Isabel Löfgren 104 Figure 4 – Screenshot from Google Earth showing Facebook’s data center near the city of Luleå, northern Sweden. Note the absence of clouds in the image. Source: Google Earth. The data processed, however, comes from the entire planet and grows exponentially, generating a demand for more servers and, consequently, more natural resources to generate the energy required for their operation. For instance, the vol- ume of data created, captured, copied, and consumed globally grew from 2 zettabytes5 in 2010 to 64.2 zettabytes in 2020 – the year when the planetary data infrastructure expanded the most, partly due to the hyper digitization during the COVID-19 pandemic. A palpable situation on a planetary scale during the pandemic, in which I found myself trapped inside Baudrillard’s simulacrum, but without simulation (Baudrillard, 1981). It was a virtual life that wasn’t dialogically related to the real, but in a total replacement of reality, where the mediatization processes and their effects on everyday life have become frightening con- crete and real – and very lucrative for the Californian elite, which Caetano Veloso (2021) denominates as the “twisted angels” from the Silicon Valley. Seemingly, we have also become “employees” of the “Big 5”’s techno-imaginary apparatus, as involuntary inhabitants of their “clouds”. 5 1 zettabyte is equivalent to 1 billion terabytes.
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