Phoebe
@phoebechrist
Phoebe
Article on the International Utility Locate Rodeo, where people compete to find hidden cables, water mains, and gas lines.
Consists of an expo and then competition - former at an airport hotel and the latter at a college campus.
A Locator - the person
A Locate - the place
“Locators are experts in the minutiae of landscape. Variations in strains of colour of grass and cracks in pavement can offer as much insight as a device equipped with Bluetooth or elaborate touch-screen interfaces.”
Ultimately, it all comes down to the skill of the locator, and if he or she gets it wrong, a lot of other things go wrong. Things like gas explosions destroying buildings. Or entire hospitals getting shut down by a sliced fiber-optic cable. Or water main breaks that bring traffic to a standstill.
The Common Ground Alliance - formed to continue the work of the 1999 Common Ground study, sought to consolidate information/location of utilities owned by private companies.
“Never trust a map” - “It’s less a problem of inaccuracy so much as one of incompleteness and outdated records.”
Four divisions → electric, power, gas, water, and telecom
Three courses within → “Each course has a “wheel” drawn in the ground, made with 8 strings attached to stakes forming a series of spokes. The locator has to locate his or her conduit using either flags or commemorative rodeo coins, then measure the distance of that coin from the center of the wheel against each string spoke.”
“The Locate From Hell” - three-minute competition where locators cannot use their own equipment to find a utility that may not be their speciality.
Locators are among the few people who can even begin to comprehend that dense archaeology—the ghosts of no longer used telecommunication networks, of housing booms and busts that necessitated new conduits, of urban planning that saw underground utilities as a way to create a more bucolic, natural landscape. America tries to protect but inevitably forgets its incomprehensible, aging, and in some places crumbling infrastructure by burying it.
Common Ground: Study of One-Call Systems and Damage Prevention Best Practices
The report outlines best practices for damage prevention to underground facilities, emphasizing effective planning, design processes, and the use of one-call systems to enhance safety and reliability.
primis.phmsa.dot.govDesigns for Alienation: Exploring Diverse Realities
The text explores alienation across diverse cultural, familial, educational, and systemic contexts, presenting empirical studies and theoretical reflections that highlight the complexity and implications of cultural perceptions and interactions.
jyx.jyu.fiLangman, Lauren. BAKHTIN THE FUTURE: TECHNO-CAPITAL AND CYBER-FEUDALISM
pp.341-366
p.349
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