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Looking at the physical aspects of internet infrastructure, it is possible to trace a process of absorption.[1]<\/a><\/sup> Internet infrastructure has a materiality that ranges from data centres over cables up to transmission facilities. But in order to use the internet today, non-professional users hardly ever have to deal with this materiality \u2013 except at the end points of the network<\/a>. But even there, the infrastructure increasingly deprives users from perceptibility.<\/p>\n In the mid 1990s, the early days of the European wire-based internet, the endpoints could be associated with modem noise, various cables and a fixed location. Today, visibility is reduced to a socket in the wall, few cables and the WiFi router. The latter dissolves the internet into our personal sphere, weakens the restriction of use that comes with locality and lowers the sensory perceptibility of the infrastructure.<\/p>\n When wireless (mobile) access infrastructure developed, invisibility clearly was identified as an advantage from the outset. From a user\u2019s perspective, there was no materiality to the internet infrastructure, unless one lived close to a transmission tower. Wireless internet reached us as a feature in mobile phones. To date, we refer to smartphones, and not to internet devices with phone functionality \u2013 as if telephony absorbed the internet and not vice versa.<\/p>\n Wireless internet infrastructure also contributes to a blurring of the endpoints themselves. In metro-zones internet access has become so ubiquitously available that it has become part of the environment: There is no need for an act of connecting. Being connected is the status quo. Even when there is no intention to actively access the internet, apps ensure that resources of the internet infrastructure are constantly being tapped into.<\/p>\n What is left to be observed of the internet infrastructure are apps, says internet researcher Jeanette Hofmann.\u00a0They settle on the interface to the tangible, the physical. Apps are the cars of the internet. Through applications, users align the infrastructure with purposes. They help mobilise resources to pursue other activities. “[Infrastructure is] part of the background for other kinds of work,” writes the ethnologist Susan Leigh Star (Star 1999, p . 380). She points out that invisibility is a hallmark of effective infrastructures. However, effective only means that the infrastructure works for someone, not necessarily for everyone. “One persons\u2019 infrastructure is anothers\u2019 topic, or difficulty” denotes Star on the relational character of infrastructure (Star 1999, p . 380).<\/p>\n Casually speaking: The one who has got a problem with infrastructure will notice. In Star\u2019s words: “Infrastructure becomes visible upon breakdown” (Star 1999, p 382). As an example for a breakdown in an information infrastructure, Star mentions a server failure.<\/p>\n However, looking at areas where internet infrastructure has developed in a similar manner to Germany, this example does not appear very instructional anymore: Since for most users perceptibility of internet infrastructure is reduced to the interfaces of apps, any breakdown experience is limited to error messages within apps. In other words: What is visible at breakdown is a breakdown, no more; the failure of a delegated action. In infrastructure terms, when dealing with apps, users face empty signifiers.<\/p>\n Unlike when encountering a pothole in a road, internet users can usually neither determine the point of failure of their internet experience nor can they identify who may be held responsible. Error sources may range from the device over the software to processing units on other continents. The infrastructure of the internet remains unrecognisable to those who do not deal with it professionally, such as network engineers.<\/p>\n Science can contribute to making the infrastructure of the internet more visible and show, i.e., “Hidden Levers of Internet Control” as Laura DeNardis titled her paper on governance through infrastructure (DeNardis 2012). But more systemization can be achieved. Broadly varying uses of the term “internet infrastructure”, of which I only list some here, show that. Internet infrastructure can be approached from different angles:<\/p>\n Analysing the many approaches and tracing their origins is beyond the scope of this article. The list is by no means complete. It does, however, substantiates two things: 1. Internet infrastructure is probably referred to more often than the term is explicitly put to use. 2. It suggests that wherever only a singular aspect of infrastructure as being addressed, any critical assessment should be accompanied by questioning the context and inquiring about possible interdependencies. This is what makes thinking about infrastructure interesting.<\/p>\n This awareness ought to be rooted in net policy: that, for example, networking standards may fundamentally influence options of use. That the sociality organised around an internet exchange point may contribute to where peerings between network actors come about and thus, whose data has to travel long or short routes. That the suggestion to introduce something like a “Schengen” or “German routing” may lever influence for new players, or at least whet the appetite. Where national boundaries are introduced into the internet for one purpose, they may as well be activated for other purposes. In conclusion, interventions that target one aspect of infrastructure can have side effects elsewhere.<\/p>\n Due to the revelations by Edward Snowden, we have not experienced a breakdown of internet infrastructure in the way Susan Leigh Star has described it. The internet experience of the vast user base has apparently not directly been altered by the spying, storage and analysis activities at the junction points of the internet infrastructure. On top of that, breakdowns cannot reasonably be attributed to sources in an internet that is not only controlled in a distributed way but also ever more perceived through apps. However, such activities increase the likelihood of breakdowns in other spheres of our democracies, for example, by provoking chilling effects that prevent us from exercising the right to free expression. We ought to oppose this. A prerequisite is to pay more attention to the infrastructure of the internet and its many facets.<\/p>\n <\/a>1.<\/sup>\u00a0I am referring to Germany here, but the same may hold true for other areas where internet technology has been adopted in similar phases. Another story may have to be told for areas where internet access has developed differently, like in Sub-Sahara Africa where mobile internet always has been more important for the general public than fixed broadband.<\/p>\n This post is part of a weekly series of articles by\u00a0doctoral candidates<\/a>\u00a0of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n“Visible upon breakdown”<\/h2>\n
The task: to make internet infrastructure visible<\/h2>\n
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Detect interplays<\/h2>\n
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