- ISSN: 2632-2463
- E-ISSN: 2632-2471
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oa Disease, disaster and the internet: Reconceptualizing environmental hazards in the time of coronavirus
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By
Hayley Brazier1
- Source: Journal of Environmental Media, Volume 1, Issue s1, Jun 2020, p. 10.1 - 10.8
Abstract
The internet is made from a vast physical system of cables that stretch unseen across prairies, mountains, oceans, under streets and within buildings. Our online information rapidly flows through this global lattice of equipment every time we send e-mails, play online games, stream Netflix or teleconference with co-workers. With a global society that has recently shifted to living, working and entertaining almost entirely online – to the point of pushing our internet’s capacity to its brink – it is worth considering the threat of disease to an industry that has traditionally prepared for a different set of environmental risks. Disasters such as earthquakes, tsunami, power outages and fishermen’s anchors have long been considered the leading environmental threats to the internet. But what about a pandemic? This article builds on a visit I took to a Seattle data centre in March 2020, when the city was beginning to go on coronavirus lockdown. As I toured the data centre’s earthquake-preparedness equipment, back-up batteries and servers sheltered within protective cages, I could not help but consider if the internet, and the thousands of employees who keep it in operation, were equipped to handle this type of ecological invader?
