Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data

A detailed foray into the material and spatial realities of cloud computingSince the 1990s, technologists have promoted a vision of the "cloud" as a shapeless and intangible entity.Grounding the Cloud peers through this hazy façade to reveal the earthly material foundations of global computing and data extraction.Tracing the historical and technological development of the cloud computing paradigm, Ali Fard exposes an ever-evolving project in which ideologies, economic models, and marketing images collude to shape our shared urban environments. Demonstrating how technology's spatial footprint now stretches to nearly every corner of the globe, Grounding the Cloud analyzes the often-hidden infrastructures that facilitate platform capitalism - from the mines extracting rare earth minerals in remote regions to the vast global network of fiber-optic cables at the bottom of the oceans to the nondescript data centers that sit on the peripheries of major urban areas.Meanwhile, with compelling e