Sarah Bakewell’s piece in the Guardian reminded me of the most interesting but sadly underrated book I’ve read in the last 10 years: Brian Hayes’ Infrastructure (W W Norton). Hayes reveals a world that is ours but is almost unknown: that is, the infrastructure that sustains us: agriculture, manufacture, energy, transport, communications. In brilliantly incisive and stylish fashion he demonstrates and explains the ingenuity that keeps us fed, clothed, warm and able to move around safely and talk to each other across the globe.
The fascination lies in the intellectual pleasure and witty fun involved in some of the technologies. He decodes the landscape, telling us why mobile (cell phone) phone masts have three sides; why railway lines are bedded on crushed stone rather than solid concrete; how to spot internet peering points, hidden within windowless block buildings. He also shows how technology can sometimes fail: the ruins of Teton dam in Idaho resemble a Pharaonic pyramid and of course there is Galloping Gerty, the Tacoma Narrows bridge that shook itself to piece in 1940.
Hayes’ examples are mostly from the USA but that’s no penalty – the USA’s industrial infrastructure is magnificent. Or rather it used to be. A sadness creeps is when, in the captions to his brilliant photographs (which he took), we read that these power stations, steelworks, petrochemicals plants have changed hands several times recently, passed on in grubby deals, to be sweated and run into the ground. Obama came to power on a ticket to renew America’s infrastructure: its crumbling bridges and highways. In Hayes book it still looks magnificent, but for how long?
The fascination lies in the intellectual pleasure and witty fun involved in some of the technologies. He decodes the landscape, telling us why mobile (cell phone) phone masts have three sides; why railway lines are bedded on crushed stone rather than solid concrete; how to spot internet peering points, hidden within windowless block buildings. He also shows how technology can sometimes fail: the ruins of Teton dam in Idaho resemble a Pharaonic pyramid and of course there is Galloping Gerty, the Tacoma Narrows bridge that shook itself to piece in 1940.
Hayes’ examples are mostly from the USA but that’s no penalty – the USA’s industrial infrastructure is magnificent. Or rather it used to be. A sadness creeps is when, in the captions to his brilliant photographs (which he took), we read that these power stations, steelworks, petrochemicals plants have changed hands several times recently, passed on in grubby deals, to be sweated and run into the ground. Obama came to power on a ticket to renew America’s infrastructure: its crumbling bridges and highways. In Hayes book it still looks magnificent, but for how long?
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