Selected topics in the study of film.

The digital “cloud” is a real place. It is a patchwork of subsea fiber optic cables (the highways of the internet), internet exchanges (the transit hubs of the internet), and data centers (the interconnection points and storage centers of the internet). Although almost all global media transits through these infrastructures, they remain largely invisible—even to businesses, governments, and publics that rely on them. Fields ranging from media and communications to science and technology studies to anthropology have recently taken a turn toward infrastructure. Alongside this, interdisciplinary work in digital media studies has honed in on software, hardware, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. However, even with the increased visibility of data centers alongside the emergence of artificial intelligence, there remains scattered and inaccurate information about these systems' infrastructural foundations in both public discourse and academic work. This course will give you a broad introduction to the infrastructures that support almost all media circulation today, to the multidisciplinary areas of scholarly literature -- especially studies of media infrastructure -- that are addressing these technologies, and to the possible connections between academic research and real world impacts.

Repeat Rules