Medianatures
The Materiality of Information Technology and Electronic Waste
edited by Jussi Parikka
Introduction: The Materiality of Media and Waste
Medianatures picks up from Donna Haraway’s idea of naturecultures – the topological continuum between nature and culture, the material entwining and enfolding of various agencies, meanings and interactions. Medianatures gives the concept of naturecultures a specific emphasis, and that emphasis is at the core of this living book. It is a useful concept and framework for investigating some of the ways in which our electronic and high-tech media culture is entwined with a variety of material agencies. The notion of ‘materiality’ is taken here in a literal sense to refer, for instance, to ‘plasma reactions and ion implantation’ (Yoshida, 1994: 105) – as in processes of semiconductor fabrication, or to an alternative list of media studies objects and components which are studied from an e-waste management perspective: ‘metal, motor/compressor, cooling, plastic, insulation, glass, LCD, rubber, wiring/electrical, concrete, transformer, magnetron, textile, circuit board, fluorescent lamp, incandescent lamp, heating element, thermostat, brominated flamed retardant (BFR)-containing plastic, batteries, CFC/HCFC/HFC/HC, external electric cables, refractory ceramic fibers, radioactive substances and electrolyte capacitors (over L/D 25 mm)’, and which themselves are constituted from a range of materials – plastics, wood, plywood, copper, aluminum, silver, gold, palladium, lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, selenium, hexavalent chromium and flame retardants (Pinto, 2008).
In short, media are of nature, and return to nature – where the production process for our media devices, from screens to circuits, networks to interfaces, involves the standardization and mass-mobilization of minerals and other materialities. Discarded media technologies are themselves part of such a regime of natural ‘things’ – whether picked apart in an Asian recycling village, or then left to decay in urban or rural places. The natural affords our cultural agencies and assemblages – including media practices and concrete devices – and all of that comes back to nature. The articles selected express this materiality at the core of media technological culture, and the various ecological ties these themes share with the current political economy. They range from perspectives in environmental sciences concerning e-waste and the management of electronic media remains to computer science and ideas in green computing – as well as showcasing articles and reports about the production and dismantling of things such as Cathode Ray Tubes and LCD-displays. Hence, this living book is not only about life, but also about death and dead media – but dead media in a very concrete sense of media as the death of nature, biological processes and organisms (including humans). (more)
Materials
Kevin Brigden and David Santillo
Toxic Chemicals in Computers Exposed: Determining the Presence of Hazardous Substances in Five Laptop Computers
Jason Holden and Christopher Kelty
The Environmental Impact of the Manufacturing of Semiconductors
Fumikazu Yoshida
High-Tech Pollution
Bernd Kopacek
ReLCD: Recycling and ReUse of LCD Panels
Richard W. Clapp
Mortality Among US Employees of a Large Computer Manufacturing Company: 1969-2001
Energetics
UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
ICT and CO2 Emissions
Olli Silven and Kari Jyrkkä
Observations on Power-Efficiency Trends in Mobile Communication Devices
Partha Pratim Ray
The Green Grid Saga -- A Green Initiative to Data Centers: A Review
Jonathan G. Koomey
Growth in Data Center Electricity Use 2005 to 2010
Willis Lang and Jignesh M. Patel
Towards Eco-friendly Database Management Systems
Matteo Pasquinelli
Four Regimes of Entropy. For an Ecology of Genetics and Biomorphic Media Theory
Waste
Jim Puckett and Ted Smith (eds)
Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia
Jonathan Linton, Julian Scott Yeomans, and Reena Yoogalingam
The Facilitation of Industrial Ecology, Product Take-Back, and Sustainability through the Forecasting of Television Waste Flows
Julian Scott Yeomans and Yavuz Günalay
Unsustainable Paradoxes Inherent in the International Legislation of Electronic Waste Disposal
Violet N. Pinto
E-waste Hazard: The Impending Challenge
S. Priyadharshini et al.
A Survey on Electronic Waste Management in Coimbatore
Ecosophy
Matthias Feilhauer and Soenke Zehle (eds)
Ethics of Waste in the Information Society - Special issue of International Review of Information Ethics
Jussi Parikka
Media Ecologies and Imaginary Media: Expansions, Contractions and Foldings
Garnet Hertz
Dead Media Research Lab
Redundant Technology Initiative
Appendix 1
Jennifer Gabrys
Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics