Podcast Summary:

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode: Britt Paris, "Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up" (U California Press, 2025)
Host: Megan Finn
Guest: Britt Paris
Date: March 9, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, host Megan Finn interviews Britt Paris about her new book, Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up. The conversation delves into the political economy of information infrastructures, exploring the radical potential (and limitations) of cooperatively owned and operated internet utilities. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies, especially from rural America and the American South, Paris’s book reimagines internet infrastructure through the lens of political theory, practical organizing, and material realities.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Motivation for the Book

• Personal Inspiration: Paris traces the origins of her work to her rural Missouri upbringing, where cooperative utilities provided electricity and telecommunications. These memories, contrasted against her expensive city life as a PhD student, seeded her interest in cooperative and community-driven infrastructures.

  “As I was paying my Comcast bill or paying my Verizon bill in these expensive cities...thinking back to these cooperative utilities...how we would get checks back every quarter for these utility companies that my parents were members of...” — Britt Paris [02:54]

• Academic Roots: Her dissertation on internet protocols exposed her to bottlenecks and policy design, leading her to contemplate how alternative models like local internet cooperatives could offer different outcomes.

2. Theoretical Framework: Rosa Luxemburg and Political Economy

• Luxemburg as Guide: Paris is influenced by Rosa Luxemburg’s writings on infrastructure and political power, integrating Marxist political economy and theories of structural power into her analysis.

  “I have always been really enthralled with Rosa Luxembourg's writings on the railroad, postal service activities, as well as...telegraph and communications...trying to talk about, you know, colonial policy, militarism, ecology and the environment.” — Britt Paris [06:29]

• Critical Approach: The book takes a normative stance on infrastructure, looking at agency, the rural-urban divide, and the formation of political character through resource allocation and technology.

3. Book Structure and Case Selection

• Layered Perspective: Paris aims to move beyond the ‘application layer’ (e.g., email, social media) and address the physical, material roots of the internet — including cables, environmental resources, and labor.

  “I wanted to build sort of a deeper and more grounded and more nuanced understanding of what the Internet is and how it rests on all types of material infrastructure...” — Britt Paris [13:15]

• Case Focus: The book surveys a series of case studies across the American South, including Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Philadelphia, each illustrating distinct models and challenges for alternative internet.

4. Values, Imaginaries, and Ownership

• Infrastructure Builders’ Values: Paris stresses that infrastructure reflects the values and imaginaries of those who build it. The internet’s design was militaristic, scientific, and profit-driven from inception, which shapes today’s surveillance and commodification.

  “Even at the onset...a lot of the work that was happening was, you know, coalescing around scientific and technological research for all sorts of military activities...the profit motive became sort of more deeply intertwined.” — Britt Paris [15:36]

5. Case Studies: From Rural Cooperatives to Urban Municipalities

a. Niemer (NEMR) in Missouri

• History & Legacy: Stemming from a German immigrant cooperative tradition, NEMR exemplifies rural internet built and owned by local users, offering hope for bottom-up infrastructure.

  “In these far flung areas...there is a history, a sort of cooperative tradition...these communes and cooperative utilities that German immigrants...started as these sort of utopian projects.” — Britt Paris [20:00]

b. People's Rural Telephone Cooperative (PRTC) vs. Blockware Solutions in Eastern Kentucky

• Contrast in Visions: PRTC prioritizes community needs and service, enabled by New Deal legacies, while tech companies like Blockware exploit local infrastructure for cryptocurrency mining, often driving up costs and straining grids.

  “The People's Rural Telecommunication Cooperative really cares about people...But...that invites a lot of people who want to ‘solve the problem’ with techno solutionism...introducing cryptocurrency farms...in abandoned mining warehouses.” — Britt Paris [25:57]

c. Municipal Internet: Chattanooga EPB and Philadelphia's People's Technology Project

• Barriers and Hope: Chattanooga’s EPB is a rare municipal success, often targeted by corporate incumbents like Comcast. Philadelphia’s struggles highlight the difficulty of creating people-owned infrastructure in the face of policy loopholes and corporate opposition.

  “Comcast ran a really intense and highly funded marketing campaign...to not trust the epb...It didn’t work because the EPB was a local, beloved institution...” — Britt Paris [31:02]
  “...state policy like the IJA always comes with several loopholes...we need people centered organizing to push this the rest of the way.” — Britt Paris [31:02]

6. Amazon and Futuristic Visions of Internet Infrastructure

• The Role of Amazon AWS: The book concludes by examining the concentration of infrastructural power in companies like Amazon and mapping four speculative futures for the internet.
• Four Futures (adapted from Peter Frase’s Four Futures):
  1. Libertarian Techno-Utopian Future: Seamless user experience, but perpetuates technocratic control and social inequality.
  2. Neo-Feudalist/Fascist Future: Technology as a tool for enclosure, surveillance, and authoritarianism (e.g., tight links between Silicon Valley and militarism).
  3. Socialist State-supported Infrastructure: Cooperative models, public funding, and greater community control.
  4. Anarcho-Communist/Grassroots Autonomy: Networked infrastructure without government or corporate support, sustained by local and collective effort.

  “You see a very sort of fascist wielding of technology...that’s one possibility, and then the other two...a socialist future...and the fourth is a very speculative one—a sort of like anarcho communist mode of thinking...” — Britt Paris [39:56]

7. From Book to Practice: Lessons for the Current Moment

• Addressing AI and Infrastructure: The fundamental argument is to focus on the ‘deep’ infrastructural layers — the cables, energy, labor, and ownership models underpinning emerging technologies like AI and quantum computing.

  “These technologies rest upon a sort of aggregated infrastructure that has been built over time that is incredibly brittle in a lot of ways...Those are the layers at which we might meaningfully intervene if we want to build a people’s Internet...” — Britt Paris [47:25]

8. What’s Next for Britt Paris

• Ongoing Work: Paris is now working through the American Association of University Professors on organizing labor movements around AI infrastructure and community partnerships to challenge top-down deployments of technology.

  “A big part of what I’m working on right now...we are doing a lot of work thinking about how people in the labor movement are bargaining around these very issues of infrastructural issues within AI.” — Britt Paris [50:15]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Personal reflection on hope:

  “I have to engage in work that is hopeful—hope is a practice, as Mariame Kaba said, so I have to keep practicing it.” — Britt Paris [50:15]

• On organizing for municipal and cooperative ownership:

  “Nobody’s going to give it to us unless we organize to build power around this.” — Britt Paris [31:02]

• On the lasting relevance of political economy:

  “Society is at a crossroads between socialism and barbarism—that is no more true today or no less true today than it was back in the 1890s and early 1900s...” — Britt Paris [11:03]

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |-----------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:54 | Paris discusses her background and inspiration for the book | | 06:29 | Luxemburg’s influence and the book’s political economy lens | | 13:15 | Structuring the book: from application layer to physical infrastructure | | 15:36 | Imaginaries and values embedded in Internet design | | 20:00 | Case study: NEMR (Niemer) and rural Missouri’s cooperative legacy | | 25:57 | PRTC vs. crypto mining in Kentucky: infrastructure for people vs. for capital | | 31:02 | Municipal Internet: EPB Chattanooga, policy challenges, and people-centered organizing | | 39:56 | Amazon, cloud infrastructure, and mapping four speculative futures for the Internet | | 47:25 | Implications for AI, current events, and the urgency of infrastructural focus | | 50:15 | Paris’s current and future work on union organizing and AI infrastructure |

Final Thoughts

Britt Paris’s Radical Infrastructure offers a critical, often hopeful, examination of internet infrastructure rooted in the realities of labor, politics, and material history. By recentering attention onto cooperatives, municipal projects, and the values embedded in our technological systems, Paris calls listeners and readers alike to imagine—and fight for—more equitable, collective futures for the internet.