[nonrandomstring]

At what point did ICT (horizontal services) become "infrastructure"? I use quotes, because at this point it is really superstructure in the sense of Marx.

I think we should be very careful about casually using that word.

[tedk-42]

I think you'll find that most people here have a tech background and that 'Infrastructure' is the stuff that code/apps/platforms run on. It's the physical stuff that resides these days in cloud providers.

Nothing to do with Marx or any philosophy.

[nonrandomstring]

> most people here

You're right. Perhaps I am speaking to the wrong crowd.

However, you may or not be aware that, as with all things in the tech-world (and tech-business world), the way we talk leaks out into wider use and is misused.

So, yes, in the bigger world it very much does have philosophical/social implications. When clueless top-mid execs bandy about words like "infra" they are inserting values into a business without realising it, inappropriately displacing a locus of control and decision making to external forces.

That's when you suddenly find your internal strategy documents have been dropped and the company set back by weeks because Microsoft decided that for you.