In 1974, Arthur C. Clarke, when asked if in the future we will become a computer dependent society, answered, “In some ways, yes, but it will also enrich our society, because it will make it possible for us to live, really anywhere we like." (Clarke, 2013)

What could not be predicted so easily though, was that the depth of social interaction would be reduced, and the unintended consequences of this.

The internet allows for everyone to be connected, perhaps the closest thing to a global collective consciousness. In speaking of a global collective conscious, you are speaking really of a large, intangible structure or network. Similar to our own internal nervous system, a network that we know is there, that in many ways is us, but we can never truly grasp it. This collective conscious has an architecture, it exists in form as well as not, like the railways.

The collective conscious acts as a global structure that permits us to understand the world as a whole, but not as individuals - you would think that creating an extension of our central nervous system through a technology like the internet, would serve only to tighten our connections with one another; rather, this consciousness only exists in social environments where we too exist fully. I photographed the nodes of this network; power stations to the grid, the houses they are connected to, bridges - all viewed from the bed of the dismantled railway.