Infrastructure

If you want to make long-term impact, build the roads.

Stewart Brand points out that if you compare two maps of downtown Boston - from 1860 and 1960, for example - virtually every single building has been replaced. Gone.

But the roads? They haven’t changed a bit.

That’s because systems built around communication, transportation and connection need near-unanimous approval to change. Buildings, on the other hand, begin to morph as soon as the owner or tenant decides they need to.

When creating an organization, a technology of any kind of culture, the roads are worth far more than the buildings.

This is one of the factors that contribute to why China can make “made-in-China” goods so cheap. It is not due to the cheap labour, but cheap logistic, its scale and land costs. If you have time, please use your Google Earth to have a look at the bank of all the river networks in China, and you will find countless factories along the rivers. That also explains why Southern China is relatively more economically prosperous than Northern China.

One way to describe different types of infrastructure is to classify them as 2 distinct kinds: hard infrastructure and soft infrastructure. Hard infrastructure refers to the physical networks necessary for the functioning of a modern industry. This includes roads, bridges, and railways. Soft infrastructure refers to all the institutions that maintain the economic, health, social, environmental, and cultural standards of a country. This includes educational programs, official statistics, parks and recreational facilities, law enforcement agencies, and emergency services.

A larger context naturally emerges with a bigger screen real estate.