Atelier: Ethnographic Inquiry in the Twenty-First Century

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 is 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.

Authors: Alix Johnson

Format: Paperback

Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780520396364

Publication date: 20231222