Key Questions for Communication and Critical-Cultural Studies: Posthumanism, Network Infrastructures, and Sustainability

Abstract

This essay addresses three key issues for critical-cultural studies: posthumanism, network infrastructures, and sustainability. The examples of Google Glass, Google's “Data Centers” online photo gallery, and James Cameron's film Avatar are used to briefly elaborate on the importance of these issues for critical-cultural studies, and to argue for the integration of materialist and representational forms of analysis.

Keywords:

• Posthumanism
• network infrastructures
• media waste
• e-waste
• sustainability
• material culture

Notes

[1] N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

[2] The Verge, I used Google Glass, YouTube video, 5 min.; 28 sec.; 22 Feb 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Tsrg_EQMw (accessed 15 March 2013).

[3] Strange Days. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Los Angeles, CA: Lightstorm Entertainment, 1995.

[4] Andrien Chen, “If you wear Google's New Glasses you are an Asshole,” Gawker, 13 March 2013, http://gawker.com/5990395/if-you-wear-googles-new-glasses-you-are-an-asshole (accessed 15 March 2013).

[5] GoogleDevelopers, Project Glass: Live Demo at Google I/O, YouTube video, 11 min.; sec.; 26 min., 27 June 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7TB8b2t3QE (accessed 15 March 2013).

[6] Lisa Parks, “‘Stuff You Can Kick’: Toward a Theory of Media Infrastructures,” in Humanities and the Digital, ed. David Theo Goldberg and Patrik Svensson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming).

[7] James Glanz, “Power, Pollution and the Internet.” New York Times, 22 September 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html (accessed 22 September 2012).

[8] James Glanz, “Power, Pollution and the Internet.” New York Times, 22 September 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html (accessed 22 September 2012).

[9] James Glanz, “Power, Pollution and the Internet.” New York Times, 22 September 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html (accessed 22 September 2012).

[10] “Google Data Centers,” Google, http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/ (accessed 15 March 2013).

[11] “Google Data Centers,” Google, http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/ (accessed 15 March 2013).

[12] James Hay, “The Birth of the ‘Neoliberal City’ and its Media.” In Communication Matters: Materialist Approaches to Media, Mobility and Networks, ed. Jeremy Packer and Stephen B. Crofts Wiley (New York: Routledge, 2012), 136.

[13] Ian Urbina, “Unwanted Electronic Geer Rising in Toxic Piles,” New York Times, 18 March 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/us/disposal-of-older-monitors-leaves-a-hazardous-trail.html (accessed 18 March 2013).

[14] Jonathan, Sterne, “Out with the Trash: On the Future of New Media.” In Residual media, ed. Charles R. Acland (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 17.

[15] Rick Maxwell and Toby Miller, Greening the Media (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 19.

[16] Rick Maxwell and Toby Miller, Greening the Media (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 10.

[17] Avatar. Directed by James Cameron. Los Angeles, CA: Lightstorm Entertainment, 2009.

[18] Charles Acland. “The End of James Cameron's Quiet Years.” In The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies. Vol. VI: Media Studies Futures, general ed. Angharad Valdivia, volume ed. Kelly Gates (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 288.

[19] Charles Acland. “The End of James Cameron's Quiet Years.” In The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies. Vol. VI: Media Studies Futures, general ed. Angharad Valdivia, volume ed. Kelly Gates (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 289.