A Prehistory Of The Cloud

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.

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.

The exhaustion, disappointment, and listlessness experienced under digital capitalism, explored through works by contemporary artists, writers, and performers. Sometimes, interacting with digital platforms, we want to be passive—in those moments of dissociation when we scroll mindlessly rather than connecting with anyone, for example, or when our only response is a shrugging “lol.” Despite encouragement by these platforms to “be yourself,” we want to be anyone but ourselves. Tung-Hui Hu calls this state of exhaustion, disappointment, and listlessness digital lethargy. This condition permeates our lives under digital capitalism, whether we are “users,” who are what they click, or racialized workers in Asia and the Global South. Far from being a state of apathy, however, lethargy may hold the potential for social change. Hu explores digital lethargy through a series of works by contemporary artists, writers, and performers. These dispatches from the bleeding edge of digital culture include a fictional dystopia where low-wage Mexican workers laugh and emote for white audiences; a group that invites lazy viewers to strap their Fitbits to a swinging metronome, faking fitness and earning a discount on their health insurance premiums; and a memoir of burnout in an Amazon warehouse. These works dwell within the ordinariness and even banality of digital life, redirecting our attention toward moments of thwarted agency, waiting and passing time. Lethargy, writes Hu, is a drag: it weighs down our ability to rush to solutions, and forces us to talk about the unresolved present.

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

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.

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.

"Perplexity and wonder are integral parts of Tung-Hui Hu's poetry, which is as elegant as it is surprising."—Rain Taxi "This fresh and unexpected poet extends the lyric into the social space without losing any of song's intensity or mystery."—Mark Doty "Tung-Hui Hu works magic on the page."—Linda Gregerson Weaving between the personal and cosmic I, Tung-Hui Hu's lyrics seek the "greenhouse"—a place of saturation, growth—as a poetic space to cultivate new modes through which our common language can once again illuminate and guide—"lighthouse." With minimalism and control, Greenhouses, Lighthouses draws subtly from photography, cinematography, and history to create haunting and memorable connections. from "Cosmos Revealed behind a Dense Curtain of Poppies": Greenhouses, Lighthouses. The first astronomers tended on hands and knees the soil of the universe, smoothing away moss, seeding by night. Now our galaxy has the sixfold symmetry of ornament on the tower of Alhambra, shoots curled from stem looping heaven and earth together. Trace curlicues and rosettes with your finger. The chamber sealed off to mortals but open above, like a poppy. Tung-Hui Hu, author of three books of poetry, earned his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and a PhD in film from University of California Berkeley. He teaches at the University of Michigan and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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.