The Data Center Industrial Complex (2019-2021)

This is a 3-part podcast about data centers, recorded before the onslaught of generative AI of 2022. In it we discuss and anticipate big tech's growing grip on our data, and its toll on the environment and society as we know it.

The series is hosted by Mél Hogan and Sean Willett.

Interviews were recorded and edited between 2017 and 2018 and the podcast was first released on YouTube in 2019, 2020, and 2021. The title of the podcast series comes from an article by Mél Hogan (by the same title), published in Saturation: An Elemental Politics (2021) "Chapter 13. The Data Center Industrial Complex" (p283), https://www.dukeupress.edu/saturation

The first episode focuses on people, imagination and concrete -- that is, the materiality of the infrastructure and all that it enables. Interviews with Alex Taylor, Alix Johnson, Anne Pasek, Matt Parker, Asta Vonderau, Tor Bjorn Minde, Tung Hui Hu, Julia Velkova, and more.

The second episode looks at traces of data center infrastructure and the material politics of data center in/visibility. We also discuss company data tracking, corporate data collection, and the era of 'big data analysis' for profit. Featuring interviews with Alex Taylor, Tor Bjorn Minde, Asta Vonderau, Matt Parker, Anne Pasek, and Alix Johnson. Music by Corina MacDonald and Matt Parker. Episode image by Sébastien Hogan. Editing by Sean Willett. Project lead by Mél Hogan.

The is the third podcast dealing with the data center industrial complex and focuses on the environmental impacts of data centers; land, water and energy. It features Matt Parker, Stefan Baack, Anne Pasek, Julia Velkova and Zane Griffin Talley Cooper.

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Project lead by Mél Hogan. Music by Matt Parker and Corina MacDonald. Editing and co-hosting by Sean Willett.

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That project led to various publications, including:

The making of critical data center studies

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies

Dustin Edwards, Zane Griffin Talley Cooper and Mél Hogan

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548565231224157

“Environmental media” in the cloud: The making of critical data center art

New Media & Society 2023 25:2, 384-404

Mél Hogan

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/14614448221149942

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