COM598/CRD791 Special Topics: The Politics of Infrastructure and Software Spring 2018, Thursdays 1:30-4:15pm

Dr. Grant Bollmer (email: gdbollme@ncsu.edu)

Undersea cables. Server farms. Shipping containers and logistics. To understand the politics of daily life today means understanding the political and ecological power of these technologies. Through them, digital media and software intervene in shaping our world through materialities that remain invisible to the daily experience of most individuals, all while reshaping labor, perception, knowledge, sovereign boundaries, and the ecology of the planet itself. How can we address these technologies? Study them? Change them? This course examines a wide range of recent theoretical and historical approaches to infrastructure, software, and media, intended to help students begin theorizing and imagining ways to intervene in the agencies of these central actors of today’s digital culture.