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Media Hot and Cold

Media Hot and Cold

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In Media Hot and Cold Nicole Starosielski examines the cultural dimensions of temperature to theorize the ways heat and cold can be used as a means of communication, subjugation, and control. Diving into the history of thermal media, from infrared cameras to thermostats to torture sweatboxes, Starosielski explores the many meanings and messages of temperature. During the twentieth century, heat and cold were broadcast through mass thermal media. Today, digital thermal media such as bodily air conditioners offer personalized forms of thermal communication and comfort. Although these new media promise to help mitigate the uneven effects of climate change, Starosielski shows how they can operate as a form of biopower by determining who has the ability to control their own thermal environment. In this way, thermal media can enact thermal violence in ways that reinforce racialized, colonial, gendered, and sexualized hierarchies. By outlining how the control of temperature reveals power relations, Starosielski offers a framework to better understand the dramatic transformations of hot and cold media in the twenty-first century. Nicole Starosielski examines the cultural dimensions of temperature and the history of thermal media such as thermostats and infrared cameras to theorize the ways heat and cold can be used as a means of communication, subjugation, and control. Nicole Starosielski is Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, author of The Undersea Network, and coeditor of Assembly Codes: The Logistics of Media, both also published by Duke University Press. Acknowledgments  ix
Preface: Of Temperature  xiii
Introduction: Media Hot and Cold  1
Part I
1. Thermostat: The Thermal Subjects of Broadcast Temperature  31
2. Coldsploitation: The Thermal Attractions of Cool Air  72
3. Sweatbox: The Thermal Violence of Weaponized Heat  109
Part II
4. Heat Ray: The Thermal Circuits of Radiant Media  135
5. Infrared Camera: The Thermal Vision of Heat Images  166
6. Computer: The Coldward Course of Media  191
Conclusion: Media after the Melt  219
Notes  225
Bibliography  255
Index  273

“Nicole Starosielski awakens our senses from their thermal slumber. Hot and cool, warm and cold are not only metaphors; they shape worlds. I finished this book with the caloric throb of the universe humming in my ears. Starosielski's media analysis is wonderfully both elemental and critical: temperature reveals both ontology and injustice. Media Hot and Cold invites us to a noncoercive rearrangement of affect.”
“In this dynamic and intellectually dazzling book, Nicole Starosielski grapples with complex technical principles of communication while framing them as historically and culturally conditioned and as politically and economically motivated. Starosielski's reconsideration of foundational communication models—looking beyond sender-receiver toward a more ambient and atmospheric sensibility—is necessary in an age when ubiquitous, continuous computing is fundamentally altering the atmosphere that hosts its signals. Media Hot and Cold is a model of innovative and masterful interdisciplinarity.”
"The intense media focus on climate change makes this meditation on the cultural significance of temperature coolly topical."
“Apart from media studies students and scholars, anyone interested in temperature and how it is managed, controlled, manipulated, and distributed will find Media Hot and Cold an incredible story of how temperatures determine lived experience. In this final call to arms, Starosielski polemicizes a future for media studies attendant to its world-building and world-sustaining capacities.”

Additional information

Weight 1 oz
Dimensions 1 × 6 × 9 in