um there are 23 federal superfund cleanup sites in santa clara county which largely makes up what constitutes silicon valley it's the largest
18:22
concentration of like massive federal like level environmental cleanup sites in the united states um 19 of them i think are actually specifically tied to the manufacturing production of hardware um and there's dozens of other sites like this one on charleston road that only merit sort of state level concern and cleanup they haven't gotten they're not so bad
18:44
that you need to send in the federal government to deal with it um and this is not yeah there's no plaque for this right and this is not necessarily considered computer history and like when you go to like a computer history museum at least one in the united states in my experience
19:01
if there's a better one please tell me um the way that silicon valley writes its own computer history is about industrial design and software and kind of you know individual kind of unique objects it's not really about manufacture it's it's weirdly not about scaling in the ways that everything you actually need to scale um and going into like some of the archives that
19:21
san jose state university has for the organizations that were largely involved in organizing the mostly low-income immigrant workers who were being exposed to all the chemicals in these manufacturing facilities um is a really kind of eye-opening different lens through which to think about what we think the history of technology is um but it's not considered again
19:42
it's not considered computer history like the way that librarians have cataloged this at san jose state is labor history california history uh environmental history it's not history of computing and i think that this chasm between sort of the actual experience of like what it is to make a device and sort of the things that happen with it like is an important
20:04
one to challenge because frankly like in a world where things are just kind of getting messier and dirtier we can't really afford not to um i've been looking at this stuff for about a year and kind of not really known what to kind of do with it um it's really only the last one i was like i actually just need to go make my own commemorative plaques so that's my like
20:24
summer spring project also putting some of the stuff that i've been documenting into basically like 1970s style um science textbook manuals i kind of like the idea of trying to situate this history in the time that it was taking place kind of as though if you were um i don't know like it's next to your fortran manual you pull out like the dot load the
20:43
little pamphlet that explains everything that fairchild semiconductor did to fuck over poor people in south san jose um i can't believe i have 10 it's great i'm doing sorry if i talked really fast um so i wanted to kind of leave with i guess i was trying to think like what did i actually kind of get through to here what were some of the main things i'm hoping are
21:03
useful takeaways from this and the main ones i guess would just be kind of that it's useful to kind of look at low level things and pull on sort of loose threads in in narratives in history um to kind of avoid the rather than kind of taking the approach of looking at network systems and their built environments as like i have to find the most majestic powerful thing
21:24
and i have to go on a con like go on this like epic journey to find it think about what's kind of already there in front of you that is probably already very interesting right rather than kind of looking trying to convince yourself that something is like what i mean what's one person's kind of invisible like system is another person's day-to-day life or another person's
21:43
oppressive work environment um and yeah staying kind of willing to be kind of small in the face of really large systems doesn't mean that you can't challenge them um thank you for your time
22:04
well thank you so much ingrid for your insights and your talk now we still have some time for q and a so if you have any questions please move to the microphones that we have set up here in the room i see we have no questions from the internet so you could ask right away if you have
22:20
anything questions comments anything you always wanted to ask ingrid this would be the time oh yes someone starts moving to someone start moving you move first so please hi so do you know of any effort to try to capture all these small fit bits of history
22:46
uh just like we have uh internet archive for the more software and digital oh sorry uh should i repeat myself um i kind of so you were asking about different ways to kind of preserve this history no i was i wanted to know if uh you are aware of any
23:04
effort to preserve those tidbits of history um well in terms of like that like the particular like so the question was about different efforts to kind of preserve these histories and i think these may be referring to a particular thing that i talked about or uh small weird stuff
23:22
but yeah i mean aside from like me and other specific artists or niche academics it's not really there aren't a lot of like this is not stuff that necessarily lends itself to like massive institutions deciding to dive in it tends to be sort of one person who really really cares about it or a handful of people who really really care about it um there's nicole
23:43
star cielki i'd never pronounced her name right um at nyu is probably the person doing the most um interesting complicated work about the like colonial legacies and like interesting labor histories and submarine cables right now um trying to think of other good people who kind of
24:00
reflect some of this stuff and some of i don't i mean in terms of material archives there is stuff like the stuff i've been looking over at san jose but yeah it's not necessarily like there's a institute to save weird histories there should be but thank you next question please hey ingid thank you for your talk um a question there did you map as well the
24:22
sites that you described about new york because you were discussing your book at the beginning yeah i you know i initially kind of started out doing that um and partly because i think one of the things that kind of got me doing it was realizing no one would just give me a map like turns out most people would rather not tell you where all the fiber optic conduits are buried
24:43
um but uh the reason that i didn't end up kind of releasing or producing some like magnificent map is one because like it would always be a little underwhelming if it's like just me walking around like finding markers and then just like saying like look here's the thing i found um the other was that the alternative to that was like making some sort of crowdsource platform where
25:03
everyone's gonna like put in their markers and that's like a community management um endeavor that i just personally don't want to take responsibility for like i find those like abandoned crowdsourced maps that only have like a handful of pins from like maybe less than a month of activity to be one of the most heartbreaking bits of internet litter and i
25:22
just didn't really want to make more of it you can make a game of that kind of stuff i mean there's there's a guy like an osm guy who's been working on a project um that he's been calling cloud uh i think it's just called like the new cloud atlas and it's you know i think he's doing okay with it but i was like great i don't have to manage this great that's the spirit of the real artist of course leave the work for the others thank you next
25:45
question please uh not too long ago in a city not far from here there were a kind of uh there was this cover this secret infrastructure of hidden cables that uh at
26:04
the time now nobody knew uh what it was about where it was speculated that it was uh something related to spy agencies trying to uh yeah use secret communication channels do you uh had you interest in something like that or something you would share you know um
26:29
so the question i have today i have to repeat the questions right that's useful or um i think the people in the stream should have understood great fine i just remember reading the things you should do but um so uh that stuff it like so the the generally i do think
26:46
that stuff is like interesting um but the like scene of people who work on that stuff is overrun with personalities that i just don't really want to interact with um that's like all i really have to say about it thank you next we have a question
27:02
from the internet uh yep the internet wants to know uh did you meet the actual cable builders or geographers um i've so a lot of my interactions were more with the people
27:20
actually laying the cable like a lot of my work was more with um talking to people whose like job is actually getting that stuff kind of installed in the streets um fiber optic cable manufacturer is super interesting um and i would love to go convince someone to let me go on a tour of a facility it hasn't been as high on the to-do list just yet but thank you next
27:40
question the guy here on the first mic and the blue sweater well thank you my my question is actually about the background picture whether it has any special significance right yeah so i oh i should have explained that so this is um haw one um or what's left of it it's the coaxial remnants of a coaxial submarine cable sticking out of a seawall in rural northern california um in a town called manchester california um it's when we talk about
28:05
who who goes to see the submarine cable landing sites for fun this is one that i went to go see for fun um it's actually like a really interesting area and kind of an interesting illustration of stories about submarine cables that kind of get left out of kind of heroic infrastructure stories because this town has like this massive glut of fiber running through it and
28:25
since you know as long as anyone can remember they've all had shit internet access and no one can get decent bandwidth and it's because at&t doesn't really want to share and there's sort of this like really blatant disparity there that's really i don't know it's a great place thank you and i'd like to make a comment on your discussion on the infrastructure
28:44
the open street map project is always interested in recording information as you've described i personally have been using it but i would suspect that five optic cables are something that they're interested in yeah no the the person who is working on that crowdsource platform is like a long time open street map contributor um and i think that that's
29:04
kind of his mental model behind it next question please this is something between a comment and a question i guess please move a little closer to the mic thank you i love those you were referring to the silicon valley engineering mindset and i guess we we all find this somewhat
29:24
questionable um but i actually found it somewhat more interesting looking into the history of engineering um and this is then going back to a very swiss story about engineering uh when
29:42
these crazy guys um went on building all these uh an old different kind of infrastructure in in the swiss mountains when they built railways up on mountains that we today actually find quite beautiful so this crazy mindset um of the engineer maybe uh is seeing something of
30:04
renaissance how do you feel about this way of looking at the engineer hmm i'm trying to think about how to answer this in the context of like the particular thing i was talking about um because i think you're right like like this history doesn't like this legacy doesn't start with the valley per se it just sort of got most associated with the
30:25
valley for a few reasons um so funny just describing it as the anyway um so in terms of like the resurgence of engineer as just to clarify like do you mean kind of like the the value or like the importance of an engineering mindset or yeah i was thinking
30:45
about the engineering mindset as such and as a science journalist i'm especially interested in the difference between the scientist and the engineer right so to me it feels like there is something like a way the engineer um sees the world uh in difference to the scientists
31:02
yeah i think that's that's true i think um what's kind of interesting about the ways in which software engineering has kind of become a very dominant field as opposed to other kinds of engineering is like software engineering has a lot of ketchup to do in terms of ethics education right like you know ethics and engineering generally has kind of historically
31:25
in civil engineering kind of means like don't build a bridge that collapses and a lot of what exists for kind of talking about ethical concerns in building computational systems doesn't have this kind of massive like networked effects language so i think that there is a value to like
31:44
what engineers do and can contribute to society but how it um how it manifests can be like i think is like partly shaped by like the by the ability to kind of have an ethical like kind of or moral compass while you're doing it thank you so much so we have run out of
32:01
questions which is convenient because we have also run out of time so please another warm round of applause for ingrid thank you so much