On a long train ride last week, I read ‘Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data’ by Ali Fard.
I’m gradually expanding more and more outside of my ‘typical’ urban reads, and this book is definitely an example of that. I appreciated what was, for me, an in-depth look at the ‘material and spatial realities of cloud computing’.
I have to also confess learning something through this book that I feel I should have already known- that suburban growth post-WWII was in large part also fueled by the threat of nuclear attack.
Fard also brings up an intriguing and critical question about what will happen to urban geographies ‘forcefully bent to the territorial demands of the cloud once the cloud leaves?’
As described on the University of Minnesota Press website:
“Breaking down the myth of a clean and efficient tech urbanism, this book makes visible the complex material geographies and geopolitics that undergird today’s most powerful and omnipresent corporations. A timely critique of the growing agency of tech platforms in determining the future of urban space, Grounding the Cloud offers an essential framework for understanding the shifting relationship between technology and urbanization.”
Read more about the book at the University of Minnesota Press website: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517919610/grounding-the-cloud/