Where Cloud Is Ground

Where Cloud Is Ground offers an ethnography of the international data storage industry and an inquiry into the relationship between data and place. Based in Iceland, which is fast becoming a hot spot for data centers—facilities where large quantities of data are processed and stored—the book traces the fraught work of siting data’s material manifestations in relation to landforms and earth processes, local politics, national narratives, and still-open questions of spatial justice and sovereignty. Doing so, it unsettles techno-utopian ideals of connectivity and offers a window into what it means to live with our data, in a place where more and more data now lives.

Alix Johnson is Assistant Professor of International Studies at Macalester College.

Contents

List of Figures 
Acknowledgments
Note on Language and Naming 

Introduction: Putting Data in Its Place 

PART I ARTICUTION

1. A Natural Fit 
2. The Switzerland of Bits 

PART II ANCHORING 

3. Something from Nothing 
4. Data Centers, Data Peripheries 

PART III EXCESS 

5. Inside Out 
Conclusion 

Notes 
Bibliography 
Index