7.8 Social Aspects of Infrastructure
How is infrastructure observed through the eyes of people? What do they think when
politicians tell them that development in on the way?
7.8.1 Sustainable Knowledge Infrastructure
While the Roman empire built roads, aqueducts as long-lasting infrastructure, the
Greek empire produced Euclidian geometry which has helped shaping infrastructure
(as previously defined) and the way we think or reason. One could try to equate
aqueducts and geometrical systems, but probably with disastrous results. However,
as Chap. 1 has shown, all these infrastructures are closely linked, one way or another.
Within less than a century, an influential knowledgeable market has developed to
focus on and render visible many historical projects that have matured, agglomerated, and now unnoticeably serve as vectors of assorted resources and providers of
indispensable services and utilities. Water pipes, electricity grids, motorways, oil
pipelines, and extensive networked computing and large-scale communications are
common themes of infrastructural debates (Bowker 2018).
7.8.2 Infrastructure as Stored Potential
Far from generating productivity from nothing, infrastructure uses a combination of
materials, expertise, activity and labour forces to store their productive capabilities.
In that sense, infrastructure appears to have to have stored all these spent energies
into some form of potential energy, capable not only of restoring the original energy
expended, but rather capable of producing and sharing uses without requiring much
labour input. One has just to imagine how whole factories, plants, etc. have been
automated to be managed by just one person, or a few more.
Infrastructure (e.g., roads, pipelines, grids) have been designed to facilitate flows
and to enable other things to happen, in many varied ways. A pipeline or a power
grid do not, by themselves, produce a commodity. However, without their presence,
the commodity could not easily be sold, nor put to good use. In fact, apart from the
technical expertise, the infrastructure contains the centennial legacies of materials
technology that have produced durable materials such as steel, copper, aluminium,
concrete, glass fibre, carbon, etc. which allow the construction of power cables,
water pipes, aeroplanes, etc.
Carbon, dead trees, fossilized as potential energy under the form of petroleum has
led mankind into the possible disaster of climate change. It seems urgent to tackle the
global warming accelerated movement and possible ecological catastrophes that
warming is expected to entail.
202
7 Economic and Social Aspects of Infrastructure
How is infrastructure observed through the eyes of people? What do they think when
politicians tell them that development in on the way?
7.8.1 Sustainable Knowledge Infrastructure
While the Roman empire built roads, aqueducts as long-lasting infrastructure, the
Greek empire produced Euclidian geometry which has helped shaping infrastructure
(as previously defined) and the way we think or reason. One could try to equate
aqueducts and geometrical systems, but probably with disastrous results. However,
as Chap. 1 has shown, all these infrastructures are closely linked, one way or another.
Within less than a century, an influential knowledgeable market has developed to
focus on and render visible many historical projects that have matured, agglomerated, and now unnoticeably serve as vectors of assorted resources and providers of
indispensable services and utilities. Water pipes, electricity grids, motorways, oil
pipelines, and extensive networked computing and large-scale communications are
common themes of infrastructural debates (Bowker 2018).
7.8.2 Infrastructure as Stored Potential
Far from generating productivity from nothing, infrastructure uses a combination of
materials, expertise, activity and labour forces to store their productive capabilities.
In that sense, infrastructure appears to have to have stored all these spent energies
into some form of potential energy, capable not only of restoring the original energy
expended, but rather capable of producing and sharing uses without requiring much
labour input. One has just to imagine how whole factories, plants, etc. have been
automated to be managed by just one person, or a few more.
Infrastructure (e.g., roads, pipelines, grids) have been designed to facilitate flows
and to enable other things to happen, in many varied ways. A pipeline or a power
grid do not, by themselves, produce a commodity. However, without their presence,
the commodity could not easily be sold, nor put to good use. In fact, apart from the
technical expertise, the infrastructure contains the centennial legacies of materials
technology that have produced durable materials such as steel, copper, aluminium,
concrete, glass fibre, carbon, etc. which allow the construction of power cables,
water pipes, aeroplanes, etc.
Carbon, dead trees, fossilized as potential energy under the form of petroleum has
led mankind into the possible disaster of climate change. It seems urgent to tackle the
global warming accelerated movement and possible ecological catastrophes that
warming is expected to entail.
202
7 Economic and Social Aspects of Infrastructure