"This Has Nothing to Do With Clouds": A Decolonial Approach to Data Centers in the Node Pole
Quincy Childs
Abstract
The environmental impacts of Big Tech fall disproportionately on economically poor people and countries, meanwhile material wealth concentrates to the few at the top. This essay examines how cloud computing uses the logic of coloniality and extractivism to conclude that âpost-extractive modernityâ is a conceptual fallacy. Using Facebookâs sprawling data center in the âNode Poleâ region of Sweden as an example, weâll find how the data centerâs waste heat effectively serves as a foil to Big Techâs promise of a post-extractive vision. Furthermore, this will challenge the countryâs veneer of colonial neutrality by underscoring how the data centers subsist on the ore fields of Norrbotten, effectively staging their progression from an industry that widely contributed to colonization. In sum, this discussion highlights how cloud computing is a form of dissociation from the materiality of data, that creates distance from the impact of cloud consumption in deliberate, albeit dangerous, ways.