Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies
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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Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies
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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Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies

Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies

by Sean Cubitt
Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies

Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies

by Sean Cubitt

Paperback(New Edition)

$26.95 
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Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780822362920
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication date: 01/03/2017
Series: a Cultural Politics book Series
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 256
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.54(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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

What People are Saying About This

The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality - Nicholas Mirzoeff

"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."

Software Takes Command - Lev Manovich

"Sean Cubitt offers the first theoretical analysis of how ecology in its original sense (and its related concerns for climate change and the environment) can not only inform media studies, but change what media we create and how we create it. Unique in its broad philosophical and social science perspective and full of fresh, original, and timely insights, Finite Media will find eager audiences in media studies, science and technology studies, and related fields."

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