7.1 Introduction
Exposure to changing weather conditions and the struggle to satisfy the elemental needs that arise from both body and mind are constants of the human condition. The ability to change our relationship with nature and adapt to its demands on a large scale is paramount for the establishment and adaptation of human societies. Technology has a major impact on this adaptive process. Tools and machines solidify how we interact through them with the objects of our actions. Contemporary human life is deeply mediated by various small and large technological artifacts that range from watches and smart phones to cars and public transport systems. These technologies deeply structure our daily routines. Especially in cities, the presence of ever larger technological systems and artifacts is noticeable. Drainpipes and power cables stretch under widespread street networks and enable a constant flow of water, electricity, information and power within and across the borders of our settlements, nation states and even continents. Some of these systems and artifacts, such as streets, water supply and sanitation, date back to ancient civilizations. Compared to these age old constants of human settlements, electric power systems and the internet are quite new.
Basic facilities like drinking water and waste water disposal, roads, traffic and other facilities with a similar importance for human thriving are referred to as infrastructures. They are considered to be the lifeblood of modern societies (BMI, 2009). Modern urban infrastructures connect rural and urban areas and link cities, nations and continents in vast and ever expanding networks of technologies, political decision-making and regulatory requirements. Infrastructures pose a problem for philosophical inquiry. Compared to other technological artifacts that are analyzed by philosophy and philosophy of technology, infrastructures not only shape everyday urban life; they also provide its material background and structural framework.
In the following chapter, I explore the influence of infrastructures on human life and action by focusing on the dynamics between their concrete materiality on one hand and their role in practical relations and technological networks on the other. The chapter follows a three-part structure. Since my analysis requires a broad understanding of the term infrastructure, I will give a short introduction to infrastructure research in the first part. Infrastructures are the research object and working area of various disciplines, which leads to a wide array of different infrastructure-concepts and potential starting points for philosophical inquiry. The second part is concerned with infrastructures as material background of urban life. Here, I employ a postphenomenological approach towards infrastructural technologies and technological systems combined with more traditional thoughts of philosophy of technology about the role of technologies-in-use. This is done in order to analyze the direct and indirect influences of infrastructures on human action. In the third part, I focus on the more profound connection between human praxis and infrastructures as material background. This part is mostly concerned with Sartre’s thoughts about technological artifacts and the way human society is organized.
7.2 A Brief Overview on Infrastructure Research
Even though the remains of ancient streets and water management systems give a hint of the crucial role they have for human civilizations through recorded history, the term, infrastructure’ is a relatively recent invention. In the United States defense strategy, the term infrastructure was initially used across the development of defense strategies by the US Airforce shortly after Second World War. The principal purpose of the term was to identify susceptible ground facilities exposed to air raids. Later, the term was used for those structures whose disruption would have an impact on the safety and security of the United States, e.g. telecommunications, power systems, banking, transportation, water supply systems and political systems (Rinaldi, Peerenboom, & Kelly, 2001). More recent definitions, for instance those of the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office in the United States and the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, emphasize the interconnectedness of infrastructures and their crucial and thus critical role for a nation’s well-being. These so-called critical infrastructures are all “organizational and physical structures and facilities of such vital importance to a nation’s society and economy that their failure or degradation would result in sustained supply shortages, significant disruption of public safety and security, or other dramatic consequences” (BMI, 2009, p. 4). Infrastructures can be roughly divided into technical basic infrastructures and socio-economic services infrastructures. The former include singular technologies and complex technological systems and networks, such as power supply, ICT, transportation, roads and water supply; whereas the latter include public health, emergency and rescue services, disaster control, political institutions, finance and media (BMI, 2009).
Nowadays, the term ‘infrastructure’ applies to a wide range of different institutions and technological systems, whether they provide a social, political or technical service. Within disciplinary and interdisciplinary discourses, and depending on political agendas, the identification of key features of infrastructures may vary. For example, sociologists and STS scholars analyze the supposed invisibility of infrastructures (Edwards, 2003), the supposed politics of artifacts (Winner, 1980) and the social construction of large technological systems (Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch, 1987).
In addition, infrastructures provide the theoretical and practical framework for a vast amount of technology-oriented disciplines and sub-disciplines which are concerned with the intricacies of urban life. Engineers focus on the materiality of built structures and the varying standards and regulations that have to be adhered if one wishes to bring innovation to outdated systems. Some architects focus on the ways in which networks of wires and pipes can be hidden within building design. Others try to find creative ways of utilizing traditional knowledge regarding the interrelationships between infrastructures and society. Infrastructures are especially prominent in the field of urban planning. Since the very concept of city is closely linked with infrastructure’s large-scale provision of the necessities of human life, their network-character is emphasized.
Another way of analyzing infrastructures is through certain key concepts of critical infrastructure research. These include criticality (i.e. relative importance of infrastructures), vulnerability, resilience in coping with disruptions, and preparatory and preventive measures for disruptions (Engels, 2018). These concepts are especially prominent in risk research. Here, the likeliness of potentially harmful events is assessed by focusing on critical vulnerabilities among others.
However, one core characteristic that constitutes the very concept of infrastructure can be identified. It is the fact that some institutions and technological systems provide specific services or knowledge that other sometimes more complex services, structures, institutions, individuals or the general public depend on. Modern governments, for instance, can barely function without the proper means of distributing information. These means, such as fiber cables and servers, are dependent on a vast network of electricity which is itself in need of some sort of governmental regulation in order to guarantee proper connectivity. In this example, the government as political infrastructure, the information infrastructure and the electricity infrastructure are heavily reliant on each other in order to guarantee individual and network functionality. Their individual status as infrastructures is derived from the role they play in service provision to the whole social system; which itself can be considered an important infrastructure of modern societies. Hospitals and electrical grids are not important per se. Their importance is relative to the range of hardly substitutable services they provide to society. At the same time, the technical basic and socio-economic services infrastructures are socio-technical systems themselves. Their internal functionality is the product of norm-guided, highly complex human-technology cooperation. This core characteristic of infrastructures is due to their twofold nature, which Larkin describes as follows: “Infrastructures are matter that enable the movement of other matter. Their peculiar ontology lies in the facts that they are things and also the relation between things” (Larkin, 2013, p. 329). Such a dynamic between rigid material elements and technical, social and political relations (amongst others) is what makes infrastructures so challenging for philosophical inquiry.
Since infrastructures consist of both technical elements and social relations, infrastructures are most commonly referred to as ‘socio-technical systems’. Rooted in systems theory, the concept of socio-technical systems originated from the assumption that engineers need tools to take both technical and social aspects of technologies into account. In his “Allgemeine Technologie”, Ropohl (2009) distinguishes what he calls ‘action systems’ (Handlungssysteme) and ‘technical object systems’ (Sachsysteme). Action systems are characterized according to their ability to act, which means that these systems have the capacity to both formulate goals and transform “a starting situation into a final situation” (Ropohl, 1999, p. 66). The internal structure of action systems consists of subsystems that are coupled to process inputs, outputs and system states. Individual human beings can be modeled as such systems since they can set goals for themselves and because they operate based on inputs from the outside world. This is a very basic and simplified way of conceptualizing action systems.
Technical object systems operate similarly, but with the exception that, unlike action systems, they cannot set goals for themselves. A car can be modeled as such a system. It consists of a complex arrangement of sensors and meters (information subsystem) as well as a motor, tires and a chassis that guarantees its structural integrity as a whole (execution subsystem). According to the principle of the division of labor, both action and technical object systems can perform their respective tasks as subsystems of a socio-technical system, i.e. “an action system that relies both on human and technical function carriers” (Ropohl, 1999, p. 66).
Following this theory, urban traffic infrastructures can be modeled as socio-technical systems. They consist of action systems, such as individual human beings and regulatory social and juridical institutions, as well as technical object systems, such as cars, roads, traffic lights, etc. Human action subsystems perform actions and set the goals of the larger system, for example, through their need for transportation. Technical object subsystems, such as cars for instance, perform some of the tasks of action systems in a more effective and efficient way, as these subsystems generally move faster with a slower deterioration of functionality. Since both subsystems are coupled within various feedback loops, they mutually process each other’s outputs as inputs. In action systems this processing may trigger the awareness of a necessary traffic regulation through the reasonable implementation of traffic rules and laws. New needs arise with increased efficiency, such as wider roads and more connections to other cities.
Systems theory and the theory of socio-technical systems are used to grasp the complexity of large infrastructural systems, which makes it easier to highlight and analyze the complex intrasystem interactions between human beings and technologies. A large body of STS-literature addresses the problems and challenges of large technological systems; a concept that was introduced by Bijker et al. (1987). Monstadt (2007) addresses the socio-technicality of large infrastructure systems by pointing out network-like structures, large spatial networking and a high intensity of economic capital among others.
Conceptualizing infrastructures as socio-technical systems provides a shared vocabulary and joint concepts for interdisciplinary research. In addition, it allows retracing of the evolution of these large technological systems and illustrates their entanglement in political, scientific, technical and social processes. Furthermore, it illustrates the complexity of human-technology interactions and the interdependency of infrastructures. Fiber-optic and power cables may be providing the passive and material guidelines for information and electricity alongside other infrastructures, but without standardized rules and regulations as implemented by socio-political systems and without power generation, these infrastructures are non-functional. Their complexity and functionality is a direct product of their embeddedness in complex interdependent systems (Rinaldi et al., 2001). For philosophy in general and philosophy of technology in particular, the intricate relations engendered by the high-level interdependencies within infrastructure systems can be challenging. The twofold nature of infrastructures has to be constantly addressed in order to understand the full complexity of their interaction with society.
The somewhat challenging apparency of infrastructures, which ranges from transparent “artificial environment” (Edwards, 2003, p. 189) to opaque structures in case of emergency, catastrophe or disruption, is a direct outcome of their embeddedness within cities and settlements. In her ethnographic study on infrastructures, Star (1999) defines nine properties of infrastructures. Five of those properties, namely embeddedness, transparency, learned as part of membership, embodiment of standards and becomes visible upon breakdown, are directly related to infrastructures’ apparency. Star points out that infrastructures can easily become obscured through everyday use, familiarization and standardization. For example, sewage and drinking water systems are embedded into the built environment of cities in such a way that these systems become almost indistinguishable from one another, even though they need to be physically separated for hygienic reasons and incorporate vastly different technologies and regulatory laws. Their status as embedded urban water infrastructure outlines their functionality as providing both the means for the distribution of fresh water and for the disposal of waste water. As such, the transparency of urban water infrastructures is due to the fact that they can be utilized without having to be “reinvented each time or assembled for each task” (Star, 1999, p. 381). In most developed countries, this functionality is not questioned because the convenient provision of water is the rule and not the exception. Since these urban water infrastructures usually do not cause a disturbance and work properly and reliably, they become transparent in such a way that their presence and service provision is not questioned anymore. However, this effect of infrastructural transparency only applies to a certain extent. In case of disruptive events such as blackouts or fires, the importance of infrastructures becomes apparent. This can be a problem in countries with usually reliable infrastructures, since the population’s dependence on the reliable services of these infrastructures is much higher than it is in countries with less developed or less reliable infrastructures. During disruptions, missing infrastructural services can become very much visible. Speaking about transparency as an essential property of infrastructures is thus questionable (Larkin, 2013).
Edwards circumvents this problem. He does not consider transparency to be a property of infrastructures. Instead, he focuses on the mechanisms by which infrastructures become transparent or invisible in the first place. A rather technical aspect of this transparency is due to the fact that infrastructures are deliberately hidden. For instance, urban water infrastructures are usually walled in and buried alongside streets, tracks and other infrastructures for aesthetic, practical and precautionary reasons. These infrastructures are constructed to be unobtrusive for everyday users, while still allowing unhindered maintenance by technicians and engineers. Depending on whether infrastructures are handled by lay people or specialists, their apparency changes from background to foreground. Besides these technical aspects, habituation, habits and the learning of social norms seem to play a major role in infrastructure apparency. Since “[h]uman attention naturally focuses on what changes, rather than what remains constant” (Edwards, 2017, p. 329), the presence of infrastructures shifts out of everyday awareness. Habituation is “defined as a behavioral response decrement that results from repeated stimulation and that does not involve sensory adaptation/sensory fatigue or motor fatigue” (Rankin et al., 2009, p. 136). This applies to most acquired interactions with infrastructures, reaching from public transport and water utility to left-hand/right-hand driving and more. The comparison of both Star’s and Edwards’ approaches shows that infrastructure apparency is not purely a product of the fact that the complexity of infrastructures is deliberately hidden. The relative awareness of everyday users and their daily habits play a major role in how the presence of infrastructures is perceived.
7.3 Material Background: Life Within Infrastructures
Modern cities are almost fully comprised of small technologies and large technological systems. Hardly a naturally grown piece of land or tree can be found. Abandoned areas that have been left to their own devices are sometimes the only exception where nature might have taken its course. For humans, urban life takes place alongside technologies. Most activities of modern human beings depend on a strong interaction with technological artifacts, like alarm clocks, toothbrushes, clothes, smart phones and cars. We cook our food on the stove, we sleep in wooden beds and cover ourselves with rainproof jackets. Technologies are a reliable way to satisfy our needs.
Contemporary philosophy of technology is starting to focus on these urban technologies and technological systems. Although human beings do not directly interact with these systems in the same way as they do with smaller technologies, these large systems are nevertheless influential. In the following section, I explore the way infrastructures, as material background of urban life, influence the actions, perceptions and experiences of human beings by employing a postphenomenological approach towards urban infrastructures. I will follow up on this with further philosophical thoughts on infrastructure technologies.
One of the main claims of postphenomenology is that technologies and human beings mutually shape and constitute each other within the relations they form. However, unlike classical phenomenology, postphenomenology does so by taking individual technologies into account, instead of focusing on the essence of intentional objects as deduced by their phenomenal structure. The cornerstone of postphenomenological thought is the theory of technological mediation, which upholds the argumentative line that the lifeworld of human beings is mediated through technologies (Ihde, 1990). Postphenomenology provides several types of human-technology-world relations which may help to illustrate the role technological artifacts play in a person’s world-experience. They are not so much prototypical types of relations but can be understood as heuristic means which uncover the different positions of technologies within this experience. Ihde (1990) proposes four human-technology-world relations; embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity and background. In all of these relations, technologies mediate between humans and world. Embodiment relations describe the relations in which technologies change the bodily perception of their users while becoming perceptually transparent themselves. Glasses and hearing aids are typical examples of this relation. The former refract light to correct for errors in their user’s retina, while the latter render acoustic signals perceivable by their users. In doing so, these technologies alter their user’s individual bodily sense of space since, for instance, the head has to be turned differently in order to properly see or hear. Although Ihde focuses more on perception instead of action he mentions that “to embody one’s praxis through technologies is ultimately an existential relation with the world” (Ihde, 1990, p. 72). Accordingly, technologies not only expand or delimit the perception of human beings but affect the way these human beings are existentially directed towards their surrounding environment. This environment can be completely comprised of technologies. Ihde describes relations with semi-automated and automated technologies as background relations. He exemplifies this with toasters, washing machines and air conditioning as well as shelters. Other more exaggerated forms of the shelter example are nuclear submarines and space stations which seal off their inhabitants from an otherwise hostile surrounding. Ihde (1990) claims that human action is also mediated by technologies in the background. What differentiates background technologies from technologies in the foreground is the fact that background technologies do not constantly have to be interacted with in order to work and thus condition the context of human life. Most of the relations between human beings and infrastructures take place within the range of embodiment and background relations.
The material background of modern cities is comprised of concrete roads, buildings and power cables. Depending on region and culture, pedestrians, bicycles, cars or public transport systems are more prominent. The close interaction with infrastructure technologies is most apparent in the way we traverse through and out of our cities and settlements. How we act in cities and how we experience the urban framework depends on the technologies we use. Ihde gives the example of a sports car that mediates the road in a different way than bicycles or shoes do. Through finely calibrated shock absorbers every bump in the road can be felt accordingly and micro movements of the steering wheel can have tremendous consequences (Ihde, 1990). However, cars that are designed for urban usage are generally smaller and slower. Their design delimits possible options for action, which makes them more suitable for urban environments. It is easier to find parking spots and, due to their decreased speed, the likeliness of crashes is reduced. Some cars have a city drive mode that allows smoother steering under 30 kph. These technologies mediate the urban environment differently and thus provoke different modes of interaction. They change the perception of urban spaces. However, these interactions with technologies have to be acquired and do not come naturally. Across the range of relations with urban technologies, the relation with roads and the urban environment via bikes and cars is a more embodied one. Nevertheless, the relation depends on large urban technologies in the background, such as street lights, traffic barriers, concrete roads etc.
Compared to the embodiment of more individual traffic technologies, the embodying of public transport systems is less apparent but no less crucial for their utilization. The interaction with buses, trams and trains is less active. We enter the cabin, maybe find a place to sit, and the public transport system does the work for us. Still, we have to be cautious not to miss our stop. We have to embody the movement of the bus in a different way than we would embody the movement of self-driven bicycles or cars. This is especially challenging since we do not drive it ourselves, which can leave us unprepared for changes in direction or speed. Public transport systems are great examples of mixed human-technology-world relations, since part of the relation is naturalized by embodiment, whereas the technological artifact works without our interaction. The accelerated traversal of long distances with public transport systems has an immense influence on the perception of time and space in cities. Traveling from Brandenburger Tor to Technische Universität Berlin takes about 16 min if traversed by subway, but it takes about 45 min to walk the same distance.1 Although this might sound rather obvious, the implications of traffic and transit technologies on everyday lives are far from small. By decreasing travel time, distance traveled is itself experienced to be less. In reverse, spatially closer areas that can be hardly reached by common modes of transportation are experienced to be further away (Handel, 2017). For regions with a strong traffic infrastructure, consisting of various infrastructural technologies such as good road conditions and reliable public transport, this change in experience might not pose a problem. However, for individuals and social groups that do not have access to these means of transportation, it can cause a radical change in spatial perspective, as well as in self-awareness and external experience.
The aforementioned relations between humans and infrastructures illustrate their direct and indirect influence on the experience, perception and action of human beings. In his article “Do Artifacts Have Politics?”, Winner (1980) illustrates the potential of large technological systems to generate effects that exceed their simple use-context. He points out various biases in the design and use of technologies—one of which is the focus on technologies-in-use only. Focusing on technologies as mere tools can obscure the larger effects these technologies have on urban life and society. According to Winner, the architect Robert Moses’ low-hanging bridges were used to allow the traversal of cars in and out of Long Island. The downside of this was that the height of these bridges discouraged the presence of buses on parkways below them. Since mainly white people could afford cars and since black people, among other marginalized groups, could only afford public transit, they could hardly reach certain areas (Winner, 1980). Edwards (2017) illustrates a similar problem by analyzing the racial coding of public transport in pre- and post-Apartheid South Africa. Public buses and a railway line were used to bring otherwise segregated black laborers into white areas. Since these means of transport were less reliable, walking was the fastest way of commuting to work. The existential experience of racial inequality was, and still is, increased by the tension between the possible provision of public transport and the lack of its real-life instantiation (Edwards, 2017).
In the case of road construction in modern day Peru, Harvey and Knox (2012) identify at least three promises of emancipatory modernity which these newly built roads seem to instantiate. By connecting rural and urban areas, roads promise political freedom and economic prosperity. Since colonial times, such ideals have been far from the reality of marginalized groups (Harvey & Knox, 2012), not only in Peru. This way of thinking about infrastructures is usually situated in a horizon of technical systematicity, innovation, planning and construction. Infrastructures are associated as connectors between rural and urban areas and between nation states and even continents. Furthermore, they are also thought of as tools to potentially control and regulate societal processes. Infrastructures can thus be considered as having a powerful societal impact. They affect large groups of people far beyond their initial design.
The influence of infrastructure design becomes apparent in the research of urban mobility cultures. This concept is used to describe dominant modes of transport in connection to the social fabric of cities. Different clusters are distinguished that categorize cities according to their mobility culture. For instance, cycling cities are characterized by below average population size and settlement density, while generally being smaller than auto-oriented cities. In return, auto-oriented cities have more than average car-related businesses, combined with a generally negative fun-factor for cyclists and less than average road quality. Another cluster are transit cities. These are characterized by a generally lower household income in addition to a lower price for seasoned public transport tickets (Klinger, Kenworthy, & Lanzendorf, 2013). A similar concept is that of urban fabrics, which considers how the land use patterns change and react to the transport infrastructures and priorities of the city. This type of relation is illustrative of infrastructural systematicity, since it shows the complex relations between urban technologies and social processes. According to the transport priorities in the city, similar characteristics to that of urban mobility cultures can be derived. Walking cities, for example, have a high density, mixed land use and narrow streets; in contrast to transit cities, which generally exhibit medium density and a more diverse land use along tram routes. In their book “The End of Automobile Dependence”, Newman and Kenworthy (2015) use the theory of urban fabrics to explain the relationship between what cities look like, what modes of transportation become dominant and their respective net energy utilized for transportation purposes, in order to highlight the vulnerabilities that arose through the existing automobile-based urban planning.
Infrastructures express the rationale of artificial enhancement of natural processes in order to satisfy human needs more effectively and efficiently. This rationale is most prominently discussed in Heidegger’s “Die Frage nach der Technik” (2009). In this essay, the author compares ancient and modern technologies, especially in the way they change human’s relation to nature. He claims that the rationale behind modern technologies reveals nature as a standing reserve (Bestand) for human utilization. Heidegger illustrates his thoughts by focusing on two infrastructures. The first infrastructure is an ancient windmill, which produces energy only if the wind blows. It is harmoniously embedded into nature and benefits from its forces. The second infrastructure is a modern power plant, which harvests the river’s flow. Instead of being built on the river, the river itself is built (i.e. redirected) into the power plant. According to Heidegger, modern technologies challenge the forces of nature instead of working with them (Heidegger, 2009). This illustrates a tension between an ancient technology-concept, in which technologies are harmoniously situated in a more caring and preserving human-nature relation, and a modern one characterized by usurpation and utilization. Heidegger demonstrates the complexities of philosophic thought about technologies. He seems to assume a certain original human-world relation that is altered through the rise of modern technologies.
This alteration of human-world relations is seen in Graham’s concept of cyborg cities, which mediate society, nature and culture. For instance, urban water infrastructures “radically shape urban biospheres whilst metabolizing waste matter from urban bodies” (Graham, 2010, p. 11). These infrastructures actively shape the manner in which nature is perceived from an urban point of view. In addition, the services these infrastructures provide become internalized as the prolonged arm of urban, and thus human, needs until both fuse together to become cybernetic organisms with a shared hybrid intentionality. Graham’s thoughts shed new light on Heidegger’s claims about modern technologies and the problems of their artifactuality. Infrastructures are constructed to satisfy human needs, but they do so on such a large scale that their undesired effects can become irreversible.
7.4 Infrastructures as Structuring Praxis
So far, the investigation of infrastructures as material background has shown the influence of omnipresent urban technologies and technological systems on human actions and experience. As discussed, traffic and transit technologies affect the way we commute and experience the urban environment, while the increased speed with which distant areas can be reached changes the individual perception of space and time. On a larger scale, infrastructures mediate our relation to nature, not only by providing an artificial environment, but also by potentially rendering nature a resource for large-scale utilization. Even though the investigation already illustrates both the direct and indirect influences of infrastructures on human action and experience, the connection between human life and the surrounding materiality can be even more profoundly analyzed. The following section presents an attempt to explore the more intricate practical relationship between human beings and their material environment by making use of Sartre’s concepts of praxis and hexis.
In his “Critique of Dialectical Reason”, Sartre (1978) identifies the relation between human beings and world as a transformative praxis which affects both human beings and material world. He derives his concept of praxis from the claim that human beings are neither self-sufficient when it comes to basic material needs (such as nutrition and shelter), nor when it comes to immaterial needs like knowledge, wisdom or societal organization. These needs all depend on material and social interaction in order to be satisfied. However, Sartre does not propose a materialistic determinism that considers material needs to be the causes for human action. For him, humans are as much beings of necessity as they are beings of freedom. This enables human beings to creatively employ strategies to more effectively satisfy their needs and to generate more complex levels of society. The most important aspect for Sartre is that human beings change their material conditions in such a way that the world itself becomes the passive residue of these needs and of the strategies which were employed to satisfy them. Through praxis, human beings leave a world of their end’s material traces behind.
Sartre considers praxis to be a transformative act in which human beings materialize their ends in the world. He also considers technological artifacts to be such frozen and materialized praxis. Sartre claims that the praxis within technological artifacts stays active, which allows them to be used as tools. Usually, technological artifacts are designed to be more suitable for specific practical relations and less suitable for others. Even though technologies do not directly dictate how they are to be used, the suitability of certain tools is partially determined by how efficiently and effectively they can be used to satisfy human needs (Sartre, 1978).
Human beings materialize both their own needs and the strategies to satisfy those needs in the technological artifacts they use. These artifacts help to determine how specific needs are satisfied or interests are served. Depending on their suitability, these very artifacts influence further praxis. This process of materializing praxis within the materiality of the world can be observed in the implementation of infrastructure technologies. For instance, some roads started as paths that were literally trampled into nature. Through repeated utilization these paths become deeper and wider. Such paths are used to transport goods, people and information over longer distances. Since both transport and information are basic needs of more complex societies, more complex needs arise to secure their satisfaction. This leads to the fortification of paths and to the implementation of rules on how to use these newly built roads (Denecke, 2007); left-hand and right-hand traffic emerges. Similarly, rivers are used and redirected over time to allow a more effective fulfillment of human needs. Infrastructures are great examples for the co-shaping of human ends and technical means because they provide basic services. Water infrastructures are implemented to secure the procurement and disposal of water as a bare necessity of human life, usually in a reliable manner. Since most technologies utilize electricity, the same is true for power grids.
Alongside this continuous dialectical interaction between human beings and material conditions another important process takes place which binds together human beings, material conditions, technological artifacts and societal organization. Sartre believes that alongside every praxis a form of habituation takes place, through which successful strategies and utilizations of technical artifacts are passed on through time. Every success or failure leads to rules and norms which are again materialized in the way further praxis is actualized through technological artifacts. Sartre calls this form of habituation ‘hexis’, Greek for disposition. In this hexis, not only strategies, but also norms and moral values are preserved. Sartre’s concept of hexis has its roots in Aristotelian philosophy, where it is linked to the concept of second nature. For Aristotle, hexis is a “generic term for an entrenched psychic condition or state which develops through experience rather than congenitally” (Lockwood, 2013, p. 23). This can be connected to certain lines of thought in mobility studies, which analyze the cultivation and formation of habits regarding transportation infrastructures among others. Walker, Thomas, and Verplanken (2015) analyze how travel habits change after disruptive events. The authors show that it takes about four weeks for such habits to establish and that they slowly decay over roughly the same amount of time. Moreover, the authors suppose that the accessibility of infrastructures plays a determinant role in travel behavior and habituation after disruptive events. Schwanen, Banister, and Anable (2012) suggest that travel habits can be governed in order to promote less carbon-intensive means of transportation. For them, “a car habit is what makes it possible for car, driver, road, signs, passengers, traffic rules to merge into a seemingly effortless whole and what underpins the routine use of cars to access places” (Schwanen et al., 2012, p. 526). This again illustrates the potential of infrastructural relations to become stable equilibriums that reify order.
Similar to Sartre, Shove (2016) outlines three main aspects of how infrastructures and practical relations are connected. Firstly, infrastructures co-evolve together with individual practices. Depending on their design, infrastructures allow for the actualization of specific ends through them while making others impossible. Shove demonstrates this with street design. Starting from pathways for wanderers and horses, streets were continuously adapted to allow for their utilization through bicycles and early cars. Later, some roads are broadened and become highways that can only be used by fast cars and motorbikes. Needs, individual practices and built infrastructures are bound together in a push-pull of mutual adaptation. Secondly, infrastructures enable practices to circulate. The same push and pull not only leads to mutual adaptation, but also (thinking about the hexis) to new, innovative (and thus desired) forms of praxis. For instance, refrigerators are a phenomenon which came up in the last century. Not only did these freezing technologies change the way food storage works, they also changed the way people cook and live. In the case of large electrical grids and refrigerators, infrastructures directly influence normative orders and thus large areas of society. In the so called global north, changes like this have become the normal and modern way of living (Shove, 2016). Thirdly, infrastructures relate to changing complexes of practice. In accordance with Sartre’s concept of human life as result of necessity and freedom, infrastructures do not dictate the way they have to be used. However, as built structures of society, they can be considered the materialized residue of those needs that they were built to satisfy. This presents both advantages and disadvantages for the continuation of individual lives as well as societies. On the one hand, infrastructures not only enable more complex forms of praxis to be actualized, they also secure the effective and efficient repetition of these practices. On the other hand, infrastructures may preserve past needs and strategies in such a way that individuals and societies are condemned to repeat whole sets of practices, together with normative orders, time and time again (Shove, 2016).
Considering infrastructures to be both products and producers of praxis and hexis allows us to grasp their fundamentally structuring role for human society. Human beings have needs and interests. Through an active engagement with their material environment, humans satisfy their needs and serve their interests. This changes the world into one of human needs or needfulness. Technical artifacts solidify specific strategies because they steer the actualization of praxis towards specific ends by virtue of being designed in certain ways. Finally, success and failure may determine which strategies are preserved and which are abandoned. This leads to a hexis (or disposition) through which various forms of praxis, the associated technological artifacts, specific strategies and norms are preserved. As large technological artifacts, infrastructures both form and preserve the very structure of societies.
7.5 Conclusion
Infrastructures not only influence individual action and societal organization by providing their material background, they also structure the manner in which human beings deal with their own needs in accordance to specific material arrangements. The contemporary globalized world is unthinkable without wide systems and networks of infrastructures which allow both control and freedom across national borders.
Infrastructures are both the passive material and the organizing structure of society; which has desired and undesired consequences. On the one hand, infrastructures store normative ordering patterns and provide orientation for the implementation of new technologies. Due to their rigidness, infrastructures store this order over time, which allows for the relative security of concomitant political systems. On the other hand, societies can easily become trapped by the way their infrastructure is materially arranged. Even though infrastructure technologies are implemented with specific ends in mind, these ends nevertheless are human ends. However, if infrastructures preserve a certain stage of historical development, the manner in which means and ends are connected at this stage can become obscured. This can lead to a repetition of practices without considering their initial purpose—a development that is called path dependency in infrastructure research. Sartre suggests that not only simple practical relations, but whole modes of production (and thus power relations) are preserved within the artifacts we use. In the case of infrastructures, the preservation is even less reversible.
With regard to philosophy of technology, the analysis shows two things. Firstly, it shows that infrastructures are still an underestimated research object in philosophy and philosophy of technology. This is partly due to a large body of literature from other scientific disciplines which deals with infrastructures in their own way, which makes it difficult to single out aspects of infrastructures that are promising for philosophical research. Nevertheless, this lack of research is also an opportunity for philosophy of technology. Even though I have tried to provide a wide spectrum of potential philosophical inquiry, other infrastructural aspects have been addressed only very briefly, such as regarding how infrastructures store power relations or how built structures can be used to include and exclude large parts of society. Another only briefly mentioned aspect is the apparency of infrastructures. On one hand, infrastructures are deliberately hidden by design. On the other hand, they become ‘invisible’ as a result of repeated interaction and habituation. Secondly, the analysis shows that a uniform philosophical approach towards infrastructures is still missing. This is partly due to infrastructures’ complex two-fold nature as things and as relations between things. However, this paper can be seen as an approach towards infrastructures from a praxeological point of view.
As human beings, the interaction with our built environment is an acquired one. We are thrown into a world of technological standards, old structures and innovations. We learn how to navigate through concrete jungles, how to use the things at hand and how to find meaning in the way we interact with other human beings and the material world. Infrastructures are the constant companions of our modern age; both in the way they provide us with opportunities and how they challenge us. The fact that such highly interdependent and complex technological structures can become second nature to us not only questions our conceptions of first nature but also the distinction between nature and culture in the first place.