Traversing the infrastructures of digital life

This chapter explores the infrastructural qualities inherent to the experience of living with contemporary digital technologies. Communications protocols and programming languages, also infra-structure technological devices, making the interoperability of particular platforms possible and creating the basis for contemporary ways of communicating and socialising. Digital infrastructure includes, therefore, not only the wires and cables that support mobile and computer communication but also the integration of sensors, databases of measurements, and real-time data analytics into buildings, motorways, ticketing services, fast food delivery, taxi services and more. Structural accounts describe such effects in political economic terms, focusing on access to resources, ability to generate income, levels of cultural participation and work/life balance. Although ‘digital infrastructures’ are often taken to mean the infrastructures of digital technologies, already existing infrastructural forms like roads, railways and energy systems are also undergoing processes of digitisation.