They say The Cloud is a bad metaphor for the internet because this makes it seem immaterial and like its presence doesn’t have a real physical impact on the planet. They say to remember the server buildings in rural farmland and globe-spanning deep-sea cables and unregulated precious metal mining operations in Africa and elsewhere. This, they say, is the real web, the accidental megastructure. It isn’t up in the clouds at all, it’s right here connected by cables and cords, wifi and routers.