Before the bridge was built, barges and ferries docked along the piers. Trains brought people and goods into Brooklyn and beyond. After a century of decline, the neighborhood, Fulton Ferry Landing, is being reclaimed by artists and people like me who work anywhere, thanks to the Internet. Disconnected for a hundred years, due to a network of roads that ignored it, Fulton Ferry Landing changed little. Today, it is quickly being reconnected to the rest of the planet, as a result of the most efficient transportation network ever devised.
Most people make do with a modem.
Thanks to Linux, some volunteer work and a bit of luck, the old headquarters of the Brooklyn Railroad is now one of the most wired old buildings on the planet. Each apartment has two data ports connected to a router in the basement. The router is connected to the Internet through a digital leased line. A few months ago, I asked the building's residents to let me wire the building with CAT5 in order to set up a building network, because it made sense both economically and organizationally. Three years ago, I used to walk into many businesses that had each desktop computer connected to the Internet through a dial-up connection.