A Geology of Media (Volume 46)

Electronic Mediations

by Jussi Parikka

Media history is millions, even billions, of years old. That is the premise of this pioneering and provocative book, which argues that to adequately understand contemporary media culture we must set out from material realities that precede media themselves—Earth’s history, geological formations, minerals, and energy. And to do so, writes Jussi Parikka, is to confront the profound environmental and social implications of this ubiquitous, but hardly ephemeral, realm of modern-day life. Exploring the resource depletion and material resourcing required for us to use our devices to live networked lives, Parikka grounds his analysis in Siegfried Zielinski’s widely discussed notion of deep time—but takes it back millennia. Not only are rare earth minerals and many other materials needed to make our digital media machines work, he observes, but used and obsolete media technologies return to the earth as residue of digital culture, contributing to growing layers of toxic waste for future archaeologists to ponder. He shows that these materials must be considered alongside the often dangerous and exploitative labor processes that refine them into the devices underlying our seemingly virtual or immaterial practices. A Geology of Media demonstrates that the environment does not just surround our media cultural world—it runs through it, enables it, and hosts it in an era of unprecedented climate change. While looking backward to Earth’s distant past, it also looks forward to a more expansive media theory—and, implicitly, media activism—to come.
 

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, History, Theory, Research, Cultural, Environment

224 pages, Paperback

First published March 17, 2015

About the author

Jussi Parikka is a Finnish new media theorist and Professor in Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University, Denmark. He is also Professor in Technological Culture & Aesthetics at Winchester School of Art as well as Visiting Professor at FAMU at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.

Reviews

[August Bourré · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally got around to this. A few good things in here, but not at all what I was expecting. Lots of theorizing about materialism almost as a way to distance oneself from the physical reality of materialism, if that makes sense. Laments for Foxconn factory workers while simultaneously trying to figure out how to use their suffering to make avant garde art projects accessible (both physically and intellectually) only to wealthy Europeans.

What ultimately made me decide the book as a whole was a failure was when he took up the issue of respiratory illnesses in Foxconn factory workers, and seemed to decide it was more interesting as a metaphor than as a fact in the world to be confronted.

[Britni Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

The appendix was definitely the best/most useful chapter for me. (But I definitely didn't care for his use of "anthrobscene" throughout the book. Sure it was a cute play on words the first time. The other 20 usages were just annoying.)

[Dong]

Very rich in materials and examples, but light on theories and critical reflections.
Fav chapter: 'Fossil Futures'

[melancholinary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of course planned obsolescence (and perceived obsolescence) take a great part on our incapability to trace the mineral-footprint inside every technical media we are facing everyday. In our consumer society, black-box inside any contemporary consumer electronic is a necessity in order to keep the tradition of planned obsolescence. We should look the notion of black-box not exclusively on its functionality, but through its materiality to the point that the exploitation of mineral and labour is visible.

What we can do? Well, according Jussi Parikka, media archeology and contemporary art method of tracing materiality in an object might be a good start. When most of the technological tools is manufactured by a corporation (and sometimes military), a more ethical alternative on the development of new media is needed. This alternative could be conceived by understanding the media archeology.

[etogeid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Este libro nos lo recomendó una profesora de una materia (que es medio una fiaca) y la tipa cuando te recomienda algo no es que te lo recomienda y ya, sino que te obliga a aceptar y tomar su recomendación. No me quedó otra que leerlo. La verdad que es una falopeada, onda el hecho de relacionar la evolución geológica de la tierra con la historia de los medios (de comunicación, audiovisuales, tecnológicos, medios en general) es algo que nunca me lo hubiera imaginado. El libro es predominantemente un libro de ecología, maneja bastante lenguaje cientifico. Tiene cosas interesantes como lo del impacto ecológico que tiene el arte, el concepto del antropoceno, lo del tiempo y el sonido profundo. Pero en general es un libro bastante denso y medio bodrio, encima lo tuve que leer en inglés porque no lo conseguí en español. Qué decir. Bueno nos vemos en la reseña de memorias de una geisha!!!

[Vanessa Lorenzo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most impresive story that influenced the understanding of the rest of the book (and actually how I think-with soil media now) was the one about the Earth screaming. I like the way the author plays with the words while talking about, otherwise, a very heavy subject. Funk the space, let's dig into soil.

[Ignacio A V · Rating 3 out of 5]

1.nivel d obsesión: me he leido 1 libro d geologia¿? xq mencionaba a donna haraway en la contraportada. 2.igual q en el mundo d los medios digitales dl antropobsceno q todo se consume muy rapido creo q esto tb ocurre en libros como este q se puede notar q está publicado hace 10 años (y especialmente antes dl covid). 3.libro muymuy documentado y q ofrece perspectivas interesantes x otro lado.

[Guada G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hermoso y fascinante ♡

[Bertha Bella Duygu Nas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant and subtle analysis that uncovers and explains how media cultural objects ground with the soil, what components and materials enable the information technology, and political economy behind the industrial and postindustrial production.