Networks of New York

A guided tour of the physical Internet, as seen on, above, and below the city's streets
What does the Internet look like?
It's the single most essentail aspect of modern life, and yet, for many of us, the Internet looks like an open browser, or the black mirrors of our phones and computers. But in Networks of New York, Ingrid Burrington lifts our eyes from our screens to the streets, showing us that the Internet is everywhere around us, all the time—we just have to know where to look.
Using New York as her point of reference and more than fifty color illustrations as her map, Burrington takes us on a tour of the urban network: she decodes spray-painted sidewalk markings, reveals the history behind cryptic manhole covers, shuffles us past subway cameras and giant carrier hotels, and peppers our journey with background stories about the NYPD's surveillance apparatus, twentieth-century telecommunication monopolies, high frequency…