r00ts

r00ts traces your web browsing to the data centers behind it. The internet doesn't live in the cloud. It lives in specific places: real buildings with real addresses that sit on land, draw power from a grid, and often pull water from local supplies, with people living right next to them. Want to find out where your internet lives? Install r00ts, visit any site, and see the data centers your session likely passes through, some might be near you, others a world away. For each one, we show the clues we followed to land on that specific building, so you can run the same kind of investigation yourself. Our hope: to connect the dots between the brilliant journalism and activism about data centers and the everyday, abstracted way we all use them. r00ts is private by design, free and open source. Made by AIxDESIGN for anyone curious about the material reality behind their screen, students, journalists, designers, organizers, and the plain nosy. Made with support from Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, through the Grounding the Cloud open call.