Start
Wed
,
Oct 13
6:00 pm
End
Wed
,
Oct 13
8:00 pm
How
In-Person
Type
Talk
Location
Goethe-Institut New York, 30 Irving Place, New York, NY, 10003
Partner(s)
Oct
13
Start
Wed
,
Oct 13
6:00 pm
End
Wed
,
Oct 13
8:00 pm
How
In-Person
Type
Talk
Location
Goethe-Institut New York, 30 Irving Place, New York, NY, 10003
Partner(s)

Every simple interaction we have with the internet is supported by an enormous, hidden infrastructure, and every action we take online produces data. And data never dies. Rather, as Niklas Maak discusses in his book Servermanifest, it gets stored in the most important new building typology of the 21st century: the server farm. While the internet is omnipresent, our data is not so easily accessible, housed in sprawling, windowless buildings that are tucked away in remote areas. Similarly, our increasingly digital society is maintained by vast logistical regimes that, in the case of e-commerce, treat objects and data in similar ways. Like server farms, logistics and fulfillment centers are largely hidden away while having significant spatial and architectural impacts. Jesse LeCavalier’s book The Rules of Logistics focuses on Walmart’s logistical operations in particular, and how these operations are changing our bodies, brains, buildings, and cities. In connecting these topics in conversation, Maak and LeCavalier ask what future impacts we can expect from these architectures, and how these processes are affecting our societies and democracies.
Every simple interaction we have with the internet is supported by an enormous, hidden infrastructure, and every action we take online produces data. And data never dies. Rather, as Niklas Maak discusses in his book Servermanifest, it gets stored in the most important new building typology of the 21st century: the server farm. While the internet is omnipresent, our data is not so easily accessible, housed in sprawling, windowless buildings that are tucked away in remote areas. Similarly, our increasingly digital society is maintained by vast logistical regimes that, in the case of e-commerce, treat objects and data in similar ways. Like server farms, logistics and fulfillment centers are largely hidden away while having significant spatial and architectural impacts. Jesse LeCavalier’s book The Rules of Logistics focuses on Walmart’s logistical operations in particular, and how these operations are changing our bodies, brains, buildings, and cities.
In connecting these topics in conversation, Maak and LeCavalier ask what future impacts we can expect from these architectures, and how these processes are affecting our societies and democracies.