Data Centers Cover
1 / 11

Monika Dommann, Hannes Rickli, Max Stadler (eds.)

Data Centers

Edges of a Wired Nation

Questions of privacy, borders, and nationhood are increasingly shaping the way we think about all things digital. Data Centers brings together essays and photographic documentation that analyze recent and ongoing developments. Taking Switzerland as an example, the book takes a look at the country's data centers, law firms, corporations, and government institutions that are involved in the creation, maintenance, and regulation of digital infrastructures. Beneath the official storyline—Switzerland’s moderate climate, political stability, and relatively clean energy mix—the book uncovers a much more varied and sometimes contradictory set of narratives.

Questions of privacy, borders, and nationhood are increasingly shaping the way we think about all things digital. Data Centers brings together essays and photographic documentation that analyze recent and ongoing developments. Taking Switzerland as an example, the book takes a look at the country's data centers, law firms, corporations, and government institutions that are involved in the creation, maintenance, and regulation of digital infrastructures. Beneath the official storyline—Switzerland’s moderate climate, political stability, and relatively clean energy mix—the book uncovers a much more varied and sometimes contradictory set of narratives.

Winner of Die schönsten Deutschen Bücher & Die schönsten Schweizer Bücher 2020/2021

«Es bietet sich geradezu an, darin zu lesen, wenn im Homeoffice vorübergehend das Netz ausfällt.»
– TAGES-ANZEIGER

«das Internet mit all seinen Apps und Algorithmen basiert auf einer globalen physischen Infrastruktur aus Tiefseekabeln, Rechenzentren und Datenspeichern. Das von den HistorikerInnen Monika Dommann und Max Stadler sowie dem Künstler Hannes Rickli herausgegebene Buch «Data Centers» ist ein wertvolles Lehrstück dazu.»
– WOZ

Edited by Monika Dommann, Hannes Rickli, Max Stadler, in collaboration with Collegium Helveticum

With photographs by Andrea Helbling, Marc Latzel

With contributions by Scherwin Bajka, Silvia Berger Ziauddin, Sascha Deboni, Monika Dommann, Kijan Espahangizi, Lena Kaufmann, Moritz Mähr, Ioana Marinica, Fatih Öz, Hannes Rickli, Giorgio Scherrer, Renate Schubert, Max Stadler, Andrés Villa-Torres, Emil Zopfi and photographic works by Yann Mingard and Roland Schneider

Design: Hubertus Design

19 × 26 cm, 7 ½ × 10 ¼ in

344 pages, 125 illustrations

paperback

2020, 978-3-03778-645-1, English
Architectural Research
CHF 35.00

Monika Dommann

Monika Dommann is Professor of Modern History at the University of Zurich. She researched and taught a.o. at the International Center for Cultural Technology Research and Media Philosophy (IKKM) in Weimar, the German Historical Institute (GHI) in Washington, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Topics in Dommann’s research and teaching are the intertwining of the Old and New Worlds (especially Europe, North America, the Caribbean), media-, economic- and legal history, the history of knowledge and science, and the methods of historical science. She has a special focus on the history of material cultures, immaterial goods, logistics and data centers.

Hannes Rickli

Hannes Rickli is a visual artist and has held a professorship at the Zurich University of the Arts since 2004. Born in Bern in 1959, Rickli studied photography, the theory of art and design, and media art in Zurich and Karlsruhe. From 1988 to 1994, he worked as a freelance photographer for various newspapers and magazines (incl. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Das Magazin and Bilanz), and has staged visual art exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad since 1991. In 2004, he was awarded the Meret Oppenheim Prize from the Swiss Federal Office for Culture. His teaching and research focus on the instrumental use of media and space.

Max Stadler

Max Stadler is a post-doctoral researcher at ETH Zurich (Science Studies and Collegium Helveticum). He has received a Ph.D. in the history of science, technology and medicine from CHoSTM, Imperial College, London. Prior to coming to ETH, he was a pre- and post-doctoral fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science; more recently, he has co-directed the research project Augenarbeit – Visual Performance and Visual Design at Eikones, NCCR Bildkritik, and co-founded intercom Verlag, Zurich, an academic publishing collective. His research interests center on the history of high-tech, labor, and the human sciences.

CHF 35.00