![]() The words you are reading are a point of entry into an ethereal realm that many call the “Cloud.” As they travel across time and space at the speed of light, beneath our oceans in fiber optic cables thinner than human hairs, these dense packets of information, instructions for pixels or characters or frames encoded in ones and zeros, unravel to create the digital veneer before you now. Whatever your query, desire, or purpose, the internet provides, and all of the complexity of everything from unboxing videos to do-it-yourself blogs are contained within infinitely complex strings of bits. On this same river of the digital, millions flock to binge their favorite television programming, to stream pornography, or enter the sprawling worlds of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs), or simply to look up the meaning of an obscure word or the location of the nearest COVID-19 testing center. Perhaps they are emails, hastily scrawled on smart devices, or emoji-laden messages exchanged between friends or families. Introduction: Materializing the Immaterial Learners will be able to apply a holistic, humanistic approach to sociotechnical challenges. Learners will understand some of the ways that user behavior and cultures of computing influence efficiency and sustainability outcomes. Learners will recognize the environmental toll of digital life and the complexity of infrastructures involved in its operation. Learners will be able to identify the various material and ecological impacts of computation and digital data storage practices. Steven Gonzalez Monserrate Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society, MIT Keywords: climate change, Anthropocene, data centers, data storage, digital ecology, materiality of computation, sustainable computing This case study closes with a speculative vignette that scales up from various local impacts to a planetary framework, sketching some of the particular ways that computation contributes to climate change and the Anthropocene. By attending to the culture of workplace practice and the behaviors and training of technicians in data centers, this case study reveals that the Cloud is not fully automated, nor is it hyperrational emotion, instinct, and human judgment are enlisted to keep servers running. These examples include air conditioning and thermal management, water cycling, and the disposal of e-waste. It surveys a range of empirical accounts of server technicians to illustrate on-the-ground examples of material and ecological factors that permeate everyday life in the Cloud. How does computation contribute to the warming of the planet? As information technology (IT) capacity demands continue to trend upward, what are some of the ecological obstacles that must be overcome to accommodate an ever-expanding, carbon-hungry Cloud? How do these material impacts play out in everyday life, behind the scenes, where servers, fiber optic cables, and technicians facilitate cloud services? This case study draws on firsthand ethnographic research in data centers-sprawling libraries of computer servers that facilitate everything from email to commerce-to identify some of the far-reaching and tangled environmental impacts of computation and data-storage infrastructures. In the age of machine learning, cryptocurrency mining, and seemingly infinite data storage capacity enabled by cloud computing, the environmental costs of ubiquitous computing in modern life are obscured by the sheer complexity of infrastructures and supply chains involved in even the simplest of digital transactions. ![]()
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