Lisa Parks

Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures - The Geopolitics of Information Lisa Parks

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.; The contributors to 'Signal Traffic' investigate how the material artifacts of media infrastructure - transoceanic cables, mobile telephone towers, Internet data centers, and the like - intersect with everyday life. Essayists confront the multiple and hybrid forms networks take, the different ways networks are imagined and engaged with by publics around the world, their local effects, and what human beings experience when a network fails. Biographical Note: Lisa Parks is director of the Center for Information Technology and Society and professor of film and media studies at University of California at Santa Barbara. She is the author of Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual. Nicole Starosielski is assistant professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University. Review Quotes: "The first and only collection of its kind I know. This book is going to be a big deal, both nationally and internationally." --Vicki A. Mayer, author of "Below the Line: Producers and Production Studies in the New Television Economy"Publisher Marketing: The contributors to Signal Traffic investigate how the material artifacts of media infrastructure--transoceanic cables, mobile telephone towers, Internet data centers, and the like--intersect with everyday life. Essayists confront the multiple and hybrid forms networks take, the different ways networks are imagined and engaged with by publics around the world, their local effects, and what human beings experience when a network fails. Some contributors explore the physical objects and industrial relations that make up an infrastructure. Others venture into the marginalized communities orphaned from the knowledge economies, technological literacies, and epistemological questions linked to infrastructural formation and use. The wide-ranging insights delineate the oft-ignored contrasts between industrialized and developing regions, rich and poor areas, and urban and rural settings, bringing technological differences into focus. Contributors include Charles R. Acland, Paul Dourish, Sarah Harris, Jennifer Holt and Patrick Vonderau, Shannon Mattern, Toby Miller, Lisa Parks, Christian Sandvig, Nicole Starosielski, Jonathan Sterne, and Helga Tawil-Souri." Contributor Bio:  Parks, Lisa Lisa Parks is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She is the author of Cultures in Orbit: Satellite Technologies and Visual Media.