Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space

Contributor(s): Professor Keller Easterling, Dr David Madden | Infrastructure is not only the underground pipes and cables controlling our cities. It also determines the hidden rules that structure the spaces all around us – free trade zones, smart cities, suburbs, and shopping malls. In this lecture Keller Easterling drew on her new book ‘Extrastatecraft’ to chart the emergent new powers controlling this space and showed how they extend beyond the reach of government. Easterling explored areas of infrastructure with the greatest impact on our world – examining everything from standards for the thinness of credit cards to the urbanism of mobile telephony, the world’s largest shared platform, to the “free zone,” the most virulent new world city paradigm. In conclusion, she proposed some unexpected techniques for resisting power in the modern world.