While digital media give us the ability to communicate with and know the world, their use comes at the expense of an immense ecological footprint and environmental degradation. In Finite Media Sean Cubitt offers a large-scale rethinking of theories of mediation by examining the environmental and human toll exacted by mining and the manufacture, use, and disposal of millions of phones, computers, and other devices. The way out is through an eco-political media aesthetics, in which people use media to shift their relationship to the environment and where public goods and spaces are available to all. Cubitt demonstrates this through case studies ranging from the 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang to an image of Saturn taken during NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission, suggesting that affective responses to images may generate a populist environmental politics that demands better ways of living and being. Only by reorienting our use of media, Cubitt contends, can we overcome the failures of political elites and the ravages of capital.
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Sean Cubitt offers a large scale rethinking of theories of mediation by describing the ecological footprint of media. He investigates the energy, material, and space needed to create, operate, and dispose of electronic devices, and shows how changing how we use media is the only solution to planetary devastation.
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Acknowledgments  vii Introduction. Eco-mediation  1 1. Energy  13 2. Matter  63 3. Eco-political Aesthetics  151 4. Ecological Communication as Politics  169 Coda on Saturn  193 References  201 Index  237
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"This insightful book is replete with illuminating examples and case studies, with subtle arguments that will likely prove prescient in years to come."
"Sean Cubitt has accomplished an astonishing feat of synthesis, reading across fields as varied as waste management, fiber-optic cable installation, semiocapitalism, and net neutrality. His wide-ranging and remarkable project extends beyond the reach of infrastructure media studies to show how global capitalism is remaking the planet in its own image. An innovative and dynamic book."
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780822362920
Publisert
2017-01-03
Utgiver
Vendor
Duke University Press
Vekt
363 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet

Forfatter

Om bidragsyterne

Sean Cubitt is Professor of Film and Television, Goldsmiths, University of London, and the author of several books, most recently, The Practice of Light: A Genealogy of Visual Technologies from Prints to Pixels.