Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors from Ben Mendelsohn on Vimeo.
A short documentary, sounding almost like a commentary and update on Innis’ Empire & Communications: It reminds us that the Internet is very much a physical infrastructure, with one of its major hubs located at 60 Hudson St. NY, just a few blocks from the former World Trade Centre. (Seeing the 2-storey Palo Alto Internet Exchange, another major hub, is particularly entertaining.) Why 60 Hudson Street? It is where “conduit[s],” pneumatic tube, telegraph, telephone, etc. have long been piggybacked on one another. “Any [existing] conduit is good conduit,” after all. And just as important, it is at a centre of multiple, intersecting empires (national, corporate, financial, etc.).
It would be great to see a similar video about the location and function of major server farms (i.e. the iron constituting “the cloud”) that are the material substrate for videos like this.