Sy Taffel

Perspectives on the postdigital: Beyond rhetorics of progress and novelty

The term postdigital has in recent years been applied across a broad range of disciplines, often with contradictory meanings. This article seeks to map the various definitions, deployments and appropriations of the term alongside undertaking a consideration of the underlying issues that the postdigital is argued to gesture towards. These issues, which pertain to contemporary (post)digital technologies and their relationships to discourses and practices surrounding novelty, materiality, embodiment, progress and the construction, comprehension, and control of contemporary urban spaces, are considered through the rhetorics associated with the multifarious manifestations of the postdigital and subsequently contrasted with numerous existing apertures that explore digital technoculture, including digital humanities, software studies, digital studies (following Bernard Stiegler) and media archaeology.

Invisible Bodies and Forgotten Spaces: Materiality, Toxicity, and Labour in Digital Ecologies

Discourses surrounding digital media technologies have long focused upon relationships between bodies, spaces, and technologies, but posthuman and cyborgian approaches primarily focus upon the end-users of technology. This chapter explores social and ecological costs attributable to the life-cycle of digital technologies which are often rendered invisible by this focus upon consumption in urban spaces. From the radioactive waste associated with mining rare earth elements, to the workers who earn US

Technofossils of the Anthropocene

1 a day treating highly toxic e-waste, behind the image of digital culture as “green” and “weightless”, we find numerous bodily harms enacted upon humans and nonhumans overwhelmingly located in spaces far removed from the primary sites of technological consumption.

Technofossils of the Anthropocene: Media, Geology, and Plastics

From the inception of modern, petrochemical-derived synthetic plastics to the contemporary situation in which over 300 million tons of plastic are produced each year, media assemblages and plastics constitute a range of intra-actions that contribute to our understanding of contemporary material politics. This article explores a number of issues surrounding entanglements of media and plastics, including the formation of vast oceanic plastic garbage patches, the treatment of highly toxic electronics waste, the usage of thermal papers that disrupt the human endocrine system, and the formation of technical fossils whose lack of biodegradability forms one strand of evidence within discourses of the Anthropocene. The material politics of plastics places into conversation temporal scales ranging from geological rhythms, which are measured in millions of years, to the hyperconsumption of 24/7 global capitalism, asking pertinent questions about how we conceptualize contemporary ethical and biopolitical issues surrounding humans and other living systems.

Escaping Attention: Digital Media Hardware, Materiality and Ecological Cost

From the inception of modern, petrochemical-derived synthetic plastics to the contemporary situation in which over 300 million tons of plastic are produced each year, media assemblages and plastics constitute a range of intra-actions that contribute to our understanding of contemporary material politics. This article explores a number of issues surrounding entanglements of media and plastics, including the formation of vast oceanic plastic garbage patches, the treatment of highly toxic electronics waste, the usage of thermal papers that disrupt the human endocrine system, and the formation of technical fossils whose lack of biodegradability forms one strand of evidence within discourses of the Anthropocene. The material politics of plastics places into conversation temporal scales ranging from geological rhythms, which are measured in millions of years, to the hyperconsumption of 24/7 global capitalism, asking pertinent questions about how we conceptualize contemporary ethical and biopolitical issues surrounding humans and other living systems.