Center for European Studies

Lunchtime Symposium Speaker Series
Geographies of Digital Development in Europe’s New “Node Pole” 

Alix Johnson, Anthropology
Moderator: Brenda Chalfin, Center for African Studies

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While digital data is often imagined as ephemeral, what we call “the cloud” is actually comprised of infrastructures and industries, unevenly distributed around the world. The Nordic countries and North Atlantic islands in particular have emerged as a hot spot for the data storage industry, thanks to their cold climates which facilitate the cooling of server farms. In fact, developers, engineers, and officials often go so far as to claim a “natural” fit between digital data and this part of the world. Drawing on eight years of ethnographic research in Iceland, this talk critically examines this association, and draws attention to some of the social, political, and environmental frictions that arise in data center development. In addition to its “natural” assets, I argue that Iceland is also made attractive to digital development by its history of military occupation and corporate extractivism. More broadly, I make the case for attention to the situated materiality of digital data, or the way that local landscapes shape digital networks, and are re-shaped by them in turn.