ABSTRACT
This book has shown how we are starting to see a dramatic renewal in the physical, social, political and discursive salience of urban networked infrastructures and the diverse technological mobilities that they support and mediate. As a result, in many cities and parts of cities across the developed, developing, newly industrialising and post-communist worlds, networked infrastructures are, in a sense, being (re)problematised. The ‘black boxes’ surrounding them, built up through the uneven elaboration of the modern infrastructural ideal, are being ‘reopened’. Certain powerful users are starting to look beyond the taken-forgranted point of consumption – the phone or Internet terminal, the electricity socket, the car ignition key, the water tap, the street – at the configuration of the whole technical and mobility system that supports their transport, street, communication, power and water needs.
