| Description | Join the Department of Human Centered Design for our spring Preliminary Exam presentations. HCDE doctoral students in their second year of the PhD program will overview their research project, discuss research methods and any results thus far, and describe how this research contributes to the field. Presentations will be about 15 minutes with time for a brief Q&A after each talk.
Chokepoints in the Cloud: Generative Potential of Breakdown in Cloud Infrastructures
Anoolia Gakhokidze, HCDE PhD studentDockworkers, truck drivers, warehouse workers, and cloud computing workers have more in common than might seem at first glance. Our paper argues that cloud computing workers–much like logistics workers—-carry significant positional power in the means of production. With powerful tech companies receiving a substantial chunk of their revenue from the cloud computing services they provide, scholars of labor studies and critical logistics are beginning to theorize data centers as logistics facilities established to produce and support the cloud infrastructure. Building on this new understanding of data centers, we further reframe cloud computing workers from merely those who maintain hardware for cloud infrastructure to agents (or logistics workers) within a global production network. We argue that this insight also guides us to think about breakdowns in the cloud infrastructures as events ripe with liberatory potential. With our interdisciplinary engagement, we uncover new conceptual insights for HCI and movement strategies against Big Tech.
View the full prelims schedule:
April 19, 2024April 23, 2024 |
|---|