Data centers as infrastructural in-betweens:

Item Type Journal Article Author Alix Johnson URL https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/amet.12735 Volume 46 Issue 1 Pages 75-88 Publication American Ethnologist ISSN 1548-1425 Date 2019 Extra _eprint: https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/amet.12735 DOI 10.1111/amet.12735 Accessed 2024-10-21 19:10:32 Library Catalog Wiley Online Library Language en Abstract On Iceland's Reykjanes peninsula, a new industry is taking root in the ruins of a US military base: digital data storage. The new data centers, where transnational corporations pay to store terabytes of information, have been lauded as transformative for the region. But as they engage the military base's physical infrastructures, spatial orders, and affective resonances, they reprise and cement Reykjanes's former role as an infrastructural in-between: a node in others’ networks, both built in and left out. Thus, while digital networks are often imagined as overcoming marginality through the “death of distance” or “compression of space-time,” their layering amid imperial legacies means that on Reykjanes they perpetuate marginality. These conditions illustrate the unevenly emplaced impacts of cloud computing and unsettle the techno-utopian ideal of connectivity. [infrastructure, information technology, data centers, militarism, intermediarity, marginality, Iceland] Short Title Data centers as infrastructural in-betweens