A Prehistory of the Cloud

Tung-Hui Hu (University of Michigan)

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English

MIT Press
02 September 2016

Media studies; Ethical & social aspects of computing

Series: A Prehistory of the Cloud

The militarized legacy of the digital cloud- how the cloud grew out of older network technologies and politics.

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.

By: Tung-Hui Hu (University of Michigan)
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 13mm
Weight: 318g
ISBN: 9780262529969
ISBN 10: 0262529963
Series: A Prehistory of the Cloud
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 02 September 2016
Recommended Age: From 18 years
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Tung-Hui Hu, a former network engineer, is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Michigan and the recipient of a 2015 NEA literature fellowship.

Reviews for A Prehistory of the Cloud

Witty, sharp and theoretically aware, Hu deconstructs this much-discussed but poorly understood 'cultural fantasy'. * The Guardian * But the thing about a cloud, Tung-Hui Hu reminds us in his mesmerizing new book, A Prehistory of the Cloud, is that you can only see it from a distance..... A Prehistory of the Cloud is Hu's imaginative attempt to bring this abstraction into clearer focus. It's informed as much by his current jobs (English professor and poet) as his old one (network engineer), and his approach is eclectic and unpredictable, full of unexpected riffs on Victorian sewage systems, the history of television, counterculture seekers, and the chilling final scene of Francis Ford Coppola's paranoid classic 'The Conversation.' * New Yorker * The realm of the cloud does not countenance loss, but when we touch it, we corrupt it. The word for such a system -- a memory that preserves, encrypts and mystifies a lost love-object -- is indeed melancholy. Hu's is a deeply melancholy book and for that reason, a valuable one. * New Scientist *