Infrastructure Cyborgs: Part One

Paul Graham Raven, infrastructure, cyborg, urbanisation, tea, supply chain, globalisation

In the simple ritual of making tea, I have already marshalled two vast technological systems which exist only to fulfil my desires - and that’s without thinking about the convoluted global supply chain through which I acquired the tea (which involves not only the agricultural systems used to grow and prepare the tea leaves, but also the packing, distribution and stock management systems used to get the tea from where it was grown to where it will be consumed, and the global markets of trade and finance through which its ownership and value must pass), or where the fuel for some of those power stations might have originally come from. I have accomplished all this with a few movements and gestures, so simple and untaxing that they can reproduce themselves almost unbidden through even the fiercest of hangovers.

http://futureeverything.org/news/infrastructure-cyborgs-part-one/