a cathedral for electricity

In a space fit for worship lost somewhere in the far, far metropolitan fringe of Northern California, is a decommissioned hydroelectric power plant, the building now used for the storage of dusty, forgotten outdated equipment.  The space's original utility was to produce electricity for an industrializing Bay Area and Central Valley, but now it sits vacant, in need of structural repair and earthquake retrofitting.

The main room of the building.  Note the railroad tracks on the bottom left, and all the windows letting in plenty of natural light -- no reliance on electrical lighting even though electricity was being produced in this space.  Photo by Alan Wiig.

Used Pelton wheel turbines -- hydraulic mining technology now used to generate hydroelectric power.

Old signage letters -- look at that font!

Antique equipment.  The truck was deteriorating but in decent shape.  The covered frame center left is possibly from a San Francisco horse-car, the pre-cable car form of urban transit that Chris Carlsson wrote about recently on Streetsblog SF.

The view of the holding reservoir right outside the power plant.  Swallows now roost throughout the building, gaining entry via broken window panes.  Their cries echoed throughout the main room during our visit.

entry points to the urban underground

Photos taken last winter on the University of Pennsylvania's campus.  I was struck by the variety of shapes and sizes of the cast iron circles, as well as how prevalent these access points are around the campus. 

Looking at the patterns of squares and circles was, at the time, something to do to distract myself from all the snow that had 

recently fallen. Now, in early August, winter seems like a distant memory.

mapping submarine fiber-optic cables

Telegeography's Global Submarine Cable Map 2010

Yesterday, via an article on The Economist magazine's website, I found out about Greg's Cable Map, which is an excellent mash-up of submarine fiber-optic cable landing locations layered onto Bing Maps.  The map effectively shows where the Internet enters and leaves each of the continents and most, if not all, of the inhabited islands in between.  While the global scale submarine cable map can be seen and even downloaded as a jpeg file at Telegeography's website, Greg's Cable Map is useful because it allows the viewer to zoom in to see the particular cities where the various submarine cables emerge from the ocean floor and connect into the terrestrial Internet grid.

Greg has also provided links to each submarine cable's owner-operator, so it is possible with a little research to see who is routing what through where regarding the major Internet Service Providers.  For instance, in Tuckerton, New Jersey, just north of Atlantic City, two cables land, the TAT-14 and the Atlantica 1.  At the TAT-14 website, there is a list of the thirty four companies that are partnered with Sprint to use the TAT-14 cable system to route Internet traffic.  While this side of the Internet is not slick and fancy, and the websites often appear ten years out of date, the information about the submarine cable systems is interesting and important.  It places in distinct space the ephemerality of bits of information traveling over the Internet's global network.  In effect, it is the global network grounded in specific locations, like Tuckerton.  Amid the sprawl of suburban New Jersey, on the border of the Pine Barrens, is a landing point for a cable that, while anonymous and indistinct, forms part of a global communication network that we all rely on daily.  Effectively, Tuckerton is part of the everyday landscape of the Internet that is accessible through the screen of our computer or mobile phone, but also present in submarine cables like the TAT-14.

Tuckerton, New Jersey, the landing point of two submarine fiber-optic cables.  Image taken from cablemap.info

 ...a final note -- after looking at the map, I am almost positive that the map does not show the actual location of the landing point.  Finding these actual spots would require some fieldwork that I hopefully will be able to begin this fall.