Digital Rubbish A Natural History of Electronics / Jennifer Gabrys.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gabrys, Jennifer.

Series:

Digital culture books.

digitalculturebooks

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Electronic apparatus and appliances--History.

Electronic apparatus and appliances.

Electronic waste.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations; digital, HTML file(s).

Place of Publication:

University of Michigan Press 2011

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

text file

Summary:

This is a study of the material life of information and its devices; of electronic waste in its physical and electronic incarnations; a cultural and material mapping of the spaces where electronics in the form of both hardware and information accumulate, break down, or are stowed away. Electronic waste occurs not just in the form of discarded computers but also as a scatter of information devices, software, and systems that are rendered obsolete and fail. Where other studies have addressed ""digital"" technology through a focus on its immateriality or virtual qualities, Gabrys traces the material, spatial, cultural, and political infrastructures that enable the emergence and dissolution of these technologies. In the course of her book, she explores five interrelated ""spaces"" where electronics fall apart: from Silicon Valley to Nasdaq, from containers bound for China to museums and archives that preserve obsolete electronics as cultural artifacts, to the landfill as material repository. All together, these sites stack up into a sedimentary record that forms the ""natural history"" of this study. Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics describes the materiality of electronics from a unique perspective, examining the multiple forms of waste that electronics create as evidence of the resources, labor, and imaginaries that are bundled into these machines. By drawing on the material analysis developed by Walter Benjamin, this natural history method allows for an inquiry into electronics that focuses neither on technological progression nor on great inventors but rather considers the ways in which electronic technologies fail and decay. Ranging across studies of media and technology, as well as environments, geography, and design, Jennifer Gabrys pulls together the far-reaching material and cultural processes that enable the making and breaking of these technologies.

Contents:

Introduction : a natural history of electronics

Silicon elephants : the transformative materiality of microchips

Ephemeral screens : exchange at the interface

Shipping and receiving : circuits of disposal and the "social death" of electronics

Museum of failure : the mutability of electronic memory

Media in the dump : salvage stories and spaces of remainder

Conclusion : digital rubbish theory.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-219) and index.

CC BY-NC-ND

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780472900299

0472900293

9780472117611

0472117610

OCLC:

729735189

Publisher Number:

https://doi.org/10.3998/dcbooks.9380304.0001.001