Increase the Size of Your Box
Deutsche Telekom has been busy over the past year erecting large grey boxes on Berlin’s pavements in order to remind this city’s citizens that the virtual world of the internet is mirrored by a very physcial counterpart. These new boxes which contain broadband cable nodes differ from their older counterparts in that they’re four times as voluminous. The one pictured below right came up to my shoulder, meaning it’s around 1.7 meters high.
An interesting and counterintuitive development when you consider that nearly all information-technological developments of the past 50 years have been characterised by miniaturisation.
I recently had the good fortune to catch an electrician closing one of these boxes, and was just able to catch a peek at the contents. To my amazement a good 80% of the box was filled with air, with all the technical bits confined to a couple of neat looking patchbays. Obviously this is about something else altogether, and we are not meant to know. My guess is that the people profiting from these monstrous grey boxes are Berlin’s multitudinous and prolific taggers who might now profit from an enlarged surface area on which to apply their imaginitve markings.
I like the new boxes. They are so not over-designed.
I know what you mean about the mysterious nature of these junction boxes. Watching electricians working on them – or in them – is like observing a sect busy with the fine-tuning of its surveillance equipment. The confusion of wires – which only the electricians seem to know their way around – adds to the sense of a mystery brotherhood. It is too daunting to even think of approaching them and asking about their work. No wonder in London you sometimes see the boxes broken open, their sides hanging off – it may be to illegally connect an electricity supply. Or it may be to find out what the hell is going on inside!