By early 1968 (in the first year at SIDEC) I had conceptualized my prospective PhD research as concerned with the effects upon communities in Sarawak of the introduction of roads, dams, development schemes etc., and was using 'infrastructure' as a general term for such impositions/innovations. I escaped that limited and limiting research idea, but the term gathered mass as it rolled down hill in subsequent years.
Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape,/a> Brian Hayes (2005) and Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure Ingrid Burrington (2016) and How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World Deb Chachra (2023) are three examples of books on my shelves that speak to my continuing interest in this area.
Barcodes and QR codes are well worth considering under the rubric:
Barcode WikipediaQR Code Wikipedia
QR code: The global making of an infrastructural gateway Gabriele de Seta (2023)
...encoding enframes countless aspects of contemporary mediation, and should be investigated as a key ontological category of digital culture (2011, p. 114). Data encoding techniques, particularly the ones used in machine-readable patterns like barcodes and QR codes, contribute to the ongoing "full-blown standardization of space" (Thrift, 2004, p. 175), a condition under which increasing numbers of objects exist only to send and receive information about their own position and addressability. The encoding of a string of data into a machine-readable pattern could not happen without advancements in optical technologies capable of scanning it, efforts towards the standardization of its parameters, developments in error correction and compression algorithms compensating for its materiality, and changes in the geography and topology of computational infrastructures. Starting from the barcode’s invention in the late 1940s and ending with the hype around China’s "codeconomy" of the early 2020s, this section demonstrates how these processes have been an integral part of seven decades of machine-readable encoding history....the first UPC barcode was scanned in 1974 by cashier Sharon Buchanan at the Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio. Among various grocery products, a pack of chewing gum was chosen to demonstrate how accurately the barcode reader could work even on items with a small packaging footprint. The commercialization of scanners drove the adoption of UPC barcodes, and a decade after the first demonstration, one third of supermarkets in the U.S. had installed scanners on their checkout counters (Basker, 2012, p. 1)
OED
A collective term for the subordinate parts of an undertaking; substructure, foundation; spec. the permanent installations forming a basis for military operations, as airfields, naval bases, training establishments, etc.1927 The tunnels, bridges, culverts, and 'infrastructure' work generally of the Ax to Bourg-Madame line have been completed. Chambers's Journal 14 May 374/2
1950 In this Debate we have had the usual jargon about 'the infrastructure of a supra-national authority’' W. S. Churchill in Hansard Commons vol. CDLXXVI. 2145
1951 This new term 'infrastructure'..denotes fixed military facilities such as airfields, base installations and transport systems. European Review October 2/1
1956 What I call the infrastructure is the regularly produced two- or four-beat meter (2/2 or 4/4 measure) that characterizes any jazz performance. D. Noakes, translation of A. Hodeir, Jazz 197
1957 Thirty years ago, the dominant school of thought in the Soviet Union undertook..the task of analysing the infrastructure of society. T. Kilmartin, translation of R. C. F. Aron, Opium of Intellectuals iv. 133
1960 Part of the Nato infrastructure programme. Times 9 December 14/2
1971 A.I.D. assistance will be focused on Vihiga Division and will..upgrade the infrastructure of roads and other social services. Inside Kenya Today March 15/1
1971 A very complex infrastructure of scores of vernacular languages. J. Spencer, English Language in West Africa 31