Just so you can’t say I didn’t mention the clouds 113 All these types of clouds, whether physical like the São Paulo cloud or metaphorical, as in AI architecture, share com- mon characteristics: they do not belong to fixed territories and undergo processes of saturation, condensation, and precipitation. Visually, they render the space they occupy either opaque or transparent. Thus, both the clouds in the sky and data clouds have deep connections to territory and are not merely abstractions or exclusively human concepts. 5. The Cloud and the Territory The concept of “elemental media” connects two terri- tories that, according to Bruno Latour, are perceived as separate within dominant western conceptions: on one hand, the territory in which we live, and on the other, the territory upon which we depend for our subsistence. These subsistence territories generally remain invisible and under-politicized, as the labor required to secure our subsistence occurs far from our everyday urban experience or is performed by others. Therefore, I pro- pose that we link the Internet to the territories it depends on to exist, rather than considering it solely in terms of what we “need” to live in society, such as the use of social media from a consumer perspective. To paraphrase Ailton Krenak (2019), the Internet is not something we can eat. In this context, it is useful to introduce Latour’s concept of “terrestrial politics” (2018), which considers the planet Earth as a political actor. This implies viewing the Earth as a subject with its own materiality and understanding that this materiality broadens the scope of political issues by integrating the social and natural worlds into a network of interactions (Latour, 2018, p. 87). Unlike the modern imaginary, which is based on estab- lished political, economic, and media institutions, the terrestrial imaginary does not yet possess formal institutions. Nature does not measure, think, or express itself in our terms. And contrary to the presumed Western disconnection between nature and culture, the terrestrial dimension, in Latour’s view, suggests a political cosmology based on collaboration and proximity, in contrast to the divisions and disputes fostered by governance
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