The Information Super Cycleway

The ‘Information Superhighway’ was a popular phrase early in the Web’s history and was used to describe the exciting potential for digital communication across the global computer network.

When media communications were limited to broadcast television, radio and print, it was exhilarating to ‘dial up’ to the World Wide Web, to join this ‘superhighway’ and feel like you had access to world’s information. Visiting a website felt like going to a distant and exotic destination, it was a feeling that’s quite hard to describe.

The information superhighway directly connects millions of people, each both a consumer of information and a potential provider. (…) Most predictions about commercial opportunities on the information superhighway focus on the provision of information products, such as video on demand, and on new sales outlets for physical products, as with home shopping. (…) The information superhighway brings together millions of individuals who could exchange information with one another.

— The concept as described by MIT

The ‘Superhighway’ spoke of interconnectivity and free the free flow of information, but the Web wasn’t exactly fast back then. Is it still a good analog for what we experience now, as we are constantly connected to it? Maybe, but for different reasons.

Real highways (or motorways) are, at worst, where things grind to a halt as the available bandwidth fails under the load placed on it (by autobese vehicles) or, at best, polluted danger zones exacting massive environmental damage at a both local and global level.

We know that today’s networked technologies and the demands we place on them are consuming vast amounts of energy with the associated carbon emissions that entails. We have to find ways of minimising our energy usage.

A projection of the electricity demand by the ICT sector (Anders Andrae, Nature, 2018). The sector is projected to use around 20% of global electricity by 2030, with the largest growth in demand coming from networks and data centers.

We to think smaller and more efficient, but also more human. Cycle networks, when done right, allow for fast and efficient transportation with the least possible impact on our environment.

So, with tongue-slightly-in-cheek, we propsose the ‘Information Super Cycleway’ as a superior analog for an aspirational global network of collaborators and communicators.