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Image. Security. Organization. These are the three things that the data centers seem to emphasize. These focuses seem to distract from unveiling the mystery of data within the cloud. The metaphor that “infrastructures are like lenticular prints: they always come with a switch effect… they animate our view, make us shift our categories of what they are” stood out to me (80). Lenticular printing gives the allusion of depth or the ability of an image to change as it is viewed from different angles. This makes companies like Google and Bahnhof seem like the mouse while the consumer is the cat – these data centers reveal enough to make you think they are being transparent with you, but leaves you without all of the information so there is still the desire and awe.
This video about the Google data centers demonstrates this seemingly hypervisible-while-still-obscure phenomena. It is full of technical terms with clean editing and futuristic/safe music. It also confirms that these data centers incorporate an environmentally friendly tactic into their image. While the video doesn’t exactly show deer in the foreground as in Figure 3.5 on page 77, it does emphasize Google’s energy efficiency.
These data centers are very much planned marketing strategies with an agenda, like a public profile. The concerns raised in the second half of the article are not publicly broadcasted, which emphasizes the bureaucratic side of these data centers. They even seem to have marketing schemes, such as the metaphors relating to the cloud, which again seem to be helping the consumer to understand what is going on in “the cloud,” but still don’t reveal intimate facts on the cloud.
Bibliography
“Security and Data Protection in a Google Data Center.flv“. Video uploaded by chandansaha101. YouTube. 24 April, 2011.
Featured Image: A central cooling plant in Google’s Douglas County, Georgia data center. Photo: Google/Connie Zhou.
Posted from Intro to Digital Studies by Lauren C.