Ingrid Burrington

Ingrid Burrington is a writer who maps the physical infrastructure that powers the internet. While most people experience the internet as an invisible network, Burrington investigates the tangible reality beneath our feet - tracing the cables, pipes, and equipment that carry data through city streets and underground systems. Her signature work, Networks of New York (Melville House, 2016), documents this hidden landscape, revealing how digital connectivity depends on physical infrastructure embedded throughout urban environments.

Burrington's research and writing have earned recognition from major institutions. She is a Fellow at Data & Society, an organization focused on understanding technology's social implications, and serves as a staff writer for The Atlantic, where she continues exploring the intersection of technology, infrastructure, and urban life. Her investigations combine rigorous documentation with accessible storytelling, making complex technical systems understandable to general audiences.

Audiences benefit from Burrington's unique perspective that challenges the myth of a weightless, placeless internet. She demonstrates that digital networks are fundamentally material - built from copper, fiber optic cable, and concrete, maintained by workers, and shaped by geography, history, and politics. Her work matters because understanding where internet infrastructure actually exists helps us understand who builds it, who profits from it, and who is excluded from it. By mapping the physical internet, Burrington makes visible the infrastructure that shapes contemporary life.