ICS Seminar Series – Brett Neilson

Date: Thursday 10 March 2016
Time: 11.30am–1pm
Venue: EB.2.02, Western Sydney University, Parramatta South campus

Brett Neilson

(Institute for Culture and Society)

From Warehouse to Data Centre: Poetics and Infrastructures of Political Form

Abstract

Otherwise known as server farms, data centres are box-like architectural facilities that accommodate computer and network systems that store, process and transfer digital information in high volume at fast speeds. These facilities are the core components of a rarely discussed but rapidly expanding data storage and management industry that has become critical to global economy and society. Focusing on the spread of data centres in the Asia-Pacific region, this paper asks what kind of research object a data centre is.

Data centres have a complex genealogy that spans the archive, the cable station, the mainframe room and the warehouse. By tracing this genealogy, I argue that these facilities are not only provide technical infrastructures but also generate political forms that are increasingly crucial to the making of territory and expression of power.

Working from an empirical base some tentative theoretical and methodological proposals about how to study data centres will emerge. In particular, I will ask how, aside from their technical and social dimensions, data centres generate ambient conditions that become part of their political effect. An approach that emphasises the networked materiality of these infrastructures allows us to stay in touch with geopolitical and political economic analyses that take seriously the category of capital.

Biography

Brett Neilson is Research Director at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. With Sandro Mezzadra, he is author of Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (Duke 2013). With Ned Rossiter, he coordinates the tricontinental research project Logistical Worlds: Infrastructure, Software, Labour (opens in a new window)). With Ilias Marmaras and Anna Lascari, he is responsible for the conceptualisation of the serious game Cargonauts (opens in a new window).

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