Cloudy With a Chance of Dystopia: Tung-Hui Hu’s “A Prehistory of the Cloud”

Grazed from LARB. Author: Kevin Driscoll.

The internet is disappearing, fading into the background of everyday life. With pervasive mobile broadband, there is no longer a need to consciously connect. Our smartphones are always already online. In the absence of Ethernet cables and dial-up modems, the network itself is rarely seen or heard.

For many, the internet is simply infrastructure, and infrastructure only merits attention when it breaks down. Just as we don’t identify as “plumbing users” or “toilet owners,” few of us would think to call ourselves “internet users,” no matter how much time we spend online.
As the internet recedes, something called “the cloud” rolls in…

Telecom engineers have used clouds in their technical drawings since the early 1970s to represent areas of the network that are uncertain, dynamic, or unspecified. But for today’s user, “the cloud” evokes something altogether more specific: the woozy, elevated contemporary experience of ubiquitous wi-fi, infinite scroll, and limitless storage…

Read more from the source @ https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/cloudy-with-a-chance-of-dystopia-tung-hui-hus-a-prehistory-of-the-cloud/#!