meta-infrastructure

Telephone poles are the original community billboard. I cannot imagine a more perfect metaphor for local social media. “Lost dog”, “Garage Sale”. As our communities grow increasingly decentralized, these distributed post-boards have become essential to local free speech.

As much as we’d prefer to bury the lines and clear our sky of wires, these old-tech telecommunication infrastructure were co-opted by the local community and pressed into service to help neighbors talk to one another.

Given that digital communication is going to slowly make these obsolete, we should capture the benefit they unintentionally added to our communities.