A prehistory of the cloud / Tung-Hui Hu.
By: Hu, Tung-Hui
.
Contributor(s): IEEE Xplore (Online Service) [distributor.] | MIT Press [publisher.].
Material type: 
BookPublisher: Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press, [2015]Distributor: [Piscataqay, New Jersey] : IEEE Xplore, [2015]Description: 1 PDF (xxix, 209 pages) : illustrations, map.Content type: text Media type: electronic Carrier type: online resourceISBN: 9780262330091.Subject(s): Computer networks -- History -- Popular works | Internet -- Social aspects -- Popular works | Epitaxial layers | Excitons | Nitrogen | Radiative recombination | Silicon carbide | Temperature measurementGenre/Form: Electronic books.Additional physical formats: Print version: No titleDDC classification: 004.6 Online resources: Abstract with links to resource Also available in print.Summary: We may imagine the digital cloud as placeless, mute, ethereal, and unmediated. Yet the reality of the cloud is embodied in thousands of massive data centers, any one of which can use as much electricity as a midsized town. Even all these data centers are only one small part of the cloud. Behind that cloud-shaped icon on our screens is a whole universe of technologies and cultural norms, all working to keep us from noticing their existence. In this book, Tung-Hui Hu examines the gap between the real and the virtual in our understanding of the cloud. Hu shows that the cloud grew out of such older networks as railroad tracks, sewer lines, and television circuits. He describes key moments in the prehistory of the cloud, from the game "Spacewar" as exemplar of time-sharing computers to Cold War bunkers that were later reused as data centers. Countering the popular perception of a new "cloudlike" political power that is dispersed and immaterial, Hu argues that the cloud grafts digital technologies onto older ways of exerting power over a population. But because we invest the cloud with cultural fantasies about security and participation, we fail to recognize its militarized origins and ideology. Moving between the materiality of the technology itself and its cultural rhetoric, Hu's account offers a set of new tools for rethinking the contemporary digital environment.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 177-194) and index.
Restricted to subscribers or individual electronic text purchasers.
We may imagine the digital cloud as placeless, mute, ethereal, and unmediated. Yet the reality of the cloud is embodied in thousands of massive data centers, any one of which can use as much electricity as a midsized town. Even all these data centers are only one small part of the cloud. Behind that cloud-shaped icon on our screens is a whole universe of technologies and cultural norms, all working to keep us from noticing their existence. In this book, Tung-Hui Hu examines the gap between the real and the virtual in our understanding of the cloud. Hu shows that the cloud grew out of such older networks as railroad tracks, sewer lines, and television circuits. He describes key moments in the prehistory of the cloud, from the game "Spacewar" as exemplar of time-sharing computers to Cold War bunkers that were later reused as data centers. Countering the popular perception of a new "cloudlike" political power that is dispersed and immaterial, Hu argues that the cloud grafts digital technologies onto older ways of exerting power over a population. But because we invest the cloud with cultural fantasies about security and participation, we fail to recognize its militarized origins and ideology. Moving between the materiality of the technology itself and its cultural rhetoric, Hu's account offers a set of new tools for rethinking the contemporary digital environment.
Also available in print.
Mode of access: World Wide Web
Description based on PDF viewed 12/23/2015.
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