anthrobscene

Wikipedia = NONE

the anthrobscene

CONTEXT:

The Anthropocene is a proposed geologic chronological term for an epoch that begins when human activities have had a significant global impact on the Earth’s ecosystems.[1] The term—which appears to have been used by Russian scientists at least as early as the 1960s[2] to refer to the Quaternary, the most recent geological Period—was coined with a different sense in the 1980s[3] by ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer and has been widely popularized by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist, Paul Crutzen, who regards the influence of human behavior on the Earth’s atmosphere in recent centuries as so significant as to constitute a new geological epoch for its lithosphere. To date, the term has not been adopted as part of the official nomenclature of the geological field of study.

found the term here: http://www.newcriticals.com/deep-mining-deep-time/print

from this mini-book: http://www.amazon.com/Anthrobscene-Forerunners-Ideas-First-ebook/dp/B00OZ4MRIA/

“In a stunning essay-book titled The Anthrobscene, Jussi Parikka argues that our media era is fundamentally geophysical, that geology itself is a media resource, and that we need to understand media in terms of dynamic, accidental processes rather than as a library of static, solid objects.”

“Media theory demands a nonlinear and far more radical account of both materiality and time. In response, Parikka posits a new context, the anthrobscene, a play on the anthropocene, or the geological period started by humans. The context of the anthrobscene could potentially help us understand how our digital media – our devices, computers and networks – are inextricably tied to organic and inorganic materials and the hunt for energy.”

“The use of anthropocene as a base for this neologism is important, as the word can:

‘demonstrate that geology does not refer exclusively to the ground under our feet. It is constitutive of social and technological relations as well as environmental and ecological realities. Geology is de-territorialized in the concrete ways in which metal and minerals become mobile…'”

http://jussiparikka.net/2014/10/31/the-anthropocene-to-the-anthrobscene/

The Anthrobscene is now out and available as a short e-book in the new University of Minnesota Press series Forerunners. **The short book (77 pp) extends on the notion of the deep time of the media (Zielinski) to talk of the geological and electronic waste layers that characterize media technological materiality.**

…

**The sections outline  the idea of materialities of media in the context of the Anthropocene – the suggested and widely discussed term for the geological period where the human being has had such a significant effect on the planet to merit a new periodization. But the idea is to extend this to emphasize the obscenities of the environmental damage that works across natural, social and media ecology.**

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from Amazon:

Smartphones, laptops, tablets, and e-readers all at one time held the promise of a more environmentally healthy world not dependent on paper and deforestation. The result of our ubiquitous digital lives is, as we see in The Anthrobscene, actually quite the opposite: not ecological health but an environmental wasteland, where media never die. **Jussi Parikka critiques corporate and human desires as a geophysical force, analyzing the material side of the earth as essential for the existence of media and introducing the notion of an alternative deep time in which media live on in the layer of toxic waste we will leave behind as our geological legacy.** Forerunners is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital works. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.