220 Week 4. The politics and poetics of infrastructure

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In the readings, “Stuff you can kick’: toward a theory of media infrastructures” and “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure” there is a central discussion about the theory of infrastructure. Each one had its own focus of discussion arguing the material aspect as well as other components that makeup what infrastructure is, including political and social considerations. Even the behavior of humanity and its enthusiasm in aesthetics and creation, surpassing its current advancement and modernity.
The majority of researches had already discovered and focused on the physical infrastructures reaching digital technologies, humanities, and media studies. The word infrastructure itself puts emphasis on it being something physical and material requiring consideration to determine locations, hardware, installations, etc. In media infrastructures, events such as transmitters, telephone towers, transoceanic cables, satellite earth stations, and internet data centers are involved (Parks). The physical aspects of media infrastructures are seen in how data and audiovisual signals are transmitted locally or globally. A similar perspective is also promoted by the transmission of goods, waste, ideas, power, etc. (Larkin)
The technology in modern society is focused on screens and gadgets, but there is more to media infrastructure before the output is presented to the viewers or receivers. The labor involved in the historical distribution process is seen in mail sorters. These laborers and their manual work provide service for the machines to function and do its duty in disseminating information in order for it to be comprehensible. “Not all infrastructures are fully automated and not all labor is immaterial” (Parks). Nowadays in the digital world, these people can be compared to those who monitor data processing and technicalities, such as Google data centers. Other aspects that make the cyber world available to the community are power poles and the linemen who are in charge of the installation and rigging of the electrical poles all over the country. These people are not very visible to the consumers but are a big part of the process prior to distribution and consumption providing an infrastructural perspective. Another infrastructural analysis presented is satellite dishes providing an example of an infrastructural argument. These materials are capable of a diverse and expansive media system but as seen in the reading, it is also faced with brute force and even termination from other people (Parks).
“The duality of infrastructures indicates that when they operate systematically, they cannot be theorized in terms of the object alone” (Larkin). The physical aspect of infrastructures had been previously explained, but the process also involves biology, political rationality, sociality, and even religion. Aesthetic dimensions are considered also promoting enthusiasm and desire for autonomy. The people have the role of influencing and running the overall process, despite the contemporary ways of machines and automation (Parks). When systems operate there is a cycle that is formed in the process producing out...