Critical perspectives

Materialities, Deep-time and the Anthropocene

EXERCISES

1. Why does the lecture argue that digital media are not immaterial?
   Identify at least three physical resources or infrastructures that make digital media possible.
2. Why can a smartphone be described as a “portable geological archive”?
   What minerals and global supply chains are embedded within it?
3. What is meant by the statement “the cloud does not float, it is grounded”?
   Explain what physical systems are hidden behind the metaphor of the cloud.
4. How does the concept of “deep time” challenge the way we normally think about media history?
   Compare human time scales with geological time scales.
5. In what ways do digital technologies reproduce older colonial or extractive relationships?
   Consider labor, resources, and global inequalities.
6. Who benefits from digital technologies and who bears their environmental and social costs?
   Provide concrete examples.
7. What is the difference between the Anthropocene and the “Anthropobscene”?
   Why might some theorists prefer the second term?
8. How does planned obsolescence contribute to environmental problems?
   Can you identify examples from your own experience?
9. The lecture states that “abstraction is political.” What do you think this means in relation to digital media?
   Reflect on how interfaces may hide underlying material realities.
10. How would Donna Haraway’s concept of “natureculture” help us understand digital media?
    Give an example that blurs the distinction between nature and technology.
11. How does Bruno Latour’s idea that nature and culture are inseparable challenge traditional views of technology?
12. What does Jussi Parikka mean by “zombie media”?
    Can you think of obsolete technologies that still affect the environment today?
13. Choose a device you use every day (phone, laptop, tablet, etc.).
    Research: Three materials used in its construction; Two environmental impacts associated with those materials; Two labor or social issues connected to their extraction or production.
14. Imagine you are designing a more sustainable digital future. Propose three interventions (technological, political, or social) that could reduce the environmental impact of digital media infrastructures.
15. When do millions of individual digital actions become a planetary transformation?

• Reflect on how seemingly insignificant activities (streaming a video, storing photos, using AI, scrolling social media) might accumulate into geological, environmental, and social consequences at a global scale.
• Author: Rui F. Antunes