Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors


(vimeo link)

Ben Mendelsohn gives us a look at "The Physical Underbelly of the Internet."

The video is meant to remind viewers that the Internet is a physical, geographically anchored thing. It features a tour inside Telx's 9th floor Internet exchange at 60 Hudson Street in New York City, and explores how this building became one of the world's most concentrated hubs of Internet connectivity.

Read more about the film at Brain Pickings. Link


Lulz- security is a major concern in the industry, but every time I asked someone what would happen if 60 Hudson Street or a similar node were somehow disabled, they seemed to think that it would be disruptive but not catastrophic.
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Edward- I understand completely what you are saying. But my experience of discovering the geography and materiality of Internet infrastructure is not uncommon--plenty of daily users remain largely unaware of the enormous amount of work, equipment etc. that goes into making communications work. In my research, I was very inspired by a scholar named Paul Edwards, who does a lot of writing on infrastructural theory. He observes that while those people who are involved with building, operating, and maintaining various infrastructure networks are extremely familiar with them, for the rest of us, these infrastructures seek to become unnoticed background. This was my motivation for making the video.
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Edward- to add a bit more, another part of my motivation was to share all that work that you "and a million other people" have done, with audiences who might no know about that work, or haven't thought about it in a while. Thanks again for watching!
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What a pile of crap. No examination of the hardware or the operating systems, just sociologists (presumably on their break from flipping burgers) and something called a "professor of cities and society". People who know absolutely nothing about internetworks, how they work and what they do. Woolly thinking from start to finish.
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