Islands in the Cloud: An Incomplete Guide to the Physical Internet in Poland

The Internet is often described in terms of its immateriality – data floating in a ubiquitous Cloud, instantaneous connection, a Digital Revolution far removed from industrial-age labour and extraction. These narratives shroud large scale computer networks, underlying infrastructures, and their socio-ecological effects in a mist of forgetfulness, erasing any inkling of local effects, agency, and character. This talk explores these politics of in/visibility and erasure in the context of Poland.

Based on a residency in the spring of 2022, consisting of Cloud Tourism of Warsaw, along some of Poland’s main Internet backbone cable lines, up to the cable landings on the Polish north coast, and back again, the talk gives an overview of the distribution and hot spots of digital infrastructures in Poland, shares tools of how to locate them, and recounts the stories, mishaps, and stakes of trying to find the physical Internet where all everybody wants you to see is, simply, a Cloud.

Admission free, in English, without translation