While evidence of infrastructure space within the contemporary city might appear to confirm the death of architecture, perhaps it really only demonstrates that the giant is alive again. Architecture makes unique objects—like stones in the water—while a constant flow of repeatable spatial formulas constructs a sea of urban spaces. Architects and urbanists typically characterize this state of affairs as disempowering, but if architecture was indeed killed by the book, perhaps it is reincarnate as something more powerful—as information itself. Infrastructure space has become a medium of information. The information resides in invisible, powerful activities that determine how objects and content are organized and circulated. Infrastructure space, with the power and currency of software, is an operating system for shaping the city.
Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space