Call me Al: Alison Powell on Community and Technology

Abstract

This paper uses the organizing concept of “visibility” to investigate how information anc communication technology (ICT) infrastructures have shifted, transformed, and consolidated economic and social power in Western (particularly North American) cities. After surveying the global impacts of IT infrastructures in urban areas, the paper focuses specifically a local example of how wireless internet infrastructure is developed and used in Montreal. Using photographs of telecommunications infrastructure in its everyday viewed context as organizing features, the paper exposes how ICT infrastructure’s banality conceals its important implication in both global and local shifts in economic power, social relationships, and the use of urban space. This “glance over” the economic, social, and physical influence of the internet on urban space concludes with a closer look at the politics of wireless signal provision in Montreal, where a community group has reappropriated ICT infrastruture and competes with leading telecommunication providers for better “visibility” of their wireless signals in politically and socially important areas. The paper is presented in chapters that are intended to stand alone, but which can also be read as sections of a larger work.

The View From Here - Introductions and Surveying the Terrain

ICT infrastructures are banal and uninteresting – but this also means that they are powerful. This introductory section establishes reasons for focusing on often invisible or ignored technical systems, and outlines the paper’s two main sections: a theoretical reflection on visualizing inequalities, and a more focused look at wireless internet’s “invisible” transmission infrastructure

Revealing Infrastructure -- The Spaces of Flows

Envisioning the banal, through image or theory, means paying attention to what is normally ignored, hidden or concealed. For North American urban dwellers, some of the most privileged citizens in the world, much upon which we depend is concealed from sight: we don’t tend to think about how it functions until it fails to deliver to us what we have come to expect. The failure of the electricity grid in Toronto and New York in the summer of 2003 has become a cultural point of reference because of the sudden visibility of so many of the normally hidden elements of urban life: suddenly lights, heat, and cell phone conversations were no longer taken for granted. However, these infrastructures connect us not only to one another, but also to larger forces that extend across the globe through the ties of ownership and the movement of capital. This section presents some theories of global and local urban inequality: Castells’ “spaces of flows” and Graham and Marvin’s “splintering urbanism”

The Economics of Infrastructure

Where are the most well-developed ICT infrastructures located? What does this have to do with the development and maintenance of high-tech capital? Saskia Sassen helps us understand capital fixity and hypermobility.

The Shapes of Spaces -- Technopoles

Like the industrial revolution, the economic revolution connected to advances in ICTs has had major impacts on urban areas. Physical reconfigurations, as well as economic shifts related to shifts in capital, have marked cities all over the world.

Montreal's Cite Multimedia, seen from above

The Shapes of Spaces -- Gentrification

The introduction of ICT-linked capital, among other things, may be a catalyst for the physical and economic transformation of urban spaces. Here, Montreal's Plateau Mont-Royal displays some of the physical traits of gentrification.

The Shapes of Spaces -- Physical Traces

Other physical changes shape cities as new ICT industries emerge. ICT infrastructure leaves physical marks on urban space, which make visible the often tenuous power relationships underpinning them. All of the complex data-processing and multimedia processing facilities upon which technopoles depend are supported by other infrastructures, such as the telephone network, the electrical grid, and fresh- and waste-water services.

Wireless Internet and The Politics of Places

It is not as if ICTs are somehow external to cities or divorced from their politics. At individual city levels as well as at global levels, the presence of ICT networks and infrastructures is part of the politics of places. Although the forces of capital fixity and hypermobility operate to consolidate wealth and power, ICT networks are often used to work against these privatizing and marginalizing forces. In the next sections I look at how Montreal's community wireless group Ile Sans Fil negotiates with various types of visibility in the very particular social context in Montreal.

A wireless antenna almost invisibly graces a storefront

Introducing Ile Sans Fil

Montreal's Ile Sans Fil is a volunteer group dedicated to expanding internet access in public spaces. Their activities demonstrate some of the paradoxes inherent in using grassroots commuity organizing to distribute cutting-edge technology.

Visibility as Strategy and Tactic -- Media Visibility

Considerations of visibility are as important in revealing the politics of grassroots technology development as they are in revealing the implications of corporate technological advances. Ile Sans Fil, for example, leverages their visibility in mainstream and alternative media outlets as a way to compete with similar corporate ventures.

Ile Sans Fil members at the St-Laurent Boulevard Street Fair (photo by Robert Crecco)

Visibility as Strategy and Tactic - Signal Visibility

In addition to targeting new members and volunteers through strategic visibility in the media, Île Sans Fil also targets laptop users by making their name visible to users of mobile devices, either through the use of signage in desirable areas, or through associating the group's name with the wireless signals themselves. This visibility, for the most part targets the privileged few who own these devices -- and who know where to look.

Paradoxes of Visibility -- Politics

However, from a perspective of splintering urbanism, there are numerous paradoxes inherent in Île Sans Fil’s work. As Sandvig (2004) points out, some aspects of providing free wireless hotspots have problematic political and economic underpinnings. One of these is the organization's work with Business Improvement Districts, groups that are often associated with pro-business, splintering activities.

Ile Sans Fil acts as a sponsor for the Montreal Fringe Festival. Photo by Boris Anthony.

Conclusion -- Seeing Clearly With Both Eyes

In conclusion, while the banal continues to hold power, the sublime is never far away. Perhaps a reappropriation of ICT infrastructure helps us to see with both eyes the sublime promise in the banal wireless signal.

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