A decade after first documenting the physical architecture connecting the internet to New York City streets, writer and artist Ingrid Burrington has revised her spotter’s guide to the metropolis’s digital utilities. Originally published in 2016 amid post-Snowden debates over government surveillance, the updated edition of “Networks of New York” arrives in an era dominated by artificial intelligence anxieties, data center expansions, and ubiquitous urban monitoring.
Walking through New York reveals a web of infrastructure that many residents overlook, from manhole covers stamped with telecommunications history to fiber distribution boxes bolted onto telephone poles. Burrington noted that while the book went out of print, a resurgence in public concern over the material footprint of technology made a revisitation timely. Conversations around the massive electricity and resource consumption of cryptocurrency mining and data centers have brought physical computing infrastructure into sharper focus for everyday citizens.
Unlike rural or suburban areas where large-scale hyperscale data centers face mounting resistance at planning board meetings, New York City presents unique spatial challenges. Hyperscaler facilities in the five boroughs typically rely on repurposed existing buildings rather than sprawling suburban footprints, limiting where such massive industrial server farms can be established.
Beyond data centers, the physical manifestations of urban surveillance have evolved significantly. Burrington contrasted modern automated license plate reader networks—such as the widely debated Flock systems deployed in various jurisdictions—with the long-standing surveillance apparatus established by the New York Police Department following the events of September 11, 2001. Modern networked cloud platforms allow for cross-jurisdictional data sharing that creates distinct privacy concerns compared to older, localized monitoring tools.
The proliferation of consumer-grade and landlord-grade surveillance devices across city neighborhoods, including digital intercom kiosks like ButterflyMX in residential buildings, adds another layer of continuous monitoring to daily life. Burrington pointed out that much of this technology functions as security theater, where the visible physical presence of a camera often serves as a deterrent rather than an active investigative tool.
Amid the corporate consolidation of the internet under a handful of major technology companies, the book also highlights grassroots alternatives. Initiatives like NYC Mesh and community network projects in areas such as Hunts Point in the South Bronx demonstrate how local governance and off-the-shelf components can create resilient, neighborhood-scale communication systems that operate outside traditional financialized models.
