Article:

Schwebende Infrastrukturen. Die extraterritorialen Ballons von Project Loon und die Medien der Stratosphäre

Since 2013 Google has sent hundreds of balloons into the stratosphere. They provide Internet access to regions that are restricted or not connected to the World Wide Web at all. With this geographically large-scale network, the company acts simultaneously as a telecommunications operator and Internet service provider, beyond the scope of familiar legislative authority. A historically informed perspective on these Internet balloons traces which political, technical, and epistemic concepts of the stratosphere Google takes up, changes, and constitutes with its Internet balloons. It places these concepts in context of discourses about the Internet for All, histories of unmanned balloon flights, and stratosphere simulations.