Mattern, Everything Is Infrastructure

8/4/2019 Mattern, Everything Is Infrastructure

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Everything isInfrastructure

Shannon MatternThe New School


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the most typical

American way ofimproving the humansituation has been bymeans of crafty and

unusually compact littlepackages, either paperedor with patent numbers,or bearing the inventor's

name to a gratefulposterity.

Francois Dallegret, un-House


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The quintessential gadgetry of the pioneering

frontiersman had to be carried across trackless

country, set down in a wild place, and left totransform that hostile environment without skilledattention.


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a small self-contained unit of high performance

in relation to its size and cost, whose function is totransform some undifferentiated set ofcircumstances to a condition nearer humandesires. The minimum of skill is required in itsinstallation and use, and it is independent of anyphysical or social infrastructure beyond that by

which it may be ordered from catalogue and

delivered to its prospective user.


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Via Klaustoon: http://bit.ly/pWqaer


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http://bit.ly/9qFCkO


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Michael Chen & Justin Snider, via Urban Omnibus:http://bit.ly/r7tUeZ


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Ben Millen, iPhone Deconstruction: http://www.benmillen.com/portfolio/?p=155


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http://vimeo.com/20412632
http://vimeo.com/20412632


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While the notion of wireless networks implies

that there are fewer wires, it could easily be arguedthat actually there are more wires. Rather than

wireless cities or wireless networks, it might bemore accurate to speak of the rewiring of cities

through the highly reconfigurable paths ofchipsets. / Billions of chipsets means trillions of

wires or conductors on a microscopic scale.

(Adrian Mackenzie, Wirelessness: Radical Empiricism in Network Cultures(Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 2010): 64-5).


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Halifax, Canada

This modest indentation on theCanadian coastline is a majorInternet landmark, a sort of

Ellis Island of the Web: Its

where a submarine cable ownedby Hibernia Atlantic comesashore. (Eleven major lines crossthe Atlantic, and this one landsunder the manhole, above left.)This particular bit started at aHibernia sister station inSouthport, England, andtraversed the ocean in about0.0028 second. It will then skip

along one of two fiber-opticthoroughfares: the cross-Canadapipe, which goes to Montrealand points west, or the southernroute, down the East Coast,through Boston to New York

City. Via Blum, Netscapes, Wired:http://bit.ly/8ZmQIl


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via InfraNet Lab:http://bit.ly/h36Gdy


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via leonelponce on Flickr: http://bit.ly/ndktH6


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Via born1945 on Flickr:

http://bit.ly/nmYtpZ


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via DePaul:http://bit.ly/qlRslY


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Dissected VCRviaThings Organized Neatly
http://bit.ly/q3SQw6http://bit.ly/q3SQw6


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eBoy, FooBar


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http://blip.tv/oreilly-where-20-conference/lisa-parks-earth-browsing-satellite-images-global-events-and-visual-literacy-975839


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Louis Kahns Phillips

Exeter Academy Classof 1945 Library;

Via Wikimedia


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Via Structures:NYC

on Flickr
http://bit.ly/oIk7G8http://bit.ly/oIk7G8


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Neutelings RiedijkArchitects Institute for

Sound & Vision,Hilversum, theNetherlands;

via NYTimes


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via Experimental Jetset
http://www.experimentaljetset.nl/archive/lostformats.htmlhttp://www.experimentaljetset.nl/archive/lostformats.html


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Archigram, ca. 1970; viaV&A Museum
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/archigram-walking-city-living-pod-instant-city/http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/archigram-walking-city-living-pod-instant-city/


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Via Western Union Collection, National Museum of American History


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the study of the cyclically recurring elements and

motives underlying and guiding the development ofmedia culture

excavation of the ways in which these discursive

traditions and formulations have been imprinted

on specific media machines and systems in differenthistorical contexts

(Erkki Huhtamo, From Kaleidoscomaniac to Cybernerd: Notes Toward an Archaeologyof the Media. Leonardo 30:3 (1997): 221-224.)


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Via Varnelis, Ed., TheInfrastructural City, p. 123


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A city...is not a flattenablegraph. In a city, networksoverlap upon other

networks

(Friedrich Kittler, The City is a Medium,New

Literary History27:4 (1996): 719)

Brian McGrath/Skyscraper Museum,Manhattan Timeformations, 2000


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This is not our map.Its Kevin Kellys Internet Mapping Project.


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Mattern, Everything Is Infrastructure