Here's Where the Internet Lives in NYC: Ben Mendelsohn On 60 Hudson Street (Q+A)

We love the Internet, but to most of us it’s a megalithic behemoth of a cyber system that, despite our numerous attempts to define its boundaries, seems to keep expanding in a seemingly never-ending vacuum of digital space.

This is why filmaker Ben Mendelsohn, formerly of the New School, decided to explore the physical infrastructures that contain our cyber networks in his thesis documentary, “Bundled, Buried, and Behind Closed Doors.” It led him to Telx, the large server building that resides on 60 Hudson Street in New York CIty. 60 Hudson is the building that houses one of the largest hubs of Internet connectivity structures on the East Coast, and sits nondescriptly in the middle of Lower Manhattan where people walk by it everyday.

I had a chance to e-mail with him this week about his documentary, the infrastructure of the Internet, and why the physical space our technology takes up matters.

Your documentary focuses on 60 Hudson Street, one of the largest internet connectivity hubs in the world. Why 60 Hudson St.? How did you get interested in this site?

My initial curiosity for this project was to find out a little about where the Internet lives and why it lives there. My thesis advisor at the New School, Shannon Mattern, does really incredible work on “urban media archeology,” and she pointed me to some interesting work that Kazys Varnelis and the Center for Land Use Interpretation have done about One Wilshire in Los Angeles, a similar downtown telecommunications hub. I had a vague notion when I started that New York City would have plenty of concentrated Internet infrastructure, but I had no clue that it would be in a centrally located downtown building with a long history of use by telecommunications firms. I was pretty certain everything would be either in New Jersey or deep Brooklyn and I was completely wrong. 60 Hudson Street just has this fascinating history, and I started to fall in love with that very quickly. What surprised you most about the actual structure after you visited it?

Telx’s meet me room looked more or less as I expected it to — but I was surprised by a few details that a modern, purpose built facility would do differently. The ceilings seemed kind of low, and the floor wasn’t raised like it is in new data centers. These were subtle indicators of how the building has been retrofitted for technologies that are quite different than the original ones that it housed. Server Stations like Telx are notoriously difficult to gain access to. Why do you think this is?

The issue of access and how this infrastructure is hidden was a core interest for the project. These facilities are not completely secret—Telx is widely known for their meet me room at 60 Hudson Street, and they do need to let potential clients know where they are. But outside of the IT industry, they don’t particularly flaunt these locations, and that’s part of the security culture of the business. Andrew Blum, who has a book coming out in May about the physical infrastructure of the Internet, says that he imagines “brewery tour” style visits to the these buildings in the future. That would be great—but I think it makes facility operators uncomfortable to be completely transparent, even though a terrorist could just as easily piece together the information as any journalist or researcher. During your tour, you see server cabinets that clients seem to rent out like lockers. Who rents out these spaces?

All sorts of folks! You can see an incomplete customer roster for the facility on Telx’s website. This particular facility is valuable because it has the largest concentration of undersea transatlantic cables on the East Coast – so a lot of long haul, international fiber optic cable operators are here. But then, because the facility is so well connected, all sorts of businesses want to be inside as well—web hosting companies, financial firms definitely, broadcast and entertainment firms, etc. You mention that if you map a lot of the paths that information in transferred they match a lot of pre-existing trade and communications networks. What do you think of this repurposing of existing infrastructure? How does it inform our current internet environment or who gets to be “linked in”? How does it shape the internet? How does it shape our relationship to our digital space?

“Infrastructural fixity” as the guys over at Mammoth called it, is a fascinating part of the story.The role of preexisting networks reveals the Internet as a technological evolution, as opposed to some radical digital revolution starting from scratch. What I learned is that technological innovations reflect immense social, geographic and material continuities as well as changes. Shannon, my thesis adviser, uses the term palimpsest—this layering of networks on top of one another. And that’s really what we have here.

I like that- technological evolution. What do you mean by that?

The Internet, both in it’s experimental and early commercial stages, relied heavily on the landline telephony network in the United States. So it was really deployed on the back of a preexisting communications network, which paints a picture of the Internet as an incremental development. FIber optic cables also make use of all sorts of non communications conduit — domestic long haul lines often run along train routes, for example, and within cities cables can exploit other conduits like electricity, gas, sewer and so forth. All of this reflects a profound embededness and dependency on preexisting networks. So while there is plenty about the Internet that is innovative and revolutionary, I see the infrastructure in these evolutionary terms. Interesting. Do you think a lot of people have a grasp on the actual physicality of the internet? Why do you think it’s important that we as a society understand these material spaces and how our technology interacts with them?

The documentary has found a much larger audience than I ever anticipated, so I think it’s something that people know instinctually but rarely think about. I think it’s important for the same reasons that it’s important to know that our garbage doesn’t just disappear but must be transported somehow to some other place. Our water, our electricity, the fuel for our vehicles, the food in our grocery stores. These are massive networks and systems that we rely upon every day. Digital communications can have an anesthetizing, dematerializing effect that makes us forget these ecologies—screens are kind of a portal out of our immediate surroundings, into some distant or imaginary space. So puncturing that mythology and reminding people—myself included—that our communications are dependent on vast materialities, this felt like a useful gesture to make.

For more about Ben Mendelsohn, check out his website or follow him on Twitter @bamendelsohn