The Cloud is a Factory: An Industrial History of the Information Economy
Prof. Nathan Ensmenger, Associate Professor, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, Indiana University
The metaphor of "the Cloud" is ubiquitous, compelling, and wickedly misleading. It is mobilized by the tech giants to suggest that computing occurs outside of geography, beyond material constraints, unburdened by the environmental costs associated with traditional industrial activity. But the Cloud is not a force of nature. It is a factory — a ravenous consumer of earth, air, fire, and water, embedded in specific geographies, layered over the bones of nineteenth-century transportation and communication networks, and deliberately designed to render invisible the material infrastructure and human labor that make it possible.
What do we gain by taking that claim seriously? This talk will explore the continuities between the industrial and information economies. Who works in these new factories, under what conditions, and at what cost? Who bears the environmental burden of their operations, and who captures their benefits? What mechanisms have we developed to govern industrial activity, and why have we declined to apply them to the information economy? By focusing on the material underpinnings of the digital economy, and on the relationship between "computing power" and more traditional processes of resource extraction, exchange, management, and consumption, we can better prepare ourselves to address the environmental and energy demands associated with the explosive and ongoing growth of artificial intelligence.
Der Vortrag findet im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung „Verflochtene Zukünfte: Digitalisierung und Nachhaltigkeit“ statt.
Die Ringvorlesung „Verflochtene Zukünfte: Digitalisierung und Nachhaltigkeit“ ist ein interdisziplinäres Projekt der Bereiche Soziologie, Geschichte, Philosophie und Medienwissenschaften. Sie beleuchtet aktuelle Fragen rund um digitale Transformation und nachhaltige Entwicklung aus unterschiedlichen wissenschaftlichen Perspektiven.
Die Veranstaltungen finden im Sommersemester 2026 dienstags von 18:00 bis 20:00 Uhr s.t. im Hörsaal O2 statt und werden durch Begleitseminare ergänzt.
