The materiality of the cloud ☁️
By Julia Rone
In this literature review, Julia Rone outlines the key trends and logics behind the boom in data centre construction across the globe.
Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By th’ mass, and ‘tis like a camel indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale?
Polonius: Very like a whale.
The cloud – this fundamental building block of digital capitalism – has been so far defined mainly by the PR of big tech companies.
The very metaphor of the “cloud” presupposes an ethereal, supposedly immaterial collection of bits gliding in the sky, safely removed from the corrupt organic and inorganic matter that surrounds us. This, of course, can’t be further from the truth.
But even when they acknowledge the materiality of the “cloud” and the way it is…
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