Chasing the Cloud: Introduction to Network Infrastructure

Instructor: Zane Cooper

Email: zane.cooper@asc.upenn.edu

Assignments:

Infrastructure is never really invisible. We just are not trained to notice it properly. This class is intended to help develop the art of noticing, of seeing, of thinking through the infrastructural connections that undergird our lives. The project for this course is an iterative one that you will complete as a group throughout our time together.

Your homework, before each session, is to go on a “data walk”, in which you will begin training yourself to notice how network infrastructure operates in your neighborhood. On these data walks, you will become a network archaeologist, discovering traces of connections you have never noticed before. Use each session as a primer for what to look for. You will take pictures of your findings and upload them to an Instagram account I have created especially for this course. In addition to posting picture(s), you will write 200-300-word blog posts about each walk (what you noticed, how you felt, the weather, how it smelled, the textures you encountered, etc.), and paste them in the comments of your Instagram post. At the end of the course, you all will have built a collective collage of network infrastructure from all over the country and world! At least that is the hope, right?

Let’s get noticing! Use Ingrid Burrington’s field guide below to get ideas for how to start noticing the infrastructure all around you!

Session 1: What is Infrastructure?

We will spend our first session collectively unpacking what infrastructure is, how it is used to pursue and embed ideological objectives, and how the Internet has been shaped by those objectives.

READINGS:

Session 2: Path Dependencies

Today we will look at the infrastructural history of communication in the United States, and how the paths taken by these older systems have been incorporated into the material shape of the Internet.

READINGS

Session 3: Cables

Today we delve into the dirty business of “connection” – what it takes, how it happens, and who makes it happen. We will explore interactive submarine cable maps and screen an excerpt of Rithy Panh’s documentary about connecting Cambodia called The Land of Wandering Souls (1999)

READINGS:

In-Class Screenings

We will watch sections of these together in class, but I am posting them so that you can watch the rest, if you’re interested.

Buried, Bundled, and Behind Closed Doors (2010, Dir. Ben Mendelsohn)

The Land of Wandering Souls (2000, Dir. Rithy Panh)

Session 4: Data Centers

Today we will discuss the social and environmental implications of data centers and the various infrastructural relationships required to keep them humming.

READINGS

Further Reading

What follows is a long, but far from comprehensive list of notable sources on the topics we covered in class. This is a deep, expansive list, with much to explore. Get reading!

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Boyer, D. (2014). Energopower: An Introduction. Anthropological Quarterly, 87(2), 309–334.

Boyer, D. (2018). Infrastructure, Potential Energy, Revolution. In The Promise of Infrastructure (pp. 223–243). Duke University Press.

Brunton, F. (2013). Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet. MIT Press.

Brunton, F. (2019). Digital cash: The unknown history of the anarchists, utopians, and technologists who created cryptocurrency. Princeton University Press.

Chun, W. H. K. (2006). Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics. MIT Press.

Chun, W. H. K. (2011). Programmed Visions: Software and Memory. MIT Press.

Chun, W. H. K. (2016). Updating to remain the same: Habitual new media. MIT Press.

Cowen, D. (2014). The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade. University of Minnesota Press.

Crawford, K., & Joler, V. (n.d.). Anatomy of an AI System. Anatomy of an AI System. Retrieved January 1, 2020, from http://www.anatomyof.ai

Cubitt, S. (2017). Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies. Duke University Press.

Ensmenger, N. (2018). The Environmental History of Computing. Technology and Culture, 59(4S), S7–S33. https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2018.0148

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Halpern, O. (2014). Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945. Duke University Press.

Haraway, D. (2012). A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s. In Coming to Term: Feminism, Theory, Politics (pp. 173–204). https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203093917

Haraway, D. (2015). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge.

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