Master’s Thesis
Exploring the Divergent Materialities of
Digital ‘Stuff’
Responding to the Ecological Consequences of Cloud Computing
Graduate School of Humanities
New Media and Digital Culture
Supervisor: dhr. dr. M.D. Marc Tuters Second Reader: dhr. dr. Thomas Poell
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1 Introduction ………..
1.2 Outline of Research ………..……
3
4
2. Unpacking Materialism
2.1 Between the Social and Material ………..
2.2 Materialism’s Contemporary Developments ………
6
12
3. Eco-materialism
3.1 Waste as Infrastructure ……….
3.2 Shiny iPhones and Old Flip Phones ………
3.3 Ethics, Ecology and Economy ……….
3.4 Psychedelics, Ecology, and the Personal Computer ………
3.5 Tsunamis Of Electronic Waste ………
17
20
23
25
31
4. The Cloud and Ecology
4.1 Understanding ‘the Cloud’ ………...
4.2 Politics of Cloud Visibility ………...
35
41
5. New Frameworks for Cloud Computing
5.1 Exploring Media through Geology ………...
50
6. Conclusion
………
54
1. Introduction
1.1 Introduction
French foreign minister Laurent Fabius brought down a small leaf-shaped gavel and an enormous rapturous applause immediately followed. The tumultuous Climate Change Conference in Paris, which violently merged discourses of national security and the climate crisis together (Busby), concluded with exultant spirits. With nearly 200 nations, the agreement, crafted towards mitigating the most catastrophic effects of
climate change and transitioning to a carbon-free economy, signalled the most significant international accord since climate negotiations began in 1995 (Will). The agreement managed to establish voluntary national emission targets for all consigned nations, quinquennial returns to negotiations, and entrusts market-enabled capital with the responsibility of gradually lowering carbon emissions (Stavins). Its conclusion garnered both media and international praise. Celebratory acclaim from The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, The New Yorker and The Globe and Mail echoed the outward proclamations of triumph from notable international figures like “Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister, Jeff Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and Giza Gaspar Martins, chairman of the ‘Least Developed Countries’ association” (Kolbert). Even the murmuring voices of dissent from environmental
organizations could not dampen conference’s jubilant narrative. As for now, hope remains that the agreement’s momentum will resonate in domestic policies and justify the current applause. As John Cassidy wearily expresses, “It is to be hoped, fervently, that, in
centuries to come, the Paris climate-change agreement is mentioned in the same breath as the Non-Proliferation Treaty rather than the well-meaning Kellogg-Briand Pact. At this stage, though, there are no guarantees”1(Cassidy).
1 Cassidy parallels the Paris Agreement with two international treaties: the disastrously ill conceived 1928
Kellogg-Briand Pact, which outlawed warfare as a mechanism for resolving territorial disputes, and the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, still enforced today, to highlight the precarity of international agreements.
The Paris climate conference was the culmination of decades of scientific research and public pressure demanding national governments to genuinely address climate
change. While its expected consequences and influences on market signals are uncertain, the agreement does resonate in the recent work of academic scholars, where emerging literature in a myriad of discourses has gradually shifted and reoriented research towards ecological paradigms. In media theory and scholarship, this particular interest rings within eco-discourses that study the ecological context of media’s production, use and disposal. These discourses adopt an ecologically oriented materialism, concentrating on the environmental politics of electronic waste, energy infrastructure, techno-progressive capitalism, digital consumerism and media virtuality. This research will explore the emerging terrain of media eco-materiality, engaging with its historical development within media and economic theory, as well as its varying articulations. This discussion will culminate towards an eco-critical analysis of online platform services, documenting Cloud computing’s ecological implications and addressing its eco-framework.
1. 2 Outline of Research
Materialism is complex historical term that connotes material, social and cultural relations and commands significant interest and scholarship among media theorists. However, the emergence of Cloud computing and networked technologies presents several challenges, with specific issues regarding how Cloud computing’s ecological context can be appreciated. Cloud computing, despite its perception as environmentally friendly, has underlying energy politics and reliance on dirty fuel seriously questions this insight. Yet, while increasing attention is beginning to recognize digital technology’s questionable ‘green’ status, Cloud computing has largely escaped environmental reflection. This exclusion looks to become increasingly blatant as Cloud computing ubiquitousness expands and proliferates. This research will then strive demonstrate the ecological costs associated with Cloud computing and articulate an expanded eco-materialism that provides the theoretical framework able to integrate the environmental consequences of networking technologies.
Materialism’s historical tradition in media theory partly informs how contemporary eco-critics approach the issues of ecological sustainability in digital cultures. Therefore, this research will begin by summarizing the development of materialism within media theory, and in particular, it’s early antagonism with social constructivism and the scholarly reluctance towards adopting materialist frameworks. Here, the influential works of Marshall McLuhan and Friedrich Kittler will help establish how materialism was introduced in media theory. Afterwards, the following chapter will survey how contemporary developments have shaped modern thinking around materialism. Bruno Latour will be specifically evoked, since his efforts at
articulating contemporary materialism foreground the eco-crisis and provoke academics to reflect this ecological climate in their literature.
The subsequent chapters will look to establish the contemporary literature surrounding eco-materialism and the mounting body of literature espousing the
environmental consequences of digital capitalism. Here, the ecological context of digital technologies will align scientific literature and ideological criticisms. Here, the research will also carefully investigate how utopic narratives around technology emerged, as well as their consequences and affect in contemporary society. This includes acknowledging Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Catalog, and how technology slowly became to embody the utopic ambitions of the early environmental movement in 1960s. As well, it will account for how the metaphor of ‘the Cloud’ developed during the Internet’s early history and still influences cultural perceptions around Cloud computing. These chapters will also articulate the growing challenges to these narratives and summarize the some of their most vocal critics in media theory. This will begin with the ecological economists during the 1960s and 1970s, as the first opponents of capitalistic growth, and continue with contemporary interests in technological obsolescence and digital consumerism. Summarized as eco-materialism, these discourses, expressed by Jonathan Sterne, Lisa Parks, Jennifer Gabrys and Elizabeth Grossman, detail how technocapitalism and the ‘sublime’ remain powerful forces, seducing consumers through an incessant faith in technological progress.
While appreciating eco-materialism’s numerous articulations, this research will strive to analyze ecological criticisms of media technology that conceptualize materialism not just as the raw resources or mineral substrates of cognitive capitalism, but through a broader conceptualization that incorporates media’s diverse materialities and
temporalities. Accordingly, this research will study emerging frameworks that explore this broadening methodology, including Jussi Parikka’s ‘Geology of Media,’ Jennifer Gabrys’ residual media as well as Lisa Parks’ infrastructural intelligibility.
Contemporary eco-criticisms remain influenced by the historical development of media materiality, which, through its opposition to social constructivism, rigidly
emphasized the physicality of media. This phenomena can be primarily attributed to the lingering traditions established by materialism’s early pioneers: Kittler and McLuhan. Accordingly, electronic waste and discourses around obsolescence have emerged as the dominant narratives in eco-criticisms. However, as a result, the ecological context of recent technological developments such as Cloud computing and the growing prominence of mobile Internet use can potentially escape critical environmental
considerations. Therefore, expanded understandings of materialism referred to as new or digital materialism can provide the necessary tools to access this shortcoming.
Additionally, infrastructuralism as a methodological framework can offer productive insights into accounting for the material arrangements underlying the ostensibly immaterial online networks of Cloud computing. The discussion will subsequently investigate infrastructuralism, its emergence in critical theory and its potentials for eco-materiality, arguing that infrastructuralism, along with new material theories, offers the analytical framework able to appreciated both ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ within ecological contexts.
2. Unpacking Materialism
2.1 Between the Social and Material
Materialism has an extensive and interdisciplinary history, extending back to ancient Eurasia in India, China and Greece and spanning across philosophical domains
and discourses. As Gabrys Jennifer, an American media theorist attests, “Materiality is a topic and focus that is now pervasive across multiple disciplines, from media studies to geography and science and technology studies (Gabrys 10). Accordingly, Jussi Parikka, in his recent publication, A Geology of Media, briefly hints at the enormous cultural and theoretical scope of materialism, and opens his chapter with, “To label yourself a materialist does not necessarily itself mean much” (1). In attempting to account for materialism’s widening articulations, Parikka continues,
The long histories of materialism and idealism in philosophy are one point, but so are the everyday uses of the term: do we refer to it as the opposite of spiritual or ethical (as in expressions of disgust toward the materialist aspects of consumer society) or refer to the reality of machines and technology that structure our life (ibid.)
Here, Parikka entertains some critical distinctions, alluding to materialism’s strong traditions in philosophy, as well as its relevance in consumerist rhetoric and technological discourses. These diverging appropriations reveal materialism’s numerous appeals, and the crowded arena the term signifies. One prominent articulation establishes materialism through its material qualities, aligning it along concepts such as malleability or tangibility. American media theorist Leah A. Lievrouw similarly defines materialism as “The
physical character and existence of objects and artefacts that makes them useful and usable for certain purposes under particular conditions” (Lievrouw 25). Yet, this
conceptualization arises through a critically disputed history. The following section will contextualise materialism’s contested history and explore the evolving influence it extends in media theory, arguing how materialism’s early pioneers left an indelible imprint on the discourses development.
In her chapter, Materiality and Media in Communication and Technology Studies: An Unfinished Project, American Information Studies researcher Lievrouw charts materialism’s precarious and fluctuating history within media theory and the scholarly hesitation to adopt its discursive principles. As Lievrouw writes, during the 1970 and 1980s, Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) were ideological ridged, contending that “Technologies were solely
the product of socially negotiated means and constructs,”(22), largely engaging in discourses consistent within the internal logic of cultural analysis. Consequentially, a conceptual tension arose, loosely divided between social constructivism and technological determinism. As Lievrouw explains, prioritizing sociocultural analysis largely remains the dominant ideological framework in media theory,
Most technology scholarship in the communication field, informed by classic stream of media research, continues to follow a broadly constructivist, culturist line, privileging the technologies’ social and cultural meanings and appropriations and framing technology primarily as an outcome or expression of culture (24). As such, research appealing to artefact materiality is largely overlooked or primarily considered as a consequence of social and cultural forces (ibid.). However, recent efforts within STS are attempting to balance the sociotechnical duality and harmonize material arrangements with social articulations. This ambition informs what Lievrouw’s regards to STS and ICT’s ‘unfinished project’ (ibid.) – reconciliation between social and material forces and the development towards a dialectical, co-determining and mutually shaping framework through an adoption of “The language of sociotechnical articulation and co-production” (23). In other words, Lievrouw strives to integrate the constitutive influences of both the social/material. To accomplish this, she, along with social psychologist Sonia Livingstone, propose a model of ‘material affordances’ that “Unities communication artefacts, practices, and social arrangements/formations as inseparable and mutually determining” (ibid.) This effort to evoke materiality and reignite its analytical potential echoes the literature of German Media Theorist Friedrich Kittler and is indebted to the media scholarship associated with the Toronto School, in particular, the literature of Canadian political economist Harold Innis and philosopher of communication theory Marshall McLuhan.
As provocative academics, Kittler and McLuhan wield enormous authority over media studies, pioneering materialism in media theory and consequentially casting a lingering shadow wherever materialism emerges in discourse or research. While both Kittler and Innis/McLuhan differently appropriated materialism in their media theory, all three unapologetically emphasized materiality against an academic landscape that
adamantly prioritized social shaping and cultural discourses (22). Innis and McLuhan, often accredited as ‘Medium Theorists’ (38) predominantly emphasized how materiality influenced and determined communication technologies, “Apart from the effects of content, representation, and meaning that preoccupied ‘effects’ researchers or the institutional, economic, and power questions that animated critical/cultural theorists” (39). Their canonical text Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man remains one of the most influential efforts ever undertook in order to articulate a comprehensive and
systematic theory of media (Mitchell and Hansen x). McLuhan’s most celebrated observation ‘The Medium is the Message’ encapsulates his media theory. From his
perspective, media’s impacting influences on human experience and social structures does not mainly originate from the content it mediates, but rather through the media’s
inherent technical and formalist qualities. In other words, as McLuhan clarifies, “The personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology” (McLuhan 203). McLuhan even concluded that, “The content or uses of such media are as diverse as they are ineffectual in shaping the form of human association” (ibid.). Beyond demanding the primacy of medium analysis, McLuhan was also fascinated by how technological innovations were becoming increasingly interwoven within the societal fabric of human civilization. This understanding of technology as a ‘prosthesis of human agency’ (205) or what McLuhan terms ‘extensions of man,’ expresses a critical theme in his media philosophy. McLuhan’s work expressed an
intimate relationship between the human and technical; acutely aware of how increasingly profound technological innovations impacted the evolving human sensorium. For
McLuhan, this human/technical dynamic was of upmost significance, as he explains, It is the coupling of the human and the technological that holds primacy; while imbricated in myriad, complex ways, human enaction and technological
materiality remain two distinct forms of informatic embodiment, two distinct processes of materialization that, no matter how much they may converge, retain their respective autonomy (Mitchell and Hansen xii-xiii).
McLuhan’s insistence on documenting the materiality of technologies and its influence on sense cognition diverted from the standard preoccupations of content analysis, representational/semiotic studies and economic/institutional politics that occupied other communication and media theorists. Accordingly, McLuhan, along with Innis, were regarded as marginal thinkers within mainstream American and British cultural studies (Lievrouw 39).
“Media determine our situation”
With these stirring opening lines, Kittler opened his influential theorization on media, Gramophone, Film Typewriter. Succeeding McLuhan’s pioneering media theory, Kittler more purposefully asserted material analysis. Similar to McLuhan, Kittler disputed media analyses that negated to appreciate media’s material presence in transmission and meditation. As he indicated, “Media can no longer be dismissed as neutral or transparent, subordinate or merely supplemental to information they convey (Mitchell and Hansen vii). Kittler’s unyielding resolve in technological materialism surpassed even McLuhan’s philosophy. For Kittler, media primarily functioned at “The level of circuits, hardware, and voltage differences” (Parikka, Geology 3) with semiotic and cultural analysis “Second-order phenomena” (ibid.). Accordingly, the human subject, for Kittler, was “Relegated to the status of merely optional receiver of technically mediated information (Mitchell and Hansen viii). This was distinct from McLuhan, who viewed the body as the essential, but insufficient entity, only actualized through its own
mediation. As Mitchell and Hansen explain McLuhan position, “The body, in sum, is a capacity for relationally that literally requires mediation and that, in a sense, cannot be conceptualized without it” (ibid.). Additionally, Kittler adamantly expounded the
importance of technological literacy and encouraged humanities to embrace scientific and engineering literature, even personally experimenting with software coding and
synthesizer music (Parikka, Geology 2).
These approaches, which fervently maintain materiality’s critical priority in framing social relations, find resonance among current theorists dedicated to the
burgeoning potential of materialist analysis. These preceding paragraphs established materialism’s historical significance in STS and ICTs. Lievrouw’s chapter attempted to establish the tradition’s prominence against other media discourses that emphasized issues of representation or identity, politics of institutional power and concerns or ownership and access. However, the central influence of McLuhan and Kittler’s early materialism in eco-materialism can be found in how they specifically defined materialism as tangibly corporal. As it will be detailed, many eco-critics largely base their
understanding of materialism through physical, electronic waste. However, this emphasis on physicality is challenged by recent contemporary efforts and developments that have attempted to expand this narrow definition, extending materialism’s principle arguments and analytical range. Lievrouw’s proposed approach of ‘material affordances’ is just one contribution in a bullring of other efforts, including: ‘Autonomous Technology’, ‘Actor-Network Theory’, ‘Technological Momentum’, ‘Sociotechnical Co-Production’, ‘Media Effects Research’, ‘The Communication Network Perspective’, ‘Critical/Cultural Media Studies’, and ‘Medium Theory’ (Lievrouw 25). This wide theoretical terrain attests to materialism’s broadening influence and also indicting that while these emerging
approaches hold critical relevance to media theorists, these frameworks permeate broader philosophical discourses. These overlapping materialist frameworks encompass an
emerging field under the umbrella term ‘New Materialism.’ New Materialism, while carrying enormous implications for media materiality, is not explicitly intended for media theorists. Eclectic writers such as anthropologist and sociologist of science Bruno Latour in his succinct article, Can We Get Our Materialism Back, Please?, media scholar Jussi Parikka’s Geology of Media, political theorist Jane Bennett in her recent publication Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, as well as sociologists Diana Coole and Samantha Frost’s in their latest book New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics all explore this burgeoning discourse. Among these and others, Parikka and Latour’s approaches most strongly resonate with ecologically oriented eco-materialism. This is because both scholars foreground the climate crisis, and elevate their materialist frameworks in order to articulate neglected ecological relations. The next section will
introduce new materialism, and summarize Latour’s strand, detailing his principle articulations, as well as expounding how his analysis resonates within environmental media studies.
2.2 Materialism’s Contemporary Developments
Recent technological developments such as ‘smart objects’ and Cloud computing uneasily fluctuate between ubiquitous pervasiveness and imperceptibility, complicating the relevance and boundaries of digital materiality (Reichert 5). ‘New Materialism.’ This broad and elusive term encompasses a wide landscape of literature and concepts and arises as a response to traditional media materiality, and emphasizes non-human, inorganic and even non-solids as material influences. Accordingly, new materialist media theory orients critical attention towards overlooked materialities and specifically challenges intuitive understandings of matter. Materiality is then not limited to the capabilities of the human sensorium, and can incorporate a multiplicity of things that exert agency and influence over individuals and culture. As Ramón Reichert and Annika Richterich explain in their introductory chapter Digital Materialism, “Such investigations may involve tracing the materiality of media in terms of components' history, socio-economic and ecological implications, or to address the materiality of allegedly immaterial research objects such as software” (12). These frameworks then address the potential blind spots of media theory, and broaden its discursive range.
French philosopher Bruno Latour, in his article, Can We Get Our Materialism Back, Please?, foregrounds his understanding of new materialist critiques, offering his own negotiation of new materialism’s expanded analytical range. For him, physical objects express an uneasy tension between their concrete properties, and the social and cultural forces that constitute their realisation. Therefore, a processual analysis that integrates non-material influences, along with its physicality, renders a more comprehensive and accurate articulation (of the diverse materialities supposed by new materialist theory). This contention extends to ecological considerations, where Latour asserts that the
growing ecological crisis demands a similar re-examinations into how disciples and discourses are separated and argues for a strengthening of the bonds between disciples in order to elicit their communal discourses.
In the article, Latour challenges what he calls ‘idealist materialism’, the assumptive fallacy where scholars conflate projective geometric drawings/technical renderings with the real, and physical corresponding object. For him, these two domains occupy distinct categories, each distilling a particular mode of materialist inquiry. As Latour, begging this dilemma, asks,
But then why do we so often act as if matter itself were made of parts that behave just like those technical drawings, which live on indefinitely in a timeless,
unchanging realm of geometry? […] as if the ontological qualities of matter itself were the same as the ontological qualifies of drawings and moving parts around in geometrical space? (139).
This inability to properly account for these differing understandings constitutes a glaring oversight for Latour. Materialism emerging from the abstracted jurisdiction of blueprint documents does not wholly encompass the corresponding physical artefact of that rendering - each domains maintains its independent agency. Importantly, Latour does not hierarchically categorize geometric renderings as abstract/cold and industrial manufacturing as animated/warm. Instead, Latour wishes to emphasize the continuum and procedural relationship between these two domains and the importance of
recognizing their distinct agency, in which, the “Geometry is what allows engineers to draw and know parts, while the parts themselves go their own ways and follow, so to speak, their own directions” (140). This material autonomy, closely adhering to Latour’s philosophical leanings towards Actor-Network Theory (ANT), manifests itself during the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. On February 1st, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during its re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven crewmembers aboard the craft. The following investigation, which resulted in numerous technical and organizational changes to NASA’s Space Program, involved hundreds of different actors, from engineers, to lawyers, activists, military personal, and public citizens. The breadth of this investigation was commissioned in order transparently
identify all the individual and discrete entities that composed the space shuttle. This far-reaching investigation highlighted all the processes required for assembling the shuttle, referring to engineering and technical blueprints, but also the social relations associated with those processes. This resulted a comprehensively detailed account that far exceeded any conclusions derived solely through re-examining the “Technical representations now entrenched into CAD digital files” (141), or as Latour also claims, the idealised
conceptions of material assemblages (139). This was necessary, as Latour explains, because,
For any piece of machinery, to be drawn to specs by an engineer, one hand, or to remain functional without rusting and rotting away, on the other, requires us to accept two very different types of existence. To exist as a part inside the isotopic space invented by the long history of geometry, still-life painting and technical drawing is not all the same as existing as an entity that has to resist decay (ibid.). Through NASA’s exhaustive investigation, Latour argues, the entire assemblage of the space shuttle, which includes its idealized and actual material reality, along with its surrounding social context, was meticulously and furiously examined in the months afterwards, rendering a close approximation of, as Latour describes it, the shuttle’s “The thick description” (142). For Latour, this investigation embodies the two aspirations of materialism and consolidates their differing methodologies into an intelligible analysis; in the case of the space shuttle, the cause of its crash. Interestingly, this stressing to
consolidate diverse materialities within broader social relations further echoes another argument put forth by Latour.
During a keynote lecture in April 2007 addressing the British Sociological
Association, Latour presented A Plea for Earthly Sciences; an evocative appeal for a critical re-evaluation of sociality and ‘social connections’ as a response to, what he describes as, a war “Humans, as a whole, wage, without any explicit declaration, against Gaia2” (72). In his speech Latour confronts sociology’s embrace of progressive discourses that celebrate modernizing civilization and human emancipation from Earth’s geophysical limits. Therefore, instead of continuing this gradual retreat from cultural consciousness, in
2 Gaia is the mythical title James Lovelock, in his new book The Revenge of Gaia, gave to the aggregation
which appreciation for Earth’s geophysical limits increasingly diminishes, Latour urges a new historization through the explication of our Earthly circumstances. Borrowing from the German thinker Peter Sloterdijk, Latour develops on this alternative approach explaining, “As we moved on, through our technologies, through our scientific inquiries, through the extension of our global empires, we rendered more and more explicit the fragility of the life support systems that make our ‘spheres of existence’ possible” (74). Here, Latour challenges the modernist narrative that claims scientific progress has liberated humans to transcend our planet’s geophysical shackles, conversely arguing it rendered more clearly our fragile existence. Therefore, this abandonment of the historical narrative of modernism through the explication of our ecological conditions entails that, “Everything that earlier was merely “given” becomes “explicit”. Air, water, land, all of those were present before in the background: now they are explicated because we slowly come to realize that they might disappear – and we with them” (ibid.). Accordingly, Latour offers the reader an alternative to modernization and emancipation, redefining our current period “As one of explicitation and of attachments” (ibid.). Borrowing again from Lovelock’s vocabulary, Latour proposes that while “We might have had social sciences for modernizing and emancipating humans, we have not the faintest idea of what sort of social science is needed for Earthlings3 buried in the task of explicating their newly discovered attachments” (75). Here, Latour’s ambitions for radical change emerge.
In a new era fuelled by technological progressivism and haunted by specter of environmental catastrophe, Latour argues for an expansion of contemporary sociality should be understood to include, “Connections, associations, collections, whatever the name, between all sort of heterogeneous domains” (ibid.). This reconceptualization entrusts contemporary sociologists to closely scrutinize the “Shifting attachments offered by various non-social modes of connections” (78). Here, a non-social mode of
connections refers to disciples like law, biology, economy or politics. As a result, he contends discarding the rigid and static boundaries that constrain these domains as
3 This term, borrowed from Lovelock, denotes the post-human subject emerging from Latour’s
independent or autonomous. Instead, sociologists should engage in dynamic and
relational analysis between domains. Through this broadened sociality, Latour proposes, Shifting the definition of sociology from the study of ‘social’ connections to the study of ‘associations’ […] refusing to limit the inquiries to one domain only, as if, side by side, we had ‘social’, ‘psychological’, ‘legal’, ‘biological’ and ‘economic’ connections, each with its own science and protocols [and strive to] understand how these domains might reconnect (75).
Ultimately, while Latour concentrates on sociologists, his appeal solicits all individuals to undertake more relational methodologies in areas of study. Specifically, his persistence on associativeness works towards exposing previously obscured relations and connections. Embracing this plea from Latour, a relational perspective offers interesting directions for media scholarship, in particular, work grappling with the environment and the ecological dimensions of media materiality. This is particularly relevant to eco-materialism since it = attempts to merge disparate discourses such as economy, ecology, biology, media and computer studies. As well, Latour’s foregrounding of environmental calamity in his discussion of sociality incites a polemical tone and stresses an urgency often absent in academic literature. This Latourian argument begins to unravel the theoretical contours that eco-materialism negotiates in its attempt to articulate an ecological criticism of digital technologies. In particular, Latour’s case study of the space shuttle begins to interrogate the expansive relations that materialism demands, and the necessity for materialist frameworks to appreciate these broadening influences. Furthermore, his associative framework encourages analyses that engage with the increasingly subtle, but important relations formed between disparate concepts/discourses. Latour appeal for environmental criticism finds allegiance in media theory, where his plea for academic literature to resonate with the contemporary ecological context is taken up by a growing number of scholars. The following chapters will work towards developing emerging media theory that contextualises digital technology’s ecological contexts. The chapter will initially begin to explore how an ecologically motivated media materiality structured against electronic waste challenges important assumptions pervasive in media theory and culture. Scholars like Sterne, Parks and Gabrys express succinct criticisms of
technocapitalism, its increasing electronic waste and the resultant digital toxicity. This discussion will subsequently probe how its foundation in electronic waste potentially limits is critical effectiveness, arguing that recent technological developments require a rethinking into how ecological impact is constituted.
3. Eco-materialism
3.1 Waste as Infrastructure
Wandering through the daily Waterlooplein Flea Market in Amsterdam, visitors are sure to come across a whole range of tacky and eccentric objects, a bric-à-brac bazzar, reflecting Waterlooplein’s historical roots in alternative and youth culture. Among its vast selection of vintage military uniforms, Ché posters, questionable bicycle parts and
obligatory ‘friet met satésaus,’ visitors can peruse the market’s mounting piles of mobile phones, computer monitors and stereo speakers. Rousing nostalgia for VHS Players, Walkman’s and disposable cameras, obstacle electronics are becoming a permanent antique at outdoor markets. As these decaying artefacts of past generations accumulate dust, their growing presence has attracted the critical reflection of media scholars and researchers.
Embracing the materialist framework established through Kittler and McLuhan, an ecological motivated media theory reorients attention towards the environmental consequences resultant from the physical properties and material conditions of digital ‘stuff.’ Inevitably, the thematic imagery of electronic waste and its ever-increasing presence continually emerges as a central focus. And while electronic waste can be narrowly evoked as the guilty conscience of our digital consumerism, it can also serve as the critical underpinnings of eco-materialism and establish its discursive parameters. Jennifer Gabrys in her recent book Digital Rubbish; A Natural History of Electronics critically appropriates electronic waste, proposing waste embodies the residual remnants of its assemble, distribution, circulation and disposal. As Gabrys explains,
The advantage of focusing on electronics through remainder is that not just the effects but also the material, cultural, and political resources that enable these technologies become more evident in the traces of these fossilized forms. Such an
approach interferes with—while taking up— the specters of virtuality and dematerialization, which often ensure that the material “supports” of electronic technologies are less perceptible (4).
Therefore, beyond its function as an unsightly reminder of our digital indulgences, waste registers diverse materialities and temporalities, alluding not only to the digital economy’s elaborate infrastructures, but also its associated cultural narratives and imaginings. As Gabrys describes,
The sedimentary layers of waste consist not only of circuit boards and copper wires, material flows and global economies, but also of technological imaginings, progress narratives, and material temporalities. Waste and waste making include not just the actual garbage of discarded machines but also the remnant utopic discourses that describes the ascent of computing technologies—discourses that we still work with today (ibid.).
Gabrys’ critical embrace of electronic waste and its lingering presence allows the
consolidation of a myriad of discourses evoked by eco-materialism – enabling scientific, environmental, geological, ideological, economic and cultural research to inform this analysis. Gabrys is particularly appreciative of the conflicting tensions present in decaying technology; the enthusiasm surrounding its purchase, which is conspicuously absent as it rests abandoned and inert in a dump. This emphasis on trash directs attention to the many frequently overlooked ‘media infrastructures’ enabling the global village. American film and media scholar Lisa Parks defines these media infrastructures,
The material sites and objects involved in the local, national, and/or global distribution of audio-visual signals and data […] such as broadcast transmitters, transoceanic cables, satellite earth stations, mobile telephones towers, and Internet data centers (Parks, ‘Stuff’ 356).
Echoing Gabrys’ approach, a majority of eco-materialist literature develops against a conceptualization of waste as a marginal externality or peripheral necessity of
technocapital progress. Electronic waste does not represent a harmless by-product of modern societies, and instead, is adopted in order to enable the vast and often-neglected media infrastructures of the digital economy to emerge. This infrastructural analysis includes mineral extraction facilities like open-pit mining, manufacturing and assembly planets like the Foxconn Technology Group, recycling collection offices and waste management and disposal centers. This approach, which aims to explore cultural
phenomena through its structural constituents, resonates with emerging frameworks loosely identified as infrastructuralism. The term infrastructure, “Emerged in the early 20th century as a collective term for the subordinate parts of an undertaking; substructure, foundation, foundation, and first become associated with permanent military
installations” (355). Accordingly, infrastructure studies have predominantly centred around engineering projects and public utilities, and “Are generally thought to be bulky and boring systems that are hard to carry, such as airports, highways, electrical grids, or aqueducts” (Peters 30). However, infrastructuralism also refers to a methodological framework and mode of analysis that moves away from symbolic or hermeneutic and towards investigating structural realities (Sandvig 90). Within the context of media literature, infrastructuralism directly contrasts the semiotic and representational concerns that governed classical media theory (Parikka, Geology 3). In his recent book, The
Marvelous Clouds; Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media, John Durham Peters defines infrastructuralism as a,
Fascination for the basic, the boring, the mundane, and all the mischievous work done behind the scenes. It is a doctrine of environments and small differences, of strait gates and the needle’s eye, of things not understood that stand under our worlds […] infrastructural media are media that stand under (33).
Importantly, while Peters acknowledges the “Force-amplifying” (31) characteristic of large, global and industrial infrastructures such as “Railways, telegraphs, transoceanic cables, time zones, telecommunications networks, hydroelectric dams, power plants, weather forecasting systems, highways, and space programs” (ibid.), he clarifies that “Infrastructures can be small in interface, appearing as water faucets, gas pumps, electrical outlets, cell phones, all of them gates to bigger and submerged systems” (ibid.). This distinction echoes Parks’ paralleling notions of infrastructural disposition and
infrastructural intelligibility. For Parks, infrastructural disposition refers to the ability to perceive the vast and diverse politics of infrastructures through only isolated or narrow frames, whereby individuals are then able to intelligently relate their own actions into these larger systems. Similar to Peters’ insight into the importance of infrastructural scale, infrastructural disposition and infrastructural intelligibility, allow the acknowledgement
small, trivial actions to be integrated with their enormous corresponding infrastructure system, which typically remain mentally and physical distant.
What I [Parks] am suggesting is a way of engaging with media that not only involves questions of documentation or representation, but one that fosters […] a process by which ordinary people use images, sounds objects, observations, information, and technological experiences to imagine the existence, shape, or form of an extensive and dispersed media infrastructure that cannot be physically observed by one person in its entirety (Parks, ‘Stuff’ 359).
This theory on media infrastructures emphasizes appreciating structures at their smallest scale, and deducing from there. Both Parks and Peters, through differing approaches, advocate similar research methods for analyzing and interpreting media. Peters philosophically ruminates on infrastructuralism, reflecting on its theoretical and
conceptual merits. Parks, on the other hand, is much more empirically driven, concerned with actually applying its methodology to concrete systems. Parks in fact applies her methodology, using it to explore the American postal service, electrical power pole maintenance and the subversive installation of satellite dishes in Iran. In general, both Parks and Peters pursue infrastructural analysis to elucidate unique environmental, socio-economic or geopolitical insights. Gabrys’ work on waste and decay echoes these
infrastructural frameworks. It both acknowledges the ideological dimensions reminiscent of Peters, while also recognizing the importance of real infrastructures pursued by Parks. Within eco-materialism, infrastructuralism’s effectiveness at exposing the neglected and dire consequences of our digital society has inspired numerous scholars and media critics. The following section will examine how media scholars have embraced infrastructuralism in order to expose, what Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller call “Our Dirty Love Affair with Technology” (Maxwell and Miller, ‘Dirty Love Affair’).
3.2 Shiny iPhones and Old Flip Phones
Subsumed underneath larger traditional discourses on media materiality,
emerging media eco-criticisms have adopted materialism in order to detail the neglected ecological dimensions of media materialism. In Out with the Trash: On the Future of New Media, Canadian media theorist Jonathan Sterne opens his article with a reflection on the
accumulating digital waste and obsolete computer artefacts that crowd his university office. Sterne ponders on the insatiable fervour of university departments as they clamour for the newest gadget and gizmo, as well as the anxiety and reluctance he experiences whenever discarding his out-dated computers. This anecdote introduces Sterne’s interest in the often-obscured physicality of media, particularly trash, and establishes the article’s intended interest in the associated discourses of digital obsolescence, technological innovation/progress and capitalist consumption.
Sterne specifically criticises traditional media discourses that privilege ideals of disembodiment, immaterially and virtuality and instead favours approaches that
underscore digital disposability, electronic waste and the feverish fantasies of commodity consumption. Sterne’s primary argument is that the technological industries, along with academics, cultural commenters, and industry specialists, have engineered a continual and unique faith in digital technologies. Governed by the flawed ideological underpinnings of Moore’s Law, digital progress is perceived as continually advancing and improving. Moore’s Law, articulated by computer engineer Gordon E. Moore in 1965, describes the projected growth of computers processing power as doubling every two years
(Templeton). This confidence justifies digital obsolescence and operationalizes their decay in the pursuit of accelerated consumption. As Sterne clarifies, “The hope is always that the next generation will work better, be more stable, be more functional” (23). Older technologies, such as print, photography and television experienced diminishing
fascination when new advancements supplemented them. Therefore, in the 19th and 20th century, “‘New’ media were primarily understood as ‘new’ with respect to other media: ‘new’ media forms replaced older media forms” (19). In contrast, digital technologies have been able to maintain an enduring and imagined fantasy of ‘newness’ in spite of the fact that computers are approximately 40 years old (20). As Sterne explains,
Computer culture has reached a truly bizarre equilibrium. Today, computers and other digital hardware displace their own counterparts more then anything else. ‘Newness’ in computers is defined with primary reference to old computer (19). Accordingly, digital technology remains adorned with the fantastic patina of innovation, modernism and advancement. Parks, in her article, Falling Apart: Electronics Salvaging
and the Global Media Economy, similarly argues that, the binary distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media reflects not only a technological shift between analog and digital, but also expresses “an idle acceptance of capitalist logics, such as structured obsolescence, used to regulate the life cycles of electronic and computer hardware (33). This
phenomenon, with obvious market incentives, fuels a vociferous consumer culture that continually flocks for slight upgrades and marginal releases. Sterne closes his article by drawing attention that the digital economies flawed ideologies underpinnings obscure the environmental consequences that emerge from the resultant electronic trash. This
concluding condemning analysis on technocapitalism echoes Maxwell and Miller’s opening chapter in Greening the Media. There, the cultural and media studies scholars historically extend Sterne’s ecological account of technological progress by reimagining the Johannes Gutenberg printed press through ecology and human health. They achieve this by situating the technology within “Intersecting histories of chemical, mechanical and electrical processes” (43) in order to elucidate the negated ecological context of the 15th century invention. As Maxwell and Miller conclude,
The Print Revolution inaugurated new occupational hazards in workshops that were redolent with chemically altered natural elements and process residues of fumes, dust, and heavy metals, while later deforestation of industrial wood pulp production imposed grave risk to animal and plant diversity and habitats (ibid.). This analytical trajectory continues to contemporary technologies, where Maxwell and Miller dedicate their discursive instruments towards reorienting media studies toward the toxic physical composition of digital artefacts, as well as the globalized systems of mineral extraction, industrial assembly, labour exploitation/well-being, transnational distribution and eventual disposable/technological waste symptomatic of the industry (13). In
particular, the book concentrates on developing alternative narratives to technological progress and highlighting the underlying human and environmental costs resultant from the industrial and capitalist infrastructures nourishing a voracious craving for digital innovation and consumption. Importantly, Maxwell and Miller address the corporate influences encouraging technological fascination, complementing Sterne’s focus on the role of academics in this phenomenon.
Maxwell and Miller’s eco-criticism and Marxist analysis primarily functions to advance their ambition of extending ethical philosophy into media studies in order to address the “Spectrum of relevant ecological concerns that the field of media studies should confront as ethical challenges in the near future (Maxwell and Miller, ‘Ecological Ethics’ 332). Maxwell and Miller advocate incorporating an ecological ethics within media studies, offering both anthropocentric and eco-centric discourses that challenge the “Inextricable ties to capitalist/masculine subjugation of nature under the revered axiom of growth” (Maxwell and Miller, Greening 34). This dialogue, Maxwell and Miller suggest, ought to exist within the context of a global ecological crisis, and should
summarize a ecological ethics that “Focuses on the environmental (including human bodily) harms associated with disposal, dismantling, and recycling of media technologies” (Maxwell and Miller, ‘Ecological Ethics’ 331). As such, Maxwell and Miller content that, “This interest in e-waste is a salutary advance toward an eco-ethics in media studies (ibid.). For them, the appropriate response to the current ecological crisis is a broad revaluation of society’s ethical priorities, academics providing resilient and spirited support.
3.3 Ethics, Ecology and Economy
This capitalistic criticism in Maxwell and Miller’s book, which doesn’t shy away from ethical considerations, harkens to the ecological writings of early economists in the 1960s and 1970s. While concerns over industrial modernity, resource depletion, and ecological decay are established today, in the 1960s these debates were only beginning to emerge. Therefore, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, economic theory began starting to integrate ecological concerns with capitalist discourses of growth. Specifically, they propositioned that “The world needs economic systems that exist harmoniously with nature, and which promote social equality and justice (Caradonna 113). Economists such as E.F. Schimacher, Herman Daly and E.J Mishan discussed economic theory alongside the growing imminence of ecological crises. This literature heavily drew on political
economy and moral philosophy in order to articulate its arguments (112). As Jeremy Caradonna in his book, Sustainability: A History explains, ecological economics,
Drew on the fledging science of ecology to rethink many of the assumptions of neoclassical economics, with its ‘growthmanina,’ general indifference toward pollution and ecosystem destruction, and dogmatic belief ‘tastes and preferences’ are innate in humans rather than cultural shaped (ibid.).
Within the economic spectrum, ecological economics opposes to both neoclassical economics associated with Milton Freidmann and also traditional Keynesian economics. However, the central target of their criticism was decisively neoliberal economic theory. In particular, its requirement for perpetual productive growth and demands for
“Unending increase in aggregate throughout4, consumption, and/or output” (116). Consequentially, ecological economists held reservations regarding the promises of industrial modernity and specifically its foundation on the intrinsic value of growth. Economists like Mishan stressed the necessity to contextualize economic prosperity within biophysical limits. For many economists this consisted of stabilizing population growth, lessening individual consumption, reducing pollution and adopting renewables energy sources (118). Importantly, these economists not only challenged the
ridiculousness of exponential growth, they also refuted the neoliberal assumption that growth is natural. Instead, they situated growth as a deliberately political project originating from Western democracies following the Second World War. In their respective works, Mishan, Daly and Schumacher all detail how governmental policies such as tax reductions, interest rate manipulation and state spending, adopted to stimulate growth, created today’s industrial economies that need continual growth and expansion (ibid). Importantly, all these economists remained firmly loyal to capitalist structure, never questioning the role of private property, monetary currencies, and centrality of the marketplace as place of exchange for goods and services. Instead they appealed to strong state intervention and environmental regulations (114).
While articulated in the 1960s-1970s, these ideas strongly resonate with
environmental activists today, and still remain pivotal discussion points within ecological
discourses. Additionally, the writings of early ecological economists are far removed from the laborious and dreary tones commonly associated with economics. As this beautiful passage from Mishan’s The Cost of Economic Growth illustrates,
The erosion of the countryside, the ‘uglification’ of coastal towns, the pollution of the air and rivers with chemical wastes, the accumulation of think oils, o our coastal waters, the sewage poisoning our beaches, the destruction of wild life by indiscriminate use of pesticides, the change-over from animal farming to animal factories, and visible to all who have eyes to see, a rich heritage of natural being wantonly and systematically destroyed (Mishan 29-30).
This passage encompasses the ambitions and strategies embraced of ecological economics; it reorients attention towards the ignored natural environmental, acutely describes how industrial modernity has exacerbated ecological scarcity and the disruption of environmental ecosystems, and finally appeals to human and ethical sensibilities through its evocative prose. However, paralleling this ecological movement in economics was a similarly profound movement gaining momentum among the radical youth of the American counterculture. While distinct from the formalist influence of ecological economics, this counterculture eco-movement, and its fascination with media and information technologies has left an indelible footprint in the cultural imagination.
3.4 Psychedelics, Ecology, and the Personal Computer
As the 20th century began to close, the digital economy was increasingly
expanding in both public and private spheres. Amongst other celebratory rhetoric, praise for its environmental potential grew. In fact, “In the mid-1990s, digital enthusiasts ranging from Bill Gates to Al Gore celebrated the information economy as a green-friendly industry” (Parks, ‘Falling Apart’ 35). Suitably, Cloud computing has entertained similar praises, with claims applauding its energy efficiency due to its distributed
networked infrastructures (Morgan). This confidence in digital technology’s promise for environmental sustainability traces its origins to the early development of computing. Therefore, this chapter will investigate how counterculture sentiments found in hippie communes reversed the general publics ambivalent attitudes regarding computer
innovation and the early environmental movement’s aspirations with digital technology still influences modern developments such as Cloud computing.
The 1960s conjures wild imaginations of antiestablishment and liberation politics, rebelling against the political institutions and cultural hierarches of the time. As Andrew Kirk describes it in his essay ‘Machines of Loving Grace’: Alternative Technology,
Environment, and the Counterculture,
The counterculture is often remembered as a purple haze of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Visions of back-to-nature, neo-Luddite communes complete with bearded wilderness advocates and naked draped in flowers living off edible plants easily spring to mind (354).
Within a political climate increasingly frustrated by futility of American imperialism in Vietnam, haunted by the spectre of nuclear conflict, disillusioned by ecological
degradation and dehumanised by the emerging global economic systems, the
disenfranchised youth of the American counterculture sought alternative lifestyles that were more harmoniously synchronized with environmental systems. As a result, many individuals actively pushed against technological solutions. In particular, they challenged a dogmatic belief in the potential of science, and were quick to critically confront the material prosperity it provided them with (360). These ‘holistic preservationists’ exhibited distinct ambivalence towards technological progress; particularly congregating against the existential threat of atomic energy. As Kirk expands, “These preservationists were joined in their distrust of modern industrial society and technological quick fixes for complex environmental problems by intellectuals from a variety of backgrounds/ideological perspectives including anarchists, back-to-the-landers and antimodernists” (359). This disparate and varied collection represents an influential sentiment in American society and was increasingly magnetizing academic and popular attention.
Paralleling this development was another group of counterculturists. Influenced by New Left political discourses and keen on reimaging the intricate relationships between ecology, technology and society, “These new counterculture environmentalists concentrated on alternative technologies as a response to contemporary concerns over pollution and overpopulation” (355). Importantly, they rejected the technophobic attitude
of their contemporaries, and also refused the preservationist approach of the traditional environmental conservation movement. Instead, these counterculture environmentalists embraced the potential science offered to reverse ecological inequality, advocating for alternative energy technologies, eco-designs, innovative waste management and recycling as solutions to a more sustainable future (ibid.). A central principle, which animated these early counterculture environmentalists, was ‘appropriate technologies,’ as formulated by the British economist E. F. Schumacher in his popular book Small is Beautiful. Broadly understood, appropriate technologies were conceptualized along a few key principles:
i. “Low investment cost per work-place” ii. “Low capital investment per unit of output” iii. “Organizational simplicity”
iv. “High adaptability to a particular social or cultural environment” v. “Sparing use of natural resources”
vi. “Low cost for final product”
vii. “High potential for employment” (368).
The appropriate technologies movement emphasized sustainable and self-sufficient lifestyles, underscored the importance of self-education and individual experience and embraced pre-industrial innovations without the prejudice of progress. This ideology was advocated with the firm belief that the tools and instruments of science had a critical role in achieving these ambitions. As a varied and disparate movement, appropriate
technologies consolidated beliefs in radical politics and ecological sciences. Accordingly, Kirk argues this optimistic re-evaluation of technology’s enlightening influence on human affairs is one of the most enduring and significant consequences of the American
counterculture movement, found scattered throughout Buckminster Fuller and his geodesic domes and Steve Jobs’ empowering ‘personal’ computer (356).
While numerous individuals drew inspiration from these progressive ideologies, this partnership of environmental advocacy through scientifically progressive narratives resonated with early computing enthusiasts. Specifically, appropriate technologies’ emphasis on the revolutionizing potential of individual consumerism helped establish the framework for one of the most enduring environmental institutions in popular culture, The Whole Earth Catalog. After graduating as a biology major from Stanford University in
1960 and serving two years as an Army photographer, Stewart Brand re-entered civilian life and “Began a joyful life journey meandering among different communities and communes at that exciting juncture where art and technology intermingle” (Isaacson). His interests at the creative edge between technology and art, along with his
experimentations with LSD led him to a performance art commune called the ‘US Company.’ At USCO Brand began formalizing his democratizing views on computer technology, melding the hippie subcurrent for drug promiscuity, with an ecologically oriented social perspective. This ideology culminated in 1968 with the first publication of the Whole Earth Catalog (WEC), a magazine that,
Brought together all of the divergent counterculture technology trends under one roof: commune members, computer designers and hackers, psychedelic drug engineers and environmentalists […] becoming a nexus of radical
environmentalism, appropriate technology research, alternative lifestyle information, and communitarian anarchism (Kirk 369).
The magazine was primarily a product catalog, offering product reviews on “Steam-powered bicycles, windmills, solar collectors, wood stoves, ‘personal computers,’ satellite phones and the last telecommunications hardware” (ibid.). Under the advertised the slogan ‘access to tools,’ the magazine advocated self-sufficiency, alternative education, DIY and ecological holism. Originating from the environmental concerns of the
counterculture and inspirited by eco-criticisms associated with the appropriate technologies movement, WEC purported an ecologically sustainable global citizenry, advocated by pragmatic activism largely defined through individual consumerism. For example, as Kirk shows, “For Brand and his colleagues, Stop the 5-Gallon Flush, a guide to stopping water waste with simple household technological fixes, was just as revolutionary a book as Das Capital, maybe even more so” (370). While the catalog promoted
numerous products, it did particularly find inspiration in digital innovation. “Brand and his followers were convinced that access to innovative and potentially subversive
information and energy technologies was a vital part changing cultural perceptions that contributed to environmental decay” (ibid.). Therefore, the WEC appealed to
environmental conscience. It also played a large role in establishing the idea in
Californian entrepreneurs that digital technologies could be programmed harmoniously with the environment. However, as Brand eventually lamented, WEC might have fostered “unbridled technological optimism; the idea that innovation and invention guided by conscience could overcome even the worst social and environmental problems (375). Yet, the technological optimism inspired by Brand was a significant shift from the way computers were publicly understood. Fred Turner in his book, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism documents the emergence this digital utopianism, chronicling the allegiance between Silicon Valley and hippie cultures during the early years of computer development. Before the 1960s, “Computers loomed as technologies of dehumanization, of centralized
bureaucracy and the rationalization of social life” (2). This dynamic primarily arose from the computer’s initial employment in the Cold War, which consequently embedded the technology in dreary underground bunkers. Yet, in the 1990s, the Internet swept up the societal imagination, and drastically changed the discourse. For example, in 1995, Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman at MIT passionately exalted the Internet’s potential to, “Flatten organizations, globalize society, decentralize control, and help harmonize people” (Negroponte 182). In many ways, the Internet, and Cloud computing, now embody the counterculture agenda, challenging authoritarian institutions, ignoring social hierarches, and embracing political protest.
As Turner traced this shift in cultural perception, values originally voiced by the counterculture youth, such as “Empowered individualism, collaborative community, and spiritual communion,” (Turner 2) slowly turned to symbolize computer technology. Scholars such as Norbert Wiener, Buckminster Fuller, and Marshall McLuhan, and the emerging cybernetic discourses also provided these counterculturists with inspired rhetoric. As Turner describes,
To a generation that had grown up in a world beset by massive armies and by the threat of nuclear holocaust, the cybernetic notion of the globe as a single,
interlinked pattern of information was deeply comforting: in the invisible play of information, many thought they could see the possibility of global harmony (5).
Beset by ecological crisis, and frustrated by the established political hierarchies, stagnating bureaucracies, and rigid social activism, Brand and his cotemporaries were seduced by the utopic undertones in media scholarship, and subsequently advocated a turn away from politics and towards information technologies as the catalyst for social change. Interestingly, this enthusiasm for technology’s potential resonated with telecommunications executives, financial stock mark analysts, and conservative
politicians, showing the commanding influence the countercultural movement values and practices in the market and the state (8).
Overtime, Brand and his colleagues and associates at WEC, Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, (WELL), Global Business Network, and Wired, worked to,
Redefine the microcomputer as a ‘personal’ machine, computer communication networks as ‘virtual communities’, and cyberspace itself as the digital equivalent of the western landscape into which so many communards set forth in the late 1960s, the ‘electronic frontier’ (6).
Brand’s optimism signalled an important transition, in which computers slowly began shedding this image in favour of the familiar enthusiasm we associate today with iPhones and tablets. Before the WEC, computers were associated with the ominous military-scientific-industrial research paradigm, initially developed during World War Two and flourishing in service of the Cold war. Yet, the 1960s counterculture movement sough to reappropiate that conceptualization and,
The creators and readers of the Whole Earth Catalog helped to synthesize a vision of technology as a countercultural force that would shape public
understandings of computing and other machines long after the social movements of the 1960s had faded from view (ibid.).
As a result, computer technology was now closely related with the egalitarian rhetoric and decentralizing imaginations of the counterculture. Most recently, Cloud computing has endured similar praises, as commentaries and industry specialists acclaim Cloud
computing’s flexibility, efficiency, security, accessibility and environmental potential (Lynch). Yet, these values represent a specific historical evolution, which began with Brand’s technological fervour and his unique position within the early cybernetic community. This cybernetic narrative of digital utopianism from the counterculture
echoes the larger humanist discourses that applaud technological progress and scientific innovation. However, the echo of progress is contrasted by contemporary eco-critics of media theory Therefore, while the 1960s saw the growth of both critical and enthusiastic visions of technology’s role in the environment, contemporary academic literature from Sterns, Parks, and Maxwell and Miller is increasingly shifting away from that early optimism, aligning more closely with the ecological economists Schimacher, Daly and Mishan.
3.5 Tsunamis Of Electronic Waste
In Greening the Media, Maxwell and Miller’s revive the economic principles Schimacher, Daly and Mishan, continuing their methodology and deriding how the
ideology of indefinite growth has merged with the digital economy. This research, from Maxwell and Miller as well as Caradonna, aligns with Sterne’s argument regarding technological enchantment, explaining that “Widespread resistance to a critical, secular view of technology can be attributed to the technological sublime, a totemic, quasi-scared power that industrial societies have ascribed to modern
machinery and engineering” (4). As a result, depictions in popular and professional rhetoric rarely disrupt technology’s association with pleasure and plenitude (ibid.). Advertising campaigns such as Apple’s highly successful ‘Silhouette’ ads from 2004-2008 (Figure 1), with its relentlessly dynamic soundscape and enticing animated aesthetic, bombard consumers with values that, “Valorize novelty, speed, and style over the virtues of longevity, tinkering, and making do” (Parks, ‘Falling Apart’ 40). This hymnal of technological sublime, which originated with the “Advent of the train, the telegraph, and the photograph,” (Maxwell and Miller, ‘Ecological Ethics’ 338) anchors a
