Saturday, May 3, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Email Correspondence
[email from Sales Rep. at tel-x/60 Hudson. Five minutes later he called me back after hearing from his manager and temporarily de-invited me. Security protocol, of course. Every student needs an onslaught of collegiate stationary to get through these info-detectors. ]
RE: site tour of 60 Hudson
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| show details Apr 28 (3 days ago) |
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Hi Saralee,
It was nice speaking with you a few minutes ago.
I will be give a tour next Wednesday, 5/7/2008 at 1:30PM for customer. You may join us if you like. We can meet on W. Broadway entrance between Worth St and Thomas Street. Please see the link below:
<http://maps.google.com/maps?f
Here is my blackberry number: 646.300.2034 in case you need to reach me. By the way, you will need a photo ID for access.
If you have questions during the tour, please ask me after the tour -- I will be happy to answer any questions for you then. Also, would it be possible to get a copy of your research paper once you are done? We would be interested learning your findings.
Thank you,
Gazi Sher
Inside Sales Executive
1 State Street, 21st floor
New York, NY 10004
Tel: 212.480.3300, x2014
Direct Dial: 347.562.0234
Cell: 646.300.2034
telx
The Interconnection Company
The Host of NANOG43 in New York and the CBX! June 1-5, 2008
"Gotta Catch 'em All"
re:re:constant access, i got in to the hub on the 24th floor and roof of the former AT&T building at 32 Ave. of the Americas with digital audio recorder and a Hi-Def camera, sucker.
video/audio tour coming soon!Re: [contact] Telecom Hotels
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| show details Apr 29 (1 day ago) |
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How great to hear from you!
I'm afraid that I don't have any information on how to gain access to these places. Frankly speaking, my own status doesn't really get me into them either, all the time. I haven't tried any of the centers in New York. Probably your best bet would be to find someone with connections to someone in a small telecoms company who can get you in there.
At present the NetLab isn't available for viewing although maybe later in the year. I would warn you however, that we don't have any exciting hardware or anything. We just do analysis so it's laptops, monitors, and us. Plus a really nice view of the Empire State Building.
All my best,
Kazys Varnelis
Kazys Varnelis [kazys.varnelis.net]
Director, Network Architecture Lab [netlab.audc.org]
Columbia University
Graduate School of Architecture
Preservation, and Planning
Co-Founder, AUDC [audc.org]
Studio-X
Suite 1610
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
A Final Project Proposal
Some Hotels are Bigger than Others
Perhaps to preface this proposal it is worth mentioning that it is commonly shared between us in coming to this project that we are not pursuing a grand apotheosis or declarative conclusion to the dispersed work we have all undertaken this semester. Moreover, we recognize that to truly commit to this project as a "complete work" would be impossible in the time remaining; if our research and materials provide us with enough inspiration, we may find it worth an ongoing investigation.
Kazys Varnelis (Director of Columbia's Network Architecture Lab) and the Center for Land Use Interpretation's ("CLUI") exhibition of One Wilshire telecommunications hub in Los Angeles introduced the phenomena of the "Telco/Telecom" or "Carrier" Hotel to the greater discourse of information systems from a scholarly, or perhaps more accurately, un-skilled information laborer's realm of knowledge. Their extended project on One Wilshire, the U.S.'s most expensive real estate ($250/sq.foot is a steal!) and infamous info-portal to Japan, may be found on CLUI's archive here. Kazys Varnelis' article (linked to the right) provides a brief but incisive genealogy of telecommunications infrastructure, both its centralization and distribution in the U.S. Varnelis ends with an image of One Wilshire, and in a sense puts to rest the popular myth that information travels in some sort of cosmic vacuum across the world, connecting you and your computer or the stock market and its dividends without heat, wires, security, or architecture.
Recently Eliza discovered two domestic Telco portals in our own backyard both operated by Frontier Online, an ISP with regional headquarters in Hopewell Junction, providing services throughout Dutchess County in telephone, fiber optics, and DSL. For more information on the types of commodities produced and infrastructure implicated in the single unit or small business telecommunications industry, a glossary of terms (a technical lexicon we are still learning) provided by the Dutchess County Economic Development Corporation may be found here.
The local buildings' architectural presences are understated, plain and uninviting brick structures - seemingly erected to inconspicuously house the telecommunications hub within this rural landscape. Part of our desire to know where other "houses" like these may be hiding, who operates them, and what they "really" look like on the inside comes from the absence of a transparent materiality of the new technologies connecting us to our education, community, and the dispersed networks we are woven through as citizens in an infocratic global market. We also wish to investigate differences in security management of rural and urban sites; the threat of hacking is made insignificant when compared to the physical vulnerability of these buildings. We are currently working on contacting Frontier, among other telecommunication centers in the Hudson Valley, to see if we can get a peek inside these telco houses to document their elaborate interior design. A directory of Telecom/ISPers that we are currently working from may be found here.
With limited access in the corporate world, and potentially more open access to Bard Campuses mothership-hub, we may be able to document some of these houses. Alana is preparing a map of the known Telecommunications & Internet Service Providers in Dutchess County, with intent to explore the ways in which access is determined. The map series will illustrate the relationships between the "etherstructure" and preexisting infrastructure (including rivers, roads, telephone lines and railways) in order to elucidate the concrete vectors through which information flows. Another aspect of the mapping project will focus on population demographics, income levels, degrees of urbanization, and distances from university systems, so as to reveal which segments of the population have access to cyber resources. For an added dimension, Alana will attempt to incorporate satellite images into the maps. Additional images, audio, website links, and video footage will be presented alongside of the maps, or perhaps embedded within, according to our technical and/or temporal capacities. These collaborative efforts represent a humble attempt to demystify the sources of information, to determine who is responsible for maintaining, selling, and storing these networks, and to explore what kind of information asymmetries exist in the relations between the information's infrastructural distribution and its consumer demographics and desires.
How Bard exists as a locus of telecommunications access in the Hudson Valley in relationship to Citizen Communications Company's (owner of Frontier who operates in Dutchess County) mission statement may illuminate a cultural urban/rural tension that manifests in a material access to resources and a spectrum of desires for certain methods of connectivity:
Saralee has sent emails to tel-x, 32 Avenue of the Americas, and Kazys Varnelis to try and document some of the U.S. most lucrative "interconnection powerhouses" connecting the Financial District to their global assets and Midtown to their national cell phone surveyors-- and in a sense, materially embodying "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere…"
(Marx/Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party.)
Limited access into "the essential knowledge for the data center industry" may be found at this Carrier Hotel networking database.
Monday, April 28, 2008
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