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Elemental Internet – Syllabus

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The internet is an elemental entity. This isn’t a poetic or metaphorical assertion but rather a recognition of the internet’s material nature that is vital for a complete understanding of its physicality within a planetary ecosystem. While the internet is all too often misrepresented as an intangible, amorphous idea, a mystical and infinite space that transcends physicality, the reality is quite contrary. I’ve recently begun to visit the internet. There, I’ve found cement, metal gates, water tanks, miles of solar farms, buzzing wires, fiber optic trenches, and towers. Data centers, often hidden from the everyday ‘user,’ house rows of blinking servers containing the vast contents of our digital lives. Inside these electronics lie conductive materials, silicon, and rare-earth minerals. We learn of the internet’s components through a series of metaphors: The Cloud, portals, sites, streams, and superhighways. They draw on the physical world yet negate any direct ties to the earth, or the c

Elemental Internet – Syllabus Elemental Internet by Kelley O’Leary The internet is an elemental entity. This isn’t a poetic or metaphorical assertion but rather a recognition of the internet’s material nature that is vital for a complete understanding of its physicality within a planetary ecosystem. While the internet is all too often misrepresented as an intangible, amorphous idea, a mystical and infinite space that transcends physicality, the reality is quite contrary. I’ve recently begun to visit the internet. There, I’ve found cement, metal gates, water

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