This poetry thesis undertakes to trace language-use in English surrounding cloud computing and cloud computing itself by considering its physical, historical, and environmental aspects. What began with the desire to find out what the term “the cloud” means and identify its material contours was a way of questioning my own and mass internet consumption; to make “the cloud” more visible in interest of climate crisis and to contribute new possibilities for understanding. This research-creation is guided by these sets of questions:

How is cloud computing marketed? The dominant narrative of “the cloud” centres lightness, access, ease, and ubiquity. It appears entrenched (it always has been and will be) and simultaneously in motion (it goes everywhere the user goes.) The implication is unsound.

What is cloud computing’s relationship to the Internet’s physical infrastructure? What are the physical components? Where do they come from? What happens when people finish using them? What sources of energy powers it? How does it intersect with the well-being of living things, of earth’s elements, and weather systems?

How is cloud computing connected to historical and social processes? How can the cloud be read in conjunction with colonialism, racism, decolonization, precolonial land use, global warming, “population displacement,” (UNESCO,) surveillance, and multinational violation of privacy and big data?

How is everyday human communication entangled with these concerns? How I might trace my personal position in this context? How can I show intimacy, disconnection, and links between people who benefit from operating within the cloud with those who are excluded?