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Our investigation begins from one question: where is contemporary life situated in the epoch of digital transformations? When we sit at our desk and receive a new message on one of our screens, how do we make sense of the processes and physical infrastructures that make this possible? We envision not only the future of this infrastructural system but make further attempts to imagine the possibilities of its physical reality and potential political implications.

As revealed in our initial case study of Equinix, the world's largest data infrastructure company, the physical reality of the data industry has been disregarded and intentionally concealed from the public eyes, despite their deep penetration into our daily activities. We are no longer able to perform our day-to-day duties without using the internet that travels through one of Equinix's facilities, although we cannot see their facilities around us. The problem that we challenge here is this disparity between the ubiquitous internet connection and the displacement of physical infrastructures from the urban centers. We believe that this problem is at the risk of centralizing the power to the hands of private monopolies. We call this digital parasitism, and the further studies seek militant strategies to battle against the private monopolization of internet infrastructure - so as to reclaim public data back to the hands of the individual end users from this digital feudalism. As a resolution, we imagine a monumental public data infrastructure located in the middle of Manhattan.

This tower establishes and maintains the exponentially growing urban data network, while serving as a civic device to reveal the system to the public eyes. From conduits to cables and tanks, every process and physical operation that enables distribution and processing of data becomes transparent and habitable in this tower. This tower democratizes and reclaims data back to the public. Architecture of the tower depicts the future that we envision. Infinite data accumulation is no longer limited in the initial boundary of the building. This tower provides a porous structural framework, and the equipment is incrementally installed as the public demand increases. The form of the tower is itself the physical manifestation of the public data usage. The tower grows, and no one has authority to define its final form. Growing inside the James Farley building, the tower introduces new public monumentality by not only expressing civic ideals but also generating common goods for the district. It utilizes excess heat from the machines by distributing it to the district and providing hanging civic spaces within its porous structure to hold various public activities. Data infrastructures no longer crawl in the shades of the city but boasts its presence at the heart of the city. Our commitment is to envision an immediate technological future that is already in the progress.

Image> Data Monumentality, cross-section drawing,  Hyun Jun Cho,  Eduardo Teran.

Image> Rendering, a Post-Technological New York,  Hyun Jun Cho,  Eduardo Teran.