SoLiXG:Digital Infrastructure

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Digital Infrastructure

Digital infrastructure interconnects both physical and virtual technologies to deliver computational processing power, digital file storage and software applications to billions of devices. It is an infrastructure-of-infrastructures which includes The Internet, but also mobile telecommunication networks, satellites, sensor networks and Cloud computing. Digital infrastructure can also be referred to as "computational infrastructure" because it involves large amounts of computing hardware, distributed over strategically located data centres that are connected through public and private networks. Operating across diverse geopolitical and financial contexts, contemporary digital infrastructure is rapidly evolving and requires an increasing volume of exhaustible resources such as clean water for cooling, critical metals and electricity. Despite ongoing investments by nation-states and the EU, the biggest part of digital infrastructure today is managed by global Big Tech companies such as Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. These companies are owned by shareholders, who need to prove growth year on year. Their services therefore move into new areas continuously, increasing the need for more digital services, or more compute. Whether it is to shift packages across the globe, organizing for resistance against apartheid, or executing border policies, digital infrastructure has become a con­dition for existence, with no more outside.

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- great, maybe re-iterate the maintenance and continuous work on the infrastructure? - stress the elacticity of the term? Stress that there is little definitory work on the term available?