Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics

by Jennifer Gabrys

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 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 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. Jennifer Gabrys is Senior Lecturer in Design and Convener of the Masters in Design and Environment in the Department of Design, Goldsmiths, University of London. Jacket Computer dump ©iStockphoto/Lya_Cattel. digitalculturebooks  is an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative and accessible work exploring new media and their impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication. Visit the website at www.digitalculture.org.

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment

242 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2011

Reviews

[Joe]

Some of the points Gabrys makes are painfully obvious--but still the terms "immaterial workers/economies" makes me want to puke and Gabrys provides a robust critique of techno-utopian dematerializing rhetorics (operative since Francis Bacon) of disembodied democratic economies of pure and liquid light--as these spaces and economies never reduce materiality but displace it. Fascinating, also, is the co-evolution of plastics and computing, the dispersal and automatization of NASDAQ, and a new informational economy in which the archive must constantly be salvaged through remediation. Will be useful as I fumble through questions of the distribution of (and poetics of) scale, speed, and value.


//////rare-earth wildcatting///////

read "free"/expend thermal life: http://www.digitalculture.org/books/d...

[jess liu · Rating 3 out of 5]

a non-exhaustive list of things i learned about: acid baths for microchips, fabrication labs, silicon valley's many superfund sites (https://www.epa.gov/superfund-redevel... // vs. SV's "virtual geography"), NASDAQ's "dematerialization," the dematerialization of information as "flows" in networks (Fritz Machlup; even noise/junk messages might contribute to value circulation+accumulation), the emergence of a culture of disposability and its link to automation after WWII, Moore's Law, the reliance of electronic archives on processes of continual turnover/transfer (as well as their extreme fragility), dust as an "ideal unit of recuperation." various points the author made got repetitive (references to benjamin and serres, for example) but i am so happy i read this

[Paz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a journey to understand the materiality of digital technologies following several and complex aspects of waste production.

The author also develops an accurate critique of zero-waste as a capitalistic idea of sustainability which conceals the material effects of economies and avoids the new imaginaries of production.

[Helen Varley]

full text online: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/...