In essence, this talk is about how three people have disrupted the landscapes of the world. Julius Caeser, Thomas Edison and Martin Cooper all have something to answer for!
 

Well, to be fair, it wasn't all their fault. Humans have an insatiable appetite for technology. When Steve Jobs invented the iPad, he didn't know what people would use it for. But we soon adopted it.
 

World leaders often measure the success of the human race by our technological advancement. But as Stephen Hawking once said, the greatest evolution of all time has been the creation of language, and look where that's got us.
 

You're probably wondering where this is going. Well, ultimately, a conference presentation on roads, electricity and cell phones isn't going to attract a crowd. This presentation is about exploring infrastructure in a different way: if people love technology, and technology needs infrastructure, then why do people hate infrastructure so much? Doesn't infrastructure gives us the technology we want?
 

Or, what we really will be exploring - how does technology change a landscape, are we okay with that, and what can we do about it?

It's unlikely we have the answer, but we have plenty of questions. We think it's time the design and planning professions started leading the conversation about how best to integrate infrastructure - not just physically, but also socially. What if communities started embracing infrastructure? Would that change how we approached the design of infrastructure?

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