Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet

Description

Grappling with the consequences of wiring our world, Program Earth examines how sensor technologies are programming our environments. Jennifer Gabrys suggests that the sensor-based monitoring of Earth offers the prospect of making new environments not simply as an extension of the human but rather as new "technogeographies" that connect technology, nature, and people.

Jennifer Gabrys is a reader in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics.

"Jennifer Gabrys deftly synthesizes fields and lines of inquiry in weaving a signature story of our age, working across intellectual planes and variegated systems and networks. Program Earth is a tantalizing account of digital, citizen-sensing worlds in the making."-Kevin McHugh, Arizona State University "Impressive and original, Program Earth is not just concerned with the collection and dissemination of data, but also-and more crucially-with the transformation of these data and with their effects."-Steven Shaviro, author of The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism "Full of stimulating ideas and provocative reframings of environmental concerns that are sure to spark further research."-American Journal of Sociology "Readers will revel in extensively written case studies as well as the contemplative opportunity to challenge, with renewed conceptual tools, the urgent notion of the environment."-Cultural Geographies "Jennifer Gabrys' book is a timely publication that combines empirical insights with a necessary speculative attitude in an emerging field."-Tecnosciencza "This sociological treatise is a valuable contribution for historians of technology... Program Earth succeeds in raising multiple epistemological and political issues intertwining sensing technologies, infrastructures, democracy, and power."-Technology and Culture