Jennifer Holt, a professor at UC Santa Barbara and author of "Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data," discusses how U.S. regulations have impacted civil liberties and democracy. She highlights the historical evolution of media policies alongside technology, emphasizing the need for equitable access to cloud services as a public good. Holt critiques outdated regulations, the environmental implications of cloud infrastructure, and the rise of surveillance capitalism, urging for a reevaluation of policies to prioritize public interest.
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insights INSIGHT
Policy as Power in Two Forms
Policy exists as both formal government rules and informal corporate agreements.
Privatized policies often protect profits over the public interest, impacting civil liberties.
insights INSIGHT
Understanding the Cloud Infrastructure
The cloud is essentially others' computers housing data with complex infrastructure.
Our engagement depends on pipelines, platforms, and data, all regulated by outdated policies.
insights INSIGHT
Environmental Impact of Data Centers
Data centers consume massive energy and require extensive cooling to operate.
Environmental impact is significant, despite efforts like locating centers in cooler climates or undersea.
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The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Shoshana Zuboff
In this book, Shoshana Zuboff provides a comprehensive analysis of surveillance capitalism, a new economic order where corporations accumulate vast wealth and power by predicting and controlling human behavior. Zuboff details how this form of capitalism, originating in Silicon Valley, has spread into every economic sector, creating 'behavioral futures markets' where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold. She argues that this system, free from democratic oversight, poses significant threats to democracy, freedom, and human future, and urges readers to take action to protect their autonomy in the digital world.
Cloud Policy
Cloud Policy
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.
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 in Law 