The Infrastructural Power Beneath the Internet as We Know It

Perhaps the last mile is actually the first step in working toward a different vision of who should own and govern the means of computation. What’s at stake for both the tech industry and government regulators isn’t what is or isn’t infrastructure, but what the ownership and profit model for that infrastructure looks like and whom it benefits. Substituting “the means of computation” for “infrastructure” isn’t going to make it any easier to alter those ownership models, but it might make it easier for us to focus on building and maintaining an internet that serves the public’s needs.

[Ingrid Burrington is a writer, educator, and the author of Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure.]