Grounding the Cloud

Name: Grounding the Cloud
Price: 270 AUD
Availability: OutOfStock
ISBN: 9781517919603

Urbanism in the Shadow of Data

Ali Fard

$270

Hardback

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English

University of Minnesota Press
01 June 2026

Impact of science & technology on society; Ethical & social aspects of computing

A detailed foray into the material and spatial realities of cloud computing

Since the 1990s, technologists have promoted a vision of the ""cloud"" as a shapeless and intangible entity. Grounding the Cloud peers through this hazy facade to reveal the earthly material foundations of global computing and data extraction. Tracing the historical and technological development of the cloud computing paradigm, Ali Fard exposes an ever-evolving project in which ideologies, economic models, and marketing images collude to shape our shared urban environments.

Demonstrating how technology's spatial footprint now stretches to nearly every corner of the globe, Grounding the Cloud analyzes the often-hidden infrastructures that facilitate platform capitalism-from the mines extracting rare earth minerals in remote regions to the vast global network of fiber-optic cables at the bottom of the oceans to the nondescript data centers that sit on the peripheries of major urban areas. Meanwhile, with compelling examples of smart-city initiatives and corporate campuses, Fard shows how the future of urbanism is deeply intertwined with the growing economies of data extraction.

Breaking down the myth of a clean and efficient tech urbanism, this book makes visible the complex material geographies and geopolitics that undergird today's most powerful and omnipresent corporations. A timely critique of the growing agency of tech platforms in determining the future of urban space, Grounding the Cloud offers an essential framework for understanding the shifting relationship between technology and urbanization.

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By: Ali Fard
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 178mm, Spine: 10mm
Weight: 397g
ISBN: 9781517919603
ISBN 10: 1517919606
Pages: 192
Publication Date: 01 June 2026
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Ali Fard is assistant professor of architecture at the University of Virginia. He is coeditor of New Geographies, 7: Geographies of Information.

Reviews for Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data

""Grounding the Cloud describes the contours of data clouds in the computing landscape – not only the physical plant of data storage but the remote urban outcroppings and the environmental blowback from an infrastructure that is not immediately visible or apparent. Ali Fard gives shape to this stretchy territory of misleading scripts, counterculture disguises, and smart city fallacies that tries to obscure its massive accumulations of capital."" —Keller Easterling, author of Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World ""Timely and important, Grounding the Cloud reflects current developments in contemporary industrial architecture and places them within the historical perspective of earlier infrastructure projects. Ali Fard's unique perspective offers a truly compelling investigation of the physical and spatial manifestations of the digital economy."" —Dietmar Offenhuber, author of Autographic Design: The Matter of Data in a Self-Inscribing World