Anonymous ID: ff6693 Nov. 24, 2021, 5:27 p.m. No.15074757   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>4773

>>15074680

IT IS JUST A TREES AND OTHER THINGS LIKE CHIMNEYS, NOTHING TO SEE HERE MOVE ALONG!!

Trees give us life. These fake ones give us TikTok on our cellphones

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-06-30/fake-trees-cell-phone-tower-southern-california

BY DANIEL MILLERSTAFF WRITER

JUNE 30, 2021 5 AM PT

A gentle breeze rustles the eucalyptus tree, its dark green foliage quivering under a cloudy Santa Ana sky. At the base of its sturdy trunk, the leaves of a fallen branch bear the scars of hungry insects.

A stand of eucalyptuses sways across the road. But this tree, surrounded by a spiky metal fence, isn’t like the others.

“AT&T authorized personnel only!” a sign warns.

This tree isn’t actually a tree at all — it’s a cellular transmission tower, one among hundreds or more that now blanket Southern California.

Cell tower trees have become an indelible part of the L.A. landscape over the last few decades, sprouting beside freeways and in the city’s other in-between spaces. The demand for calls that never drop and videos that always stream is fueling the growth of these structures, whose fake foliage is meant to obscure the rectangular antennas clustered near their tops.

Their ersatz nature leaves some Angelenos amused and others bemused. It takes little more than a glancing look to sense they don’t photosynthesize — and the whole charade definitively falls apart when comparing them with real trees.

But how often do people stop to look at trees?

This unnatural flora has spread because of a quirk of telecommunications law: municipalities cannot, in many cases, reject a cellular carrier’s request for a new tower, but they can require it to be concealed.

The proliferation of the stealth towers has invited philosophical questions about humankind’s dominion over the natural world and the role of technology in modern life. And in L.A., a city known — unfairly or not — for its artificiality, the tree tower has become an emblem. Especially the palm trees.

“To me, the cell tower palm tree seems like the best symbol of Los Angeles for the 2000s,” said Kazys Varnelis, a historian of cities and communications. “It is that city of fakeness.”

When Varnelis had to choose cover art for “The Infrastructural City,” a collection of essays on L.A. that he edited, he knew what he wanted: a palm tree cell tower.

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https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-06-30/fake-trees-cell-phone-tower-southern-california