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Since 2013 the company google has sent hundreds of balloons into the stratosphere. They shall provide Internet to regions that are not connected to the world wide web. To get balloons in the desired direction, google uses predictive models of the winds and decision-making algorithms. To critically grasp this economization of the stratosphere and its infrastructures, the lecture takes a media-historical look at ballooning practices and techniques of measuring, calculating and imagining the atmosphere since 19th century.

Hannah Zindel is a mediahistorian. She works as a postdoctoral researcher at the project »Mediacultures of Computersimulations« (Leuphana University Lüneburg) and wrote her doctoral thesis on ballooning in 19th century.