Data Centers Shape Time Itself, New Study Shows
Researchers reveal that data centers don't just process information—they fundamentally alter how time operates in the digital economy. The finding challenges conventional thinking about infrastructure and suggests policymakers must account for temporal dimensions when regulating the data economy.
Originaltitel: Data centers and the infrastructural temporalities of digital media: An introduction
<p>While data centres are predominantly studied via their spatial and territorial dimensions, we investigate this critical part of the contemporary Internet infrastructures via its temporalities and their multiple mediations. With this introduction and the articles of this special issue, we collectively complement existing scholarship on critical data studies and media infrastructure by investigating the role that data infrastructure plays in shaping the temporalities of data. Focusing on data centres, the contributors analyze the vast infrastructural assemblage that supports such temporalities. The concept of timescapes (after Barbara Adam) guides us to organize the contributions to this special issue along the analysis of three infrastructural timescapes of data—socio-economic, elemental, and transitory—to reveal new facets of the politics of time in the data economy.</p>