Building Bridges

I just finished up the second half of Roads and Bridges: the Unseen Labor Behind our Digital Infrastructure by Nadia Eghbal. In this half of the reading, Nadia switched to discussing more modern issues with the open source infrastructure, as well as possible ways to correct these issues.

My Review

The second half of the reading was a little less enjoyable for me. I feel like the author did a fabulous job with historical context and relevant modern anecdotes, but the analysis wasn’t really there. The essay did it’s job in that it shed light on the crumbling digital infrastructure. However, I felt like it was really grasping at straws near the end trying to find solutions for the issue. Those proposed werre very open ended, such as ‘Embrace, rather than fight against, decentralization’. It makes sense to keep with the naturally distributed system that open source software follows (obviously not enough sense, as it needed to be stated), but the statement itself is very generic. I can’t entirely blame the author for not giving more concrete ways to solve the problem. If the problem were easy to solve, it wouldn’t be a problem. The author did a great job in noting what wasn’t working, as well as discussing how things that were working weren’t necessarily applicable to every project out there. Focusing on the positive aspects of the infrastructure and explaining how they are such a small percentage of the overall ecosystem really helps put the problem more into perspective. I feel like this essay could be used as a guide to pave the way for the much needed digital infrastructure improvement. It does a damn good job of letting you know what isn’t working, and seems to me to be a great jumping off point.

Unanswered Questions?

I was left with a few questions after I finished reading the article. Obviously Nadia is on the side of the people who desperately need help in maintaining massive projects with little to no funding. I wonder how much the author’s personal bias affect the information portrayed in this essay? I’m sure it wouldn’t have some gross effect on the writing, and I don’t feel I was being deceived in any way, I simply wonder. I also wonder why security isn’t a larger focus among developers (if what Nadia says is true)? Finally, I wonder where we go from here? There’s an issue, and it needs solving. Is this essay a general call to arms for anyone who will listen? Is there just a hope that someone will pick it up from here? I wonder if anyone has yet?

After finishing all of the reading, I give the full work an 8/10 for excellent historical content, with a slightly lackluster conclusion, in my opinion.