What Makes Up Infrastructure

Considering the combination of things such as roads, railways, bridges, energy, the transportation system, etc., and their associations with the concept of infrastructure, one can have a general image of what infrastructure is about. In addition, it might be asked, what makes up infrastructure? What is its purpose? Why is it essential? As technology has improved and the internet becomes part of our lives, the notion of infrastructure has been generalized to the world of information technology and, as a result, IT infrastructure was introduced. In the 21st century, many people take advantage of using IT infrastructure, without consciously being aware of its existence, and the significance of its role in shaping society.

Imagine waking up in the morning and checking your cellphone as most people do at this time. Suddenly, you realize the weather application you check every day, which works based on the database Google provides, is not responding. In the meantime, once you check your Gmail inbox, you receive a message that states, ‘Google is not providing service anymore!’ Can you easily accept that and complete your daily tasks anyway? What might change for you? How impactful would that be? There is an outstanding article entitled How to Infrastructure by Susan Leigh Star and Geoffrey C. Bowker (2006). They suggest some essential points for defining infrastructure. Interestingly, as the authors believe, one of the aspects of infrastructure is the fact that it is hidden but becomes visible upon breakdown (Star and Bowker, 2006, p. 11). That situation might be as bad as, or even worse than, having a power outage. The electricity system is an example of classical infrastructure, while no one might think of such problems, like the Google scenario, as serious as they could be.

According to statistics provided by Alexa (2019), which monitors the amount of traffic on different websites, Google is ranked the first most visited website in the world (Alexa.com, 2019). It can also be assumed that people of various ages, genders, socioeconomic backgrounds, different geographic areas, and so on, use Google as their number one searching engine. Based on what Google’s website (2019) declares, its mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (“How Google Search Works | Our Mission,” 2019, pp. 1–3). The company’s history started in the 90s when Larry Page met Sergey Brin decided to build a search engine at Stanford University. Primarily, the engine was deployed on the university’s servers but later in 1997 the domain name ‘Google.com’ was formally registered and became available on the internet. The company, however, was officially launched in 1998. Although the name Google seems not to have a specific meaning, it is created as a result of playing with the term googol that represents one followed by one hundred zeros.

Google is best recognized for its powerful search engine. Although the Google search engine is very efficient, the amount of data on the internet is significantly large. Google, apparently, focuses on what matters for its users and tries to help them find what they are looking for. Likewise, one of the technologies Google engine employs is called machine learning. The concept of machine learning is part of a related computer science field known as artificial intelligence. In general terms, there are algorithms designed to learn from the dataset provided by people. For instance, if you type the word “bank” into the search box, and then type other things., if you come back and enter the letter “b”, the algorithm would remember that you recently were looking for the word “bank”, so it will suggest that to you. Obviously, this example explains the problem in a very oversimplified manner. Currently, Google uses such technologies in many different cases. Those methods are not only used in searching web pages but also help users to find images, texts, shopping items, etc.

Speaking of Google search engine as infrastructure, as mentioned earlier, there are several characteristics involved in such a theory. Based on what Star and Bowker (2006) argue, one of the most important aspects of infrastructure is embeddedness. The author states, “Infrastructure is sunk into, inside of, other structures, social arrangements, and technologies” (Star and Bowker, 2006, p. 11). As many websites and platforms use Google’s data and are built based on services provided by Google, as well as, the massive number of links the search engine has access, we can clearly perceive that the technology offered by Google is embedded in other technologies. Likewise, we can think of Google as a starting point for the tremendous amount of data that exists on the internet. Another point that is relevant to this phenomenon is transparency. According to the authors (2006), “Infrastructure is transparent to use, in the sense that it does not have to be reinvented each time or assembled for each task, but invisibly supports those tasks” (Star and Bowker, 2006, p. 11). As discussed previously, invisibility is common between different forms of infrastructure. As much as it becomes more critical, it becomes more transparent to those who use it regularly.

As infrastructure becomes extremely dominant and causes dependency, it can have a significant impact on our life. Eric Goldman (2008) in his paper entitled SEARCH ENGINE BIAS AND THE DEMISE OF SEARCH ENGINE UTOPIANISM writes, “search engines have significant power to shape searchers behavior and perceptions. In turn, the choices that search engines make about how to collect and present data can have significant social implications” (Goldman, 2008, p. 189). There are unlimited contents available on the internet. People with different points of view write about various topics. Some articles are based on science and facts, but many are based on pseudoscience and superstitions. The majority of people do not have the expertise in realizing if what they read is a scientific approach to the subject and has some truth in it. Consequently, people believe what they read, and they read what comes first. Therefore, we can clearly see how much power search engines have regarding manipulating people’s minds and, eventually, shaping society.

In the case of Google and its mission, Goldman’s perspective does not quite match what the organization addresses. Goldman (2008) claims, “Search engines are media companies. Like other media companies, search engines make editorial choices designed to satisfy their audience. These choices systematically favor certain types of content over others, producing a phenomenon called ‘search engine bias’” (Goldman, 2008, p. 189). Like any other financial institution, for search engines like Google, their priority is revenue. Likewise, anyone who can afford to pay more will have a higher position in the ranking and gets more views compared to others. It can be concluded that parties that are financially stronger can dominate others. They can manipulate technology and, as a result, control and influence society.

In addition to Goldman’s point of view and the notion of search engine bias, a graduate student at Udine University in Italy gathered a research paper entitled Personalizing Search Based on User Search Histories. The writer explains how search engines collect and personalize data. According to Mirco Speretta (2005), “All queries submitted can be viewed, organized and reused in future searches” (Speretta, 2005, p. 4). Each user, who registers in the system, owns a profile that contains data related to their previous activities. Companies like Google have a massive database that consists of information about users. That information can be used in countless different ways besides assisting users in the searching activity.

Regarding infrastructure, we may not be able to point to a specific object, model, or even definition. Likewise, it might be even difficult to define the term or to find an equivalent that has the exact meaning. Meanwhile, the word foundation might be the most suitable word to address that term since it represents the closest meaning to the notion of infrastructure as a basis. To illustrate, we can think about building. A building consists of a foundation and a structure that is normally built on top of that. The role of the foundation is to support the above structure. However, when you look at a building, you cannot see the foundation. You might even think there is no such thing as a foundation, but from the builder’s point of view, the role of the foundation is crucial. Similarly, infrastructure has the same relationship with the structure in other areas including technology. While it might be invisible to us, it has a supporting role such that the core functionality depends on it.

Considering the facts mentioned above, one can have a bit of an understanding of what infrastructure means and why it matters. Indeed, one of the most essential aspects of infrastructure is the power of making connections. As infrastructure becomes stronger in developing connections, people use it more often. As a result, it becomes part of people’s routine. At that point, it becomes invisible. Lastly, we should always keep that in mind if something is invisible to us does not mean it cannot influence our lives. As everything has changed in recent years, the concept of infrastructure has evolved. We can even think of technology as an infrastructure that has become the foundation of our society.

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References

• How Google Search Works | Our Mission. (n.d.). Retrieved November 14, 2019, from Google

• Goldman, E. (2008). Search engine bias and the demise of search engine utopianism. In Web Search (pp. 121–133). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

• Alexa.com. (2019). Alexa — Top sites. [online] Available at: Alexa [Accessed 14 Nov. 2019].

• Star, S., & Bowker, G. (2006). How to infrastructure. In L. Lievrouw & S. Livingstone (Eds.), Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Social Consequences of ICTs (Updated Student Edition, pp. 230–245). London, UK: Sage.

• Speretta, M., & Gauch, S. (2005, September). Personalized search based on user search histories. In Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE/WIC/ACM international conference on web intelligence (pp. 622–628). IEEE Computer Society.