homeless camp, broadband fiber optic lines

Underneath Chestnut Street, on Schuylkill Banks. Philadelphia.

Long-haul, interurban broadband fiber-optic lines are often buried alongside railroad tracks; their presence is typically indicated with a white plastic post with a orange or black top that will say "Do not dig here" and "Property of ___ Corp."  We as the end user on a computer or smartphone do not have or need to know what places the data is traveling through to get between our screens and the servers that house the website we are using, but the digital data is moving through space, buried under these markers. In the photo above that I took on late morning Tuesday, there is a small homeless dwelling situated alongside one of these fiber cable markers. Does the inhabitant know what he or she is sleeping on top of? Do they have a mobile phone to access the digital infrastructure that is passing directly beneath them? In this space of motion--information, railroad, and automotive above on Chestnut Street, this temporary camp was situated. This becomes an urban juxtapositions of life in the network society.

reinforced riverbank

The Seine's channelized riverbank. Winter 2008.

exposed

Lower Manhattan.

the remains of some digital infrastructure

A stack of discarded servers sitting on the loading dock of 500 South 27th St. in Philadelphia, a large, regional AT&T telecommunications facility. This loading dock sits directly below the sidewalk approach onto the new South Street Bridge. This equipment, waiting to be discarded, indicates that something goes on here, even if very little activity is visible. Rarely are workers to be seen inside the building or outside on the grounds. This building is very interesting in its brick, bunkered anonymity. It has no entrance visible from the street, few windows, and no signage other than an AT&T sign on the roof, visible from the South Street Bridge but not the sidewalk. At the same time, this site is a regional connection point for AT&T's mobile phone networks. Connecting people, in this instance, occurs in a space disconnected from its neighbors, a walled off fortress that is integral in producing and maintaining mobile connectivity.