"Roads to Power" tells the story of how Britain built the first
nation connected by infrastructure, how a libertarian revolution
destroyed a national economy, and how technology caused strangers
to stop speaking.
In early eighteenth-century Britain, nothing but dirt track ran
between most towns. By 1848 the primitive roads were transformed
into a network of highways connecting every village and island in
the nation and also dividing them in unforeseen ways. The highway
network led to contests for control over everything from road
management to market access. Peripheries like the Highlands
demanded that centralized government pay for roads they could not
afford, while English counties wanted to be spared the cost of
underwriting roads to Scotland. The new network also transformed
social relationships. Although travelers moved along the same
routes, they occupied increasingly isolated spheres. The roads were
the product of a new form of government, the infrastructure state,
marked by the unprecedented control bureaucrats wielded over
decisions relating to everyday life.
Does information really work to unite strangers? Do markets
unite nations and peoples in common interests? There are lessons
here for all who would end poverty or design their markets around
the principle of participation. Guldi draws direct connections
between traditional infrastructure and the contemporary collapse of
the American Rust Belt, the decline of American infrastructure, the
digital divide, and net neutrality. In the modern world,
infrastructure is our principal tool for forging new communities,
but it cannot outlast the control of governance by visionaries.
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