COMS 230 Lecture Notes - Lecture 33: Network Society, Consumerism, Electronic Waste

• School: McGill University
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMS 230
• Professor: Cayley Sorochan

Document Summary

Infrastructure and labor two dimensions intrinsic to the conditions to network society. The things we don"t think about much when we"re using technologies. We"re going to look at a more broad digital labor: The digital industry as a whole from start to end. In the 90s, the kinds of relationships with the internet were referred to as virtual. They were seen as unreal symbolic realm that was separate from everyday reality. Since the 90s, this isn"t a common way of thinking. Now, they are integrated to our daily lives and they affect real space. In a much more literal sense, it is material because it depends on a physical infrastructure that are invisible to the average user. Thinking about the natural resources required to maintain and produce the network public sphere (no reading on this but it"s important so we"re covering it in class) The internet is made up of millions of miles of fiber optic cables, databanks, and servers.