A Prehistory of the Cloud
- Paperback
240 pages
- Release Date
2 September 2016
Summary
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 nor…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262529969 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0262529963 |
| Author: | Tung-Hui Hu |
| Publisher: | MIT Press Ltd |
| Imprint: | MIT Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 240 |
| Release Date: | 2 September 2016 |
| Weight: | 340g |
| Dimensions: | 229mm x 152mm x 13mm |
| Series: | A Prehistory of the Cloud |
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Critics Review
Witty, sharp and theoretically aware, Hu deconstructs this much-discussed but poorly understood “cultural fantasy”.
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 *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 *Witty, sharp and theoretically aware, Hu deconstructs this much-discussed but poorly understood ‘cultural fantasy’.
* The Guardian *About The Author
Tung-Hui Hu
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.
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