Jennifer Holt, a Professor and Chair of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara, dives deep into the history of cloud policy. She reveals how outdated regulations have undermined civil liberties and public interests. Holt discusses the evolution of media infrastructure, the growing influence of corporate interests, and the challenges of adapting laws to rapid technological advancements. She also tackles the complexities of cloud services and the need for new policies that prioritize digital rights and equitable access in today's world.
01:07:45
forum Ask episode
web_stories AI Snips
view_agenda Chapters
menu_book Books
auto_awesome Transcript
info_circle Episode notes
insights INSIGHT
Policy as Power and Profit
Policy wields power both formally and informally, shaping rights and controls deeply.
Privatized policies by tech firms prioritize profit over public interests, eroding user rights.
insights INSIGHT
Understanding the Cloud Infrastructure
The cloud is a massive sociotechnical system of pipelines, platforms, and data.
It is marketed as ethereal convenience but fundamentally relies on material infrastructure and policy.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Google's Cloud PR Strategy
Google’s PR about data centers highlights beautiful surroundings to mask environmental harms.
This shows how corporations control the narrative around their cloud infrastructure's impact.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data
Jennifer Holt
Jennifer Holt's "Cloud Policy" examines the century-long evolution of US media infrastructure regulation. It reveals how this regulation has eroded civil liberties, democratic principles, and the public interest. The book connects this evolution to older infrastructure like railroads and telephony, highlighting the lasting impact of analog-era policies on today's digital world. Holt analyzes the role of the state, corporate power, and private governance in shaping cloud infrastructure. Ultimately, the book offers a path toward restorative interventions and new forms of activism for a more equitable future.
Empires of Entertainment
Jennifer Holt
Empires of Entertainment integrates legal, regulatory, industrial, and political histories to chronicle the dramatic transformation within the media between 1980 and 1996. The book provides a comprehensive overview of how deregulation influenced the media landscape during this period.
Surveillance Capitalism
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Shoshana Zuboff
Shoshana Zuboff's 'Surveillance Capitalism' exposes the hidden workings of a new economic order where companies amass vast amounts of personal data to predict and influence human behavior. This data is then used to create detailed profiles of individuals, allowing for targeted advertising and manipulation. Zuboff argues that this system undermines democratic values, privacy, and individual autonomy. The book explores the ethical and societal implications of this pervasive data collection, urging readers to critically examine the power dynamics at play. It serves as a wake-up call to the potential dangers of unchecked technological advancement.
How the United States' regulation of broadband pipelines, digital platforms, and data—together understood as “the cloud”—has eroded civil liberties, democratic principles, and the foundation of the public interest over the past century.
Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data(MIT Press, 2024) is a policy history that chronicles how the past century of regulating media infrastructure in the United States has eroded global civil liberties as well as democratic principles and the foundation of the public interest. Jennifer Holt explores the long arc of regulating broadband pipelines, digital platforms, and the data centers that serve as the cloud's storage facilities—an evolution that is connected to the development of nineteenth- and twentieth-century media and networks, including railroads, highways, telephony, radio, and television. In the process, Cloud Policy unearths the lasting inscriptions of policy written for an analog era and markets that no longer exist on the contemporary governance of digital cloud infrastructure. Cloud Policy brings together numerous perspectives that have thus far remained largely siloed in their respective fields of law, policy, economics, and media studies. The resulting interdisciplinary argument reveals a properly scaled view of the massive challenge facing policymakers today. Holt also addresses the evolving role of the state in the regulation of global cloud infrastructure and the growing influence of corporate gatekeepers and private sector self-governance. Cloud policy's trajectory, as Holt explains, has enacted a transformation in the cultural valuation of infrastructure as civic good, turning it into a tool of commercial profit generation. Despite these current predicaments, the book's historical lens ultimately helps the reader to envision restorative interventions and new forms of activism to create a more equitable future for infrastructure policy.
New Books Network 
