Data Centers

Data Centers

Edges of a Wired Nation

Author: Nina Steimel

Today, we would like to introduce you to the publication Data Centers — Edges of a Wired Nation, which is now available at Slanted Shop! It was awarded at the competitions Die schönsten Deutschen Bücher, Die schönsten Schweizer Bücher, and Best Book Design from all over the World 2020/2021.

It deals with a topic we all face on a daily basis. Data centers are the spines of our Internet; they operate silently and secretly in thousands of locations around the world. They process the information we produce and access in invisible ways. Data cures through placeless, inconspicuous, anonymous structures, such as buildings, cable ducts, junction boxes, and landing pads, etc. They are everywhere and nowhere. The publication collects research on the individuals and institutions involved in setting up, nurturing, and governing digital infrastructures and analyzes current and future developments, using Switzerland as an example.

Bringing together photographic works, essays, and case studies Data Centers explores the mutual, typically fraught entanglements of place, past and digital infrastructure. Underneath the official storyline—Switzerland’s favorable alpine climate, the relatively low energy-costs, the political stability of the area, and its strategic positioning in central Europe—Data Centers uncovers a more varied, inconclusive set of trajectories: narratives of techno-nationalist aspirations; of Swiss-Chinese interdependencies; of deregulation and once-mighty telecommunications enterprises; of cold-war legacies, and the multi-billion-dollar business of data security.

Data Centers — Edges of a Wired Nation

Publisher: Lars Müller Publishers
Editors: Monika Dommann, Hannes Rickli, and Max Stadler
Design: Hubertus Design
Release: 2020
Volume: 344 pages
Format: 259 mm × 189 mm × 25 mm
Language: English
ISBN: 978-3-03778-645-1
Price: 35.–
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Data Centers

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