Data centers, these concrete mega-computers that process and store our digital data are proliferating all over the world. They are monopolising water and electricity, generating environmental pollution and soil artificialisation, multiplying land grabbing and the concreting of cities, hoarding public funds, and accelerating the ongoing socio-ecological crisis.
During three days in Marseille, on November 8, 9 and 10, 2024, we are organising a festival of round-table discussions, meetings, screenings and a conference-walk through Marseille and its data centers, in order to find out more, organise collectively and fight against the grabbing of our territories and our lives by the dominant technocapitalist digital infrastructures. A detailed program is available on: pieds.cloud.
This festival is an initiative of the Marseille-based collective le Nuage était sous nos pieds ( The cloud was beneath our feet ), made up of three entities: le collectif des Gammares, a popular education collective on water issues; Technopolice Marseille, which analyzes and fights against surveillance technologies; and La Quadrature du Net, a French digital rights organization. Since 2023, the collective has been investigating, analyzing and fighting against the social, ecological and political impacts of dominant digital infrastructures, and the world they entail. Alerted by the virtual absence in the public debate of political, environmental and territorial issues relating to digital infrastructures, at a time when Marseille is seeing an increase in the number of submarine cables for intercontinental Internet links and the emergence of data centres, the collective is proposing a space for meetings and discussions to politicise the issue of technocapitalism taking over land and lives, and to create spaces of solidarity to think together about practices of digital alternatives, self-defense and other possible worlds, where we take care of ourselves, of each-other, and of the Earth.
The festival is intended to be both a space to report on the survey carried out by the Le nuage était sous nos pieds collective on the impact of local data centres, intercontinental submarine cables and other digital infrastructures in Marseille, and also a space for joint reflection in the company of other collectives and organizations from Marseille and elsewhere.
EDITORIAL
For a long time, we felt like data flew through the air. Just as if clusters of bits coming from the ether of the cloud imperceptibly turned into e-mail or video once the computer was switched on. At some point, we started looking under our feet. The cast-iron plate on the sidewalk. The trapdoor in the asphalt – a “manhole” – stamped “telecom”, where the cables transmitting data on a global scale are coiled. A wire with a glassy core to send out data at the speed of light. The terrestrial extension of great undersea cables, these highways connecting and bypassing continents, landing on our beaches in juncture points called “landing chambers”.
At the crossroads of these “information highways” are data centers. These warehouses made of concrete are in fact mega-computer-buildings housing hundreds or thousands of servers that make technocapitalism possible: high-frequency trading, advertising and personal data tracking, smart cities, connected agriculture, algorithmic surveillance via artificial intelligence. All of these “services”, imposed, merchandised, marketed, designed to better monopolize our territories and our lives, under the aegis of the world’s largest multinationals.
Then there are the servers themselves. Millions of chips and electronic components, chips made of minerals: silicon, gallium, gold, copper, coltan, lithium, cobalt… Under our feet, the earth is being torn apart to extract what has long been dormant. An extraction that comes at a bloody price, tainted by the conflicts it triggers in countries where the digital industry re-enacts an endless process of colonization and appropriation. These minerals will become the chips in computers, servers, IoT gadgets, weapons and other instruments at the service of political and industrial powers.
There is no inevitability to everything becoming digital. We can regain control. We must get organized, resist and put an end to the socio-environmental destruction caused by the dominant trajectory of digital technologies. Together, we can imagine other possible worlds.
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Invited collectives in attendance:
Tu Nube Seca Mi Rio (Talavera de la Reina, Espagne), Paris Marx – of the Tech Won’t Save Us (Canada) podcast, Génération Lumière (République démocratique du Congo and Lyon), StopMicro (Grenoble), Stop Mine 03 (Echassières, Allier), Le Mouton numérique (France), Framasoft (France), le collectif des Gammares (Marseille), La Quadrature du Net (France), Technopolice (France), and many other organizations from Marseille and other cities.
In collaboration with Bureau des Guides 2013, cinema Le Gyptis, and La Cité de l’Agriculture in Marseille.
A selection of books in coolaboration with Transit library in Marseille, will be available on all festival sites.
Throughout the festival, visit the exhibition Technopolice: 5 years of fighting surveillance technologies at the librairy l’Hydre aux milles têtes, 96 rue Saint-Savournin, from Tuesday to Saturday, 10AM – 7PM, until the 17th of November.
For full details of the programme, go to pieds.cloud.