<Raw:Data/> A Geopolitical History of Hard Drive Technology, 1978-2016 By Zane Cooper 1 Table of Contents <Acknowledgements/> ........................................................................................................... 2 <Abstract/> .............................................................................................................................. 3 Section O: A Material Contract ................................................................................................ 4 SECTION 1: Out Of Africa ....................................................................................................... 14 SECTION 2: Computer Language ............................................................................................. 34 SECTION 3: Magnets, Magnets Everywhere ............................................................................. 55 SECTION 4: Raw / Data ............................................................................................................. 79 <End/> ........................................................................................................................................ 84 <Bibliography/> .................................................................................................................. 85 Primary Sources ........................................................................................................................ 85 Secondary Sources .................................................................................................................... 94 2 <Acknowledgements/> Thanks = 1. Drs. Jeffrey Charles, Zhiwei Xiao, and Katherine Hijar for first helping to mold me into a historian in the Fall of 2013, and then for advising the progress of my thesis into a product of which I can be proud. 2. Dr. Xiao, for encouraging me to foster the presentation of my research, a skill that will prove indispensable at the University of Pennsylvania. 3. Dr. Charles, for constantly challenging me and improving my research skills. 4. Dr. Ibrahim Al Marashi, for instilling in me the confidence to be great and live up to my potential. 5. Dr. Hijar, for teaching me how to write like a historian. 6. Dr. Kimber Quinney, for leading by example and showing me how to be a better educator. 7. Kristine Diekman, for allowing me the opportunity to cut my teeth as a member of the Visual Arts Faculty. 8. Mayela Caro, for paving the way and offering endless support and laughter, even in the most trying and difficult times. 9. Lastly, to Kate Gressitt-Diaz, my great love, beside me like a rock this past year. Without your love and support, I could not have achieved this, nor would I have such magnificent faith in my future. I love you. 3 <Abstract/> At both the academic and popular levels, scholars of the history of computing have studied the development and proliferation of specific technologies such as the microprocessor, the great people that made these technologies possible, as well as the history of the entrepreneurial and business culture that first gave birth to the modern Silicon Valley. However, in studying the history of computing, most scholars have neglected the history of data, and the rapid construction of the infrastructure needed to support the ever-growing swaths of data we create and consume. This infrastructure is large and complicated, so in order to begin to address its history, this thesis will focus specifically on the mass production of a small but essential component of the personal computer hard drive: The NdFeB (Neodymium-Iron=-Boron) magnet. The invention and universal standardization of this magnetic material has roots in Cold War policies, civil unrest in Africa, and is closely tied to China’s rise to economic power in the 1990s. By investigating the history of the production, implementation, and continued acquisition of this magnetic material, this study will show that the personal computer revolution, the miniaturization of hard drives, and eventually the proliferation of cloud computing are chained inextricably to a dense geopolitical history of violence, military strategies, and industrial infrastructures. It will reveal the beginnings and continuing struggles of the resource war constantly waging underneath innovations in digital storage, a war in which the neodymium magnet is currently at the center. 4 Section O: A Material Contract “The world is a business, Mr. Beale.” - Arthur Jensen, Network (1976) The cloud appears free but it is everywhere in chains. We associate the cloud with liberty because of the language we use to describe and personify it. Images surrounding the cloud and cloud computing are all rooted in ideas of freedom – freedom from space and place, from weight and distance, and from materiality in general. “Cloud” evokes a green, environmental lightness, and the word “the” implies a single, monolithic, and benevolent space in which the world’s data congregates. Allegedly, in the cloud, we can access all information from everywhere; we can connect with everyone from anywhere; and the social barrier to entry into this cloud is lower than with any other form of mass communication in history.1 However, the cloud is neither benign, inert, nor is it a singular, definable entity. In reality,0 it is no more than a distributed network of massive data centers of concrete, wires, and steel that house millions upon millions of interconnected hard disk drives. These data centers are enormous, and yet they hide in plain sight, in depopulated rural areas, or in the shells of former office buildings in city centers. The growing popularity of cloud computing has caused this infrastructure to massively expand even just within the last two years. Companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Google, as well as lesser known data processing companies like Equinix and Switch have erected and continue to construct tremendous, “ultra-scale” data centers, each as large as 1.2 million square feet.2 The feasibility of the cloud and the facilitation of this emerging digital life depend entirely on this 1 Allison Carruth, “The Digital Cloud and the Micropolitics of Energy,” Public Culture, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2014). 2 Rich Miller, “Server Farms Get Super-Sized for Cloud Growth,” Data Center Knowledge (April 21, 2014), www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/04/21/server-farms-get-super-sized-cloud-growth/, accessed 12/1/14. 5 very physical infrastructure. The cloud, then, is actually a very heavy, energy-hungry, grounded entity that exists in multiple physical spaces all over the world– not a benign, ethereal, environmental body of data that exists both everywhere and nowhere. In order to understand the dynamics of cloud infrastructure, this study will investigate hard drives not as technology, but as commodities – commodities whose raw materials respond to, create, and sustain international tensions. This paper will focus specifically on one small but essential component of the computer hard drive: The Neodymium-Iron-Boron magnet – its history, acquisition, production, and implementation within the context of this industry in the 1980s and 1990s. Neodymium belongs to a series of elements called the lanthanide metals, and it, along with other metals in this series, is responsible for numerous technological innovations, including the miniaturization of electronics, green energy technology, electric vehicles, and digital screens. The NdFeB magnet has a complex history. This thesis will explore its beginnings as a research initiative to free the U.S. from volatile African mineral markets, trace its movement into the personal computer industry in the 1980s, and will then illustrate how the expansion of digital networks in the 1990s (and cloud computing in the 2000s) both responded to and helped catalyze the total transfer of NdFeB manufacturing to China. This narrative will show how the personal computer revolution, the miniaturization of hard drives, the invention of laptops, and the proliferation of cloud computing are chained inextricably to a dense geopolitical history of violence, military strategies, and industrial infrastructures. There is a resource war constantly waging underneath innovations in digital storage, a war in which neodymium is currently at the center. This thesis intersects numerous fields of historical inquiry. It is principally grounded in the history of computing, but also draws on the history of mining and natural resources, political 6 history, business history, and also the history of magnetic recording.3 Since this work looks primarily at the social and political origins of the digital data storage infrastructure, the scholarship of Thomas P. Hughes (the father of the social history of technology) has proven essential to framing my research. Hughes’s 1983 monograph Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society 1880-1930 introduces the idea of Technological Momentum, a feedback loop of societal and technological forces that work together to build grand systems around emerging technologies.4 Furthermore, his 2004 book Human Built World: How to Think About Technology and Culture applies this theory across multiple industries, including the digital information economy. Hughes connects current notions of technological enthusiasm to previous eras of rapid technological advancement, highlighting the importance of language in crafting the climate in which technology is incubated. Hughes’s work helped launch an entire sub-discipline of history that argues against notions of technological determinism (the idea that