BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Locating the Cloud in Sweden‘s North - Dr Asta Vonderau\, Depart
 ment of Social Anthropology\, Stockholm University
DTSTART:20170130T140000Z
DTEND:20170130T160000Z
UID:TALK69333@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Clare Dyer-Smith
DESCRIPTION:In the metaphoric imagery commonly used to describe the Intern
 et\, the world wide web has been pictured as being immaterial and fluid\, 
 like an ocean to be navigated. The complex infrastructures and heavy indus
 try securing the functionality of web services ‚backstage’ are seldoml
 y part of popular imagination and remain\, as technical infrastructures ge
 nerally\, part of an invisible deeper ecology. My presentation is based on
  ethnographic research conducted in the Swedish city of Luleå where Faceb
 ook opened its largest and first European data center in 2013\, providing 
 server cooling and storage facilities for user data from Europe\, Africa\,
  and the Near East. Spreading rapidly across the globe\, data centers are 
 understood to become "factories of the 21st century"\, signalling the adve
 nt of a new industrial era that comes with social and environmental change
 s. And indeed\, it is mostly thanks to Facebook that Luleå has lately bee
 n globally in the news as a center of IT competence and data storage intro
 ducing the brand name\, "The Node Pole". Ever since\, the Facebook project
  has become key to this city's self image and a generator of collective an
 d individual future visions. My presentation asks: How is „the cloud“ 
 imagined in terms of its cultural meanings and future expectations which e
 merge in relation to the data center industry? How is the cloud socially n
 egotiated when it comes to the relations between the nation state\, its re
 gions\, and border-crossing IT infrastructures? How does the cloud materia
 lize in terms of local social and environmental change? \n\nDr. Asta Vonde
 rau is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology at Stock
 holm University. Her current research project\, Farming Data\, Forming the
  Cloud: The Environmental Impact and Cultural Production of Information Te
 chnology is funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond\, The Swedish Foundation f
 or Humanities and Social Sciences. \n
LOCATION: Room SG1\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge\, C
 B3 9DT
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR