A gripping new investigation into the underbelly of digital technology, which reveals not only how costly the virtual world is, but how damaging it is to the environment.
The Dark Cloud is the searing exposé of the immense toll the “cloud” takes on our environment. A simple “like” sent from our smartphones mobilizes a cascade of invisible consequences. This small notification, crossing the seven operating layers of the internet, travels around the world, using submarine cables, telephone antennas, and data centers, going as far as the Arctic Circle in what will soon constitute the largest infrastructure built by man.
It turns out that the digital world, essential for communicating, working, and consuming, is much more tangible than we would like to believe. Today, it absorbs 10 percent of the world’s electricity and represents nearly 4 percent of the planet’s carbon dioxide emissions. We are struggling to understand these impacts, as they are obscured to us in the mirage of “the cloud.”
In this follow-up to his global bestselling book, The Rare Metals War, Pitron, a journalist, researched the dark truth behind the easy mirage of our digital world, in an investigation carried out over two years, across four continents. The result shows the anatomy of a technology virtual only in name. Pitron argues that the cloud needs to be exposed and understood—because our future is implicated.
Praise for The Rare Metals War:
“Pitron weighs the awful price of refining the materials, ably blending investigative journalism with insights from science, politics and business.”
Simon Ings, New Scientist
“[E]xposes the dirty underpinnings of clean technologies in a debut that raises valid questions about energy extraction.”
Publishers Weekly
“An expert account of a poorly understood but critical element in our economy … Pitron delivers a gripping, detailed, and discouraging explanation.”
Kirkus Reviews
“Guillaume Pitron recalls the origins of digital technology and explains how this new communication tool has catastrophic consequences on our environment,… What happens when you send an email? What is the geography of clicks? What ecological and geopolitical challenges do they bring without our knowledge? This is the subject of The Dark Cloud… For two years, the journalist followed, on four continents, the route of our emails, our likes, and our vacation photos.”
Margherita Nasi, Le Monde
“Today has two battlegrounds—carbon and silicon. In The Dark Cloud, journalist Guillaume Pitron explains the distinction between these two battlegrounds is a carefully crafted illusion. Our screens are not portals to an infinity beyond the material. Far from lacking a footprint, technology actually has an immense cost in resources, energy and environmental destruction … Pitron is a master of articulating the material cost of the “immaterial” … It’s only through works such as Dark Cloud… that laboriously map the immense, insatiable machine that we realise it’s one minute to midnight on the doomsday clock, and we’re all asleep. Well, here is your wake-up call.”
Jason Steger, The Sydney Morning Herald
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“In The Dark Cloud, Guillaume Pitron exposes the supposed immateriality of the internet as one of the more pernicious of tech bro delusions. … rather than saving us from the destructive tendencies of capitalism, the digital realm intensifies them, with the tech companies committed to exponential, unplanned growth irrespective of the environmental consequences …[The Dark Cloud] demonstrates convincingly that we can’t flee from our messed-up analogue world into some digital alternative. Our problems are material – and they require material solutions.”
Jeff Sparrow, The Saturday Paper
“It reveals the environmental cost of a dematerialized sector. Between the strategies of the giants who keep us in the illusion of a clean internet and the difficulty of feeling pollution that has no taste or smell, the investigator reveals the underside of the internet.”
Marina Fabre, Novethic
“An incredible investigation.”
France Inter
“Absolutely fascinating.”
Ali Baddou, C l’hebdo, France 5
“A landmark book.”
Le Figaro
“An illuminating study.”
L’Obs
“A riveting investigation that, just like a thriller, sets out to open our eyes about the material impact as well as the economic and geopolitical issues of a totally wired world.”
L’ADN
“Insightful.”
Sciences et Avenir
“A colossal work.”
Marianne
“Pitron’s captivating book delivers an illuminating and exquisitely written insight into the hidden world explaining the often hidden environmental costs that come with, for example, downloading this book review.”
Thomas Klikauer, International Journal of Communication
Praise for The Rare Metals War:
“[E]xposes the dirty underpinnings of clean technologies in a debut that raises valid questions about energy extraction”
Publishers Weekly
Praise for The Rare Metals War:
“An expert account of a poorly understood but critical element in our economy … Pitron delivers a gripping, detailed, and discouraging explanation … A well-rendered explanation of further bad news on the clean energy front.”
Kirkus Reviews
Praise for The Rare Metals War:
“[T]he journalist and filmmaker warns against the optimistic belief that technology is the solution … At a time when many claim to be “citizens of the world” or retreat into naive or hypocritical protectionism, Pitron’s book is an attempt to open people’s eyes to the consequences of their societal choices and lifestyles.”
Green European Journal
