Urban Technology at University of Michigan Week -36
Infrastructure, maintenance, connectivity
If you stand around in one place, eventually the future will come right to your front door. Or at least that’s what a truck I encountered in my neighborhood seems to promise. FIBER OPTIC BUSINESS INTERNET TEAM, it says. DATA CENTERS. FIBER. Zeros and ones are shooting out of the end of a bundle of fiber. The internet is happening right on the side of that van!
I’m Bryan Boyer, Director of the Urban Technology degree at University of Michigan. This newsletter is about cities, technology, and design. While we launch the program, we’re detailing the process of working toward the day when we welcome our first students, now 36 weeks and counting. Enjoy this newsletter? Send to a friend who may feel the same way. It’s good karma and who doesn’t need a bit of that in 2020?
When I happened to be taking this photo the door on the side was open, all but eliminating the depiction of a worker in hardhat and reflective vest that would otherwise be seen heroically wrangling fiber optic cables slung over their shoulder. The photo, as it is captured with the worker obscured, shows the internet as a mythology—as DATA CENTERS and BUSINESS INTERNET and DATA—that just appears without any hassle. The internet just happens, right?
No, the internet does not “just happen” any more than roads and bridges “just happen.” But it’s not everyday that you spot internet infrastructure being built or repaired in your own neighborhood! Fiber optics run in a continuous line from an endpoint, like your home, to the switch that provides further connection upstream. Tiny fiberoptic cables travel through pipes in the ground like this one…
…That were dug into the soil and laid down after workers came along and made markings like these (below) to denote the path of travel…
For more on those markings, dive into Ingrid Burrington’s excellent Seeing Networks, which is a “rough field guide to network infrastructures.” Ingrid’s work is a wealth of ways to see the internet. The new 99% Invisible book also covers street markings.
The cable that passes near my house connects to a loop through downtown Detroit, which connects to a larger circle linking Detroit to Ann Arbor, and a yet larger line that traces the “palm” of Michigan. The maps below show the vendor’s fiber network, including a lonely, long connection over to Chicago which is probably this company’s uplink into Michigan. It’s 2020 and social divisions feel wider than ever before, but the infrastructure is still and always shared—whether you link your neighbors or not!
These maps show just one provider, but it’s clear that they leave large gaps. It’s also true that fiber optics are not the only conduit for broadband, but across all modes of connection the digital divide is alive and well in Detroit. For more on this, check out the work of Taubman College faculty Cyrus Peñarroyo. The persistent digital divide means there’s more work to be done, and more ways to think about how homes, blocks, and neighborhoods are connected.
While the fiber provides a nice excuse to geek out about trenches and cables and how messy the internet really is, elsewhere in the city there are more interesting movements afoot to connect Detroiters. The Detroit Community Technology Project is a good place to look. Their Equitable Internet Initiative is focused on building connectivity at the same time as building a network of builders and maintainers. Rather than fiber optic, the Detroit Community Technology Project builds wifi mesh networks, which are easier to self-organize and quicker to install.
When you stop and watch someone laying the cable that could supply internet to your home, or climb up a ladder and lash a wifi repeater to the roof, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the internet is a network, and networks are as much about things as they are about people. Without a network of people who build and maintain the internet as a set of physical links under streets, across the oceans, and through the air, there is no internet. Maintenance makes everything go.
At University of Michigan’s Urban Technology program we need to inspire students to be maintainers and carers, first and foremost. If they happen to invent or build new things along the way, that’s fine too, but building without maintenance is like a party without music: not going to last very long.
Links
📭 That’s right folks, we’ve gotten to the “smart box” phase of the internet of things. Ugh. Pass!
🌅 Artist Ed Ruscha has taken thousands of photographs of Sunset Boulevard in LA and recently the design studio Stamen created a way to “drive” through the archives and see the strip concurrently on different timelines. Beautiful.
🤝 Bianca Wylie argues for publicly owned technology which could create a new generation of public works for things like childcare, healthcare, and public engagement. Yes, please. Good work underway in UK and Estonia on this and lots of room for more. And what if likeminded cities developed technology jointly, asks Anthony Townsend?
🧁 Interviews with Audrey Tang, Digital Minister of Taiwan are always worth your time. Audio and transcript of an interview with Tyler Cowen. Open innovation, laziness, systemic risk, and more.
📕 Don’t have a copy of it, but this issue of Logic magazine on care looks on point. Thanks for the tip, Rena.
🔮 Scott Smith and Madeline Ashby have a book out titled How to Future that provides a lovely history of foresight and futures practices. Catch Scott giving a talk about this on November 3rd.
This week: Script writing for an animation we’re developing. Notes to Justine on her illustration we glimpsed last week. Financial aid, admissions, credit hours, and CIP codes. A walk with Anthony and schemes, because schemes are what happen on walks. 🏃♂️