Conversa #51 background material

Thomas Walskaar - My Hard Drive Died Along With My Heart

Had a wonderful evening at Conversa #51 with:

• Thomas Walskaar (My Hard Drive Died Along With My Heart)
• Petr Kazil (The Materiality of Cloud Technologies)
• Sijing Zhang (Translation Intuition)

Below is some background material for the cloud talk.

Picture credits Oana Clitan and Berenice Staiger

James Bridle has several interesting essays on the materiality of the Internet:

• http://booktwo.org/notebook/secret-servers/
• http://booktwo.org/notebook/the-secure-transport-of-light/
• http://booktwo.org/notebook/how-to-see-through-the-cloud/
• http://booktwo.org/notebook/living-inside-the-machine/

And he has a longer and more detailed description of traceroute:

• https://stml.makes.org/thimble/how-to-see-through-the-cloud

Amsterdam datacenter tour with Tijmen

These are nice books on the materiality, economics and power-relations of the Internet:

• https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26172518-a-prehistory-of-the-cloud
• https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8201080-the-master-switch
• https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13036199-tubes
• https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52853.The_Victorian_Internet

This is a great site on High Frequency Trading and its microwave towers. There are many parts to this story, among them:

• https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-backyard-part-i/
• https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/hft-in-my-backyard-vi-2/

Amsterdam datacenter tour with Tijmen

And two good books on HFT and the underlying technology

• https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24724602-flash-boys
• https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12917124-dark-pools

A few relevant weblogs about cloud and mobile technology:

• http://www.cloudonomics.com/
• https://stratechery.com/
• http://www.asymco.com/
• http://ben-evans.com/

Idea for projects - if anyone thinks this is fun, then contact me through Facebook:

• Visiting the landing sites for the undersea cables - probably nothing to see there
• Finishing the tour of Amsterdam datacenters - more boring steel boxes
• Publishing the "26 Amsterdam datacenters" booklet
• Visiting the Rotterdam telecom substations - more boring utility buildings