Infrastructure tends to be made to be invisible. In terms of physical infrastructure we tend not to notice the roads and bridges we drive across when their exists melds seamlessly with our own. However, if our roads are full of potholes we will be forced to be more consciously aware of our infrastructure. The same can be said of the infrastructure we often rely on to in our interactions with media, especially digital media. We probably don’t think about all the pieces that go into getting our cable TV into our house, until suddenly its not working. Or for a timely and relevant example, when Facebook and the other platforms it owns, liek Instagram, went down for several hours on October 5th. Suddenly, the issues with Facebook’s infrastructure which go unnoticed most of its users day after day were glaringly obvious. As this New York Times article points out some of the specific infrastructure Facebook had put in place to makes things run more smoothly ended up backfiring. It is interesting to think about the fact that infrastructure almost entirely exists to be something we take for granted, but that at the same time there are some people who’s entire job is working on said infrastructure to make sure its users don’t realize it is there.
4 thoughts on “Infrastructure – Grace Brogan”
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This idea that infrastructure is something that is worked on so that people will not notice its existence because it helps the app run is not a thought I had thought of before. I had been thinking of infrastructure as something that was hidden because something in its intention was wrong. I had never thought of it just helping the app run correctly and being hidden because it is
a convenience to the users and their experience on the app.
I agree that infrastructure is meant to be hidden. The buildings we inhabit have an infrastructure that we cannot see, but it is still necessary even though the structure is not visible. While testing out the Popplet in class, we all experienced a crash in the website. The website’s failure to refresh quickly demonstrated how fragile the online infrastructure of it was. I think this is another relevant example of online infrastructure that you were describing in your post. Additionally, if comparing Popplet to Facebook, the amount of people working behind the scenes to ensure the infrastructure of Facebook stays secure must be immense in comparison. As seen from the recent Facebook crash, however, this social media giant can still collapse too.
The idea of infrastructure being a hidden, multifaceted structure is interesting. Often, when we use things like roads, bridges, computers or the internet, we do not consider all of the tiny parts that work in conjunction to present a final product. I liked your example of how just one minor mishap in Facebook’s programming can reveal problems with the entire infrastructure. In a similar sense, cars are made of of many parts thats that work together allowing it to function. If just one of these tiny parts fails, the whole system can collapse. this shows how important infrastructure security is for any product.
I agree with the idea that infrastructure is meant to be hidden. I’ve never really thought about this before, but that’s probably because infrastructures are purposefully designed to be invisible so people don’t think about them. I liked your example of the Facebook shutdown on October 5th. It’s true that many people don’t recognize an infrastructure until there is a glitch or error with it. We trust that our apps and social media will function each day and take for granted all of the complicated things that go on behind the scenes. The instagram Facebook shutdown occurred for less than one day, yet people went into a kind of frenzy, which emphasizes how dependent we are on our technology.