European Dreams of the Cloud
Imagining Innovation and Political Control
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3948092 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Albert Baur (0000-0003-3245-056X, University of Amsterdam, AISSR, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and University of Tübingen, IZEW, Tübingen, Germany, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 796-820 |
| Publication date | 2024-05-26 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Geopolitics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14650045.2022.2151902 |
| OpenAlex | W4313477814 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 24 |
| References cited | 31 |
Recently, several private and political cloud initiatives emerged in Europe. This paper demonstrates how the sociotechnical imaginaries of three European cloud projects reveal a performative coupling of innovation and political ideas of control, territoriality and sovereignty. I ascertain three elements of the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (innovation, boundary making and material properties) guiding the empirical analysis. Taking technology in the making and its role in (geo)politics seriously, this paper shows how imaginaries shape and interact with current geostrategic and political developments in Europe. The analysis of Microsoft’s cloud, Bundescloud and GAIA-X reveals that rising privacy and data security issues have been integrated into cloud imaginaries that traditionally highlight progress and innovation. More specifically, state actors and cloud providers link and sometimes merge allegedly opposing technological aspects of innovation and politicised ideas of control such as digital sovereignty. This shift constitutes a move towards erecting political borders and localising IT within a global infrastructure
Cloud computing · Economics · Epistemology · Management · Performative utterance · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sociotechnical system · Sovereignty · Territoriality · Cybersecurity and Cyber Warfare Studies · Law · Privacy, Security, and Data Protection · Social Media and Politics
Territorialising the cloud or clouding the territory? Volumetric vulnerabilities and the militarised conjunctures of Singapore's smart city-state
Rescuing Europe’ and ‘balancing powers
Digital Governance in a Rubber Band
Making the future present
Blockchain as a Breakthrough in Technological Innovation
Exporting the European third way
Drivers and Limits of the Geoeconomic Turn in EU Infrastructure Policy
Orchestrating scalability
From critique to hope
Interrogating the imaginary turn
Betting on (un)certain futures
European ambitions captured by American clouds
Frontiers of digital sovereignty
European cloud computing policy
The sovereign cloud’ in Europe
From Neoliberal Openness to Sovereign Openness
From embracement to attachment
The trust deficit. EU bargaining for access and control over cloud infrastructures
The Discursive Struggle for Digital Sovereignty
Infrastructuring public-private relations
Advancing search engine studies
Making 'EUrope' through Technologised Mobility Control
The Security-Innovation Nexus in (Geo-)Political Imagination
Arms Race or Innovation Race? Geopolitical AI Development
A Prehistory of the Cloud
Science and Democracy
Access Controlled
Who Controls the Internet?
Digital sovereignty
Dreamscapes of Modernity
The Making of Power Shortage
Moving beyond the heuristic of creative destruction
The Territorialization of Cyberspace
Seeing the forest for the trees
Cloud geographies
Science, technology, security
Revolutionary dreams
Search engine imaginary
Containing the Atom
Panacea or diagnosis? Imaginaries of innovation and the 'MIT model' in three political cultures
Taking the trouble
Between Infrastructural Experimentation and Collective Imagination
Selling Smartness
Making Digital Territory
Platform Imaginaries and Dutch Public Service Media
The Snowden Files Made Public
| Unique citing works | 24 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 8 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 22 |