Denaturalizing computation: On the Cloud’s terraforming logics

This article theorizes computation as terraforming. Supported by ethnographic research in data centres, science fiction, environmental history, media studies and astrobiology, the author tracks the ways that computers, like humans, have specific metabolic requirements (Goldilocks Zone) and are sensitive to the very changes in environment that their activities are bringing about (Anthropocene). Self-destructive to both the computers and the humans entwined in their operation, this article brings terraforming into conversation with metabolic rift theory, arguing for an alternative Cloud that does not abide by the self-destructive logic of digital capitalism.