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A Prehistory of the Cloud

Author: Tung-Hui Hu

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2016-09-02

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0262529963

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.

The Read Aloud Cloud

Author: Forrest Brazeal

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2020-08-14

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1119677645

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What is “the cloud”? Is it here or there? Should it be allowed? Should I even care? Have you ever imagined the internet as a giant Rube Goldberg machine? Or the fast-evolving cloud computing space as a literal jungle filled with prehistoric beasts? Does a data breach look like a neo-noir nightmare full of turned-up coat collars and rain-soaked alleys? Wouldn’t all these vital concepts be easier to understand if they looked as interesting as they are? And wouldn’t they be more memorable if we could explain them in rhyme? Whether you’re a kid or an adult, the answer is: YES! The medicine in this spoonful of sugar is a sneaky-informative tour through the past, present and future of cloud computing, from mainframes to serverless and from the Internet of Things to artificial intelligence. Forrest is a professional explainer whose highly-rated conference talks and viral cartoon graphics have been teaching engineers to cloud for years. He knows that a picture is worth a thousand words. But he has plenty of words, too. Your hotel key, your boarding pass, The card you swipe to pay for gas, The smart TV atop the bar, The entertainment in your car, Your doorbell, toothbrush, thermostat, The vacuum that attacked your cat, They all connect the cloud and you. Maybe they shouldn't, but they do. As a graduation gift (call it “Oh the Places You’ll Go” for engineering students), a cubicle conversation starter, or just a delightfully nerdy bedtime story for your kids, “The Read-Aloud Cloud” will be the definitive introduction to the technologies that everyone uses and nobody understands. You can even read it silently if you want. But good luck with that.

Warriors of the Clouds

Author: Keith Muscutt

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13:

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Historians and archaeologists, suggest Keith Muscutt, must have done an excellent job of recording the achievements of great pre-Columbian civilisations such as that of the Inca, which at its height covered an area the size of its Roman counterpart. They have done less well in understanding the histories of the empires that came before, the local strongholds and fiefdoms swallowed up by the mighty civilisations that the Europeans encountered. Muscutt takes us into the heart of one such ancient civilisation, the Chachapoya, nestled in the high Andes of far eastern Peru. The area is remote and nearly inaccessible (one conquistador wrote that 'the natural difficulty of the countryside is so rugged that on some roads the Indians slide down great ropes a distance of eight or ten times the height of a man, for there is no other way of advancing') for which reason scholars have been late in coming to it. Muscutt's heavily illustrated, inviting text helps place the Chachapoya empire in the larger context of Andean prehistory.

Greenhouses, Lighthouses

Author: Tung-Hui Hu

Publisher: Copper Canyon Press

Published: 2013-05-04

Total Pages: 82

ISBN-13: 1619320363

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A poetic and provocative gesture toward cinematography, Tung-Hui Hu presents the ungraspable among memory, film, and history's tantalizing ephemera

The Marvelous Clouds

Author: John Durham Peters

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016-08-15

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 022642135X

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Peters defines media expansively as elements that compose the human world. Drawing from ideas implicit in media philosophy, Peters argues that media are more than carriers of messages: they are the very infrastructures combining nature and culture that allow human life to thrive. Through an encyclopedic array of examples from the oceans to the skies,The Marvelous Clouds reveals the long prehistory of so-called new media. Digital media, Peters argues, are an extension of early practices tied to the establishment of civilization such as mastering fire, building calendars, reading the stars, creating language, and establishing religions. New media do not take us into uncharted waters, but rather confront us with the deepest and oldest questions of society and ecology: how to manage the relations people have with themselves, others, and the natural world.

Weather

Author: Andrew Revkin

Publisher: Union Square + ORM

Published: 2018-05-20

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 1454932457

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From an award–winning journalist, a “beautifully illustrated” book describing “the most pivotal moments . . . in the climate’s rich . . . 4.5 billion-year history.” (The Washington Post) Colorful and captivating, Weather: An Illustrated History hopscotches through 100 meteorological milestones and insights, from prehistory to today’s headlines and tomorrow’s forecasts. Bite-sized narratives, accompanied by exciting illustrations, touch on such varied topics as Earth’s first atmosphere, the physics of rainbows, the deadliest hailstorm, Groundhog Day, the invention of air conditioning, London’s Great Smog, the Year Without Summer, our increasingly strong hurricanes, and the Paris Agreement on climate change. A groundbreaking work by prominent environmental journalist and author Andrew Revkin, Weather: An Illustrated History presents an intriguing history of humanity’s evolving relationship with Earth’s dynamic climate system and the wondrous weather it generates. “FINALLY, someone has done something about the weather. Andrew Revkin and Lisa Mechaley have given us a startlingly fascinating book about how weather got the way it is, and how we’ve reacted to it, used it, and even helped shape it. There are a hundred captivating stories in this book that are as enlightening as they are fun. Reading them is like seeing the clouds part and the sun come out.” —Alan Alda, longtime host of Scientific American Frontiers and a founder of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University ”Informative, addictively readable . . . Highly recommended.” —Nathaniel Philbrick, National Book Award winner for In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex ”A gift of a book—at once fascinating, informative, and surprising.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction

The Cloud People

Author: Kent V. Flannery

Publisher: Eliot Werner Publications/Percheron Press

Published: 2003-06-01

Total Pages: 427

ISBN-13:

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A case study in the divergent evolution of Mexico's Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations, this collection has become a basic resource in the literature of Mesoamerican prehistory and has been widely cited by scholars working on divergent evolution in other parts of the world. Originally published by Academic Press in 1983, a new introduction by the editors updates the volume in terms of discoveries made during the subsequent two decades.

Updating to Remain the Same

Author: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2016-05-27

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0262333783

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What it means when media moves from the new to the habitual—when our bodies become archives of supposedly obsolescent media, streaming, updating, sharing, saving. New media—we are told—exist at the bleeding edge of obsolescence. We thus forever try to catch up, updating to remain the same. Meanwhile, analytic, creative, and commercial efforts focus exclusively on the next big thing: figuring out what will spread and who will spread it the fastest. But what do we miss in this constant push to the future? In Updating to Remain the Same, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun suggests another approach, arguing that our media matter most when they seem not to matter at all—when they have moved from “new” to habitual. Smart phones, for example, no longer amaze, but they increasingly structure and monitor our lives. Through habits, Chun says, new media become embedded in our lives—indeed, we become our machines: we stream, update, capture, upload, link, save, trash, and troll. Chun links habits to the rise of networks as the defining concept of our era. Networks have been central to the emergence of neoliberalism, replacing “society” with groupings of individuals and connectable “YOUS.” (For isn't “new media” actually “NYOU media”?) Habit is central to the inversion of privacy and publicity that drives neoliberalism and networks. Why do we view our networked devices as “personal” when they are so chatty and promiscuous? What would happen, Chun asks, if, rather than pushing for privacy that is no privacy, we demanded public rights—the right to be exposed, to take risks and to be in public and not be attacked?