In his essay for our series “The Cloud is Dead,” D&S affiliate Zane Griffin Talley Cooper examines resource extraction in the Arctic and how fantasies of the Network State run counter to the reality of life in Greenland.

D&S affiliate Xiaowei Wang presents their research on electronics manufacturing workers in Taiwan and Korea, tracing the toxicity of the process and the consequences of the industry’s desire for unbridled growth.

Jen Liu looks to communities in Louisiana that use their own measurement systems to track & fight the impacts of the petroleum industry & data center expansion, connecting a Meta data center to histories of enslavement.

Ana Carolina de Assis Nunes describes a community’s resistance to a Google data center in Oregon, examining the longer histories of logging and extraction that shaped the city of The Dalles.

In this series, we explore how communities have addressed the unequal power dynamics between technology production and deployment, and how tech impacts people and the environment.

The resource costs of AI “are informed not only by histories of extraction and exploitation, but by those of resistance,” D&S Climate Program Director Tamara Kneese writes. “This means we need to do more than document harms."

Members of the Trustworthy Infrastructures team write about their research road trip through Pennsylvania, where they traced the connection from the industrial past to our tech-dominated present.

In a personal reflection, Brian J. Chen offers some lines of inquiry, directions, and tentative explanations for understanding and engaging on matters of tech policy in this moment.

Anuli Akanegbu reflects on the connections between data practices and systemic racism, and offers resolutions to guide work that prioritizes the humane over the artificial.

As 2024 comes to a close, we’re looking back on some highlights of a milestone year.