Cloud and Field

Abstract

(ITL) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) promotes the U.S. economy and public welfare by providing technical leadership for the nation's measurement and standards infrastructure. ITL develops tests, test methods, reference data, proof of concept implementations, and technical analysis to advance the development and productive use of information technology. ITL's responsibilities include the development of technical, physical, administrative, and management standards and guidelines for the cost-effective security and privacy of sensitive unclassified information in Federal computer systems. This Special Publication 800-series reports on ITL's research, guidance, and outreach efforts in computer security and its collaborative activities with industry, government, and academic organizations. Certain commercial entities, equipment, or materials may be identified in this document in order to describe an experimental procedure or concept adequately. Such identification is not intended to imply recommendation or endorsement by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, nor is it intended to imply that the entities, materials, or equipment are necessarily the best available for the purpose.

Metaphors in critical Internet and digital media studies

“…Whether we understand these technologies or not is almost beside the point. (Mattern, 2016: 2)The first two sentences are a powerful evocation of the political and technical complexity of cloud computing, but the final sentence could be read as naïve. Critical scholars of the Internet and digital media need to understand the materiality of cloud computing and how it works, if only to point out to those promoting it that they are really talking about other people’s computers, with the political and material consequences that such a potential loss of control may risk.…”

Geographies of infrastructure II: Concrete, cloud and layered (in)visibilities

“…Lally et al, 2019; Paglen, 2010; Shelton et al, 2014b). Work seeking to materialize the virtual often has a quality of pulling back the curtain or of an expedition into the unknown (Mattern, 2016). In Blum’s (2012) search for the ‘center of the internet’, for example, he is directed to a non-descript room in the Palo Alto Internet Exchange (PAIX, the original data center) where cables emerge from the floor.…”

“…For Amoore (2018), this is an important element that is missed in efforts to make digital infrastructures 'visible'. Like Mattern (2016), she questions the idea that that 'making visible is making clear' (Johnson and Hogan, 2018: 6). Instead, this type of work needs to ask other questions about how that data is recalled, analyzed and mobilized for a variety of purposes, which are often not about flow but about surveillance and control (Amoore, 2018).…”

Telescoping the City: Technological Urbiquity, or Perceiving Ourselves from the Above

“…Such an infrastructural capillarity produces what can be described as an evaporation process, where volatile bits of information are instantly created and made accessible, viewable, and trackable from virtually everywhere and by everyone. It is not by chance indeed that the cloud is the essential metaphor adopted to market the current socio-technical paradigm (Carr, 2008; Mosco, 2014): “The fog of data, the algorithmic atmosphere, the hazy geography of digital intelligence,” in the words of Shannon Mattern (2016) describe this nebulized mist of data enveloping the planet. We can easily push this metaphor to include the three stages of cinematic urbanization as we have theorized so far.…”