Failures of Imagination in Urban Broadband Networks

• In Event: Smart Stuff: Internet of Things, Smart Cities, and Urban Broadband Networks

Abstract

The design and deployment of urban broadband infrastructures inscribe particular imaginations of internet access onto city streets and offer insights into government, corporate, and community desires for public internet use and ideologies about users. The different materialities and locations of these networks, their uses, and access points often expose material excesses of urban broadband networks and the failures of internet service providers, urban populations, and public officials to imagine the different ways that people incorporate internet connection into their everyday lives. We approach the study of urban broadband networks through the juxtaposition of invisible and inactive networks that are buried under the streets and have always been “turned off” (dark fiber) versus hypervisible and activated networks that are “turned on” and prominently displayed on city streets (LinkNYC). In our analysis, we concentrate on themes of visibility and spectacle as indexes of power and access.

Authors

• Germaine R Halegoua, U of Kansas

• Jessa Lingel, U of Pennsylvania