Internet Infrastructure

While continuing on the exercise we did in class, I found a wifi box in my dorm room and I also found a lot of satellites and other wifi boxes around the city. A lot of the pictures I took were super blurry and very far away that it was impossible to make out the exact object I was trying to capture. Although, doing this exercise made me realize how normalized these technologies are for me. I don’t think twice when I pass by wifi boxes or satellites. I also realized that I do not know how any of these machines work. I know their function, but I do not know how they are made and how exactly they carry out their functions. I wonder if technology would ever be incorporated into the basic high school curriculum. As we advance further with technology, it only makes sense to start having a basic foundational education around it. This experience does change my idea of what it means to be “online.” It makes me feel like being “online” is no longer a choice, especially in the city. I feel like the city runs on being “online” and by living in it, you are automatically associated. Although you might not intentionally be “online” like actively on Facebook, you may walk into a retail store whose entrance keeps track of you as a customer and records that you were there. I think being online is more than a personal one on one experience that may be used as entertain for the self. It is now even a way to document existence and record data about people that might not even know about it.