How Climate Change Will Kill the Internet: A Forecast

black and white headshot of Nicole Starosielski
Monday, Apr 19 2021, 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM, Virtual Event
Contact:
Society, Culture, Thought Program

Monday, Apr 19 2021 7:00 PM Monday, Apr 19 2021 8:30 PM America/New_York How Climate Change Will Kill the Internet: A Forecast OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | This talk is a forecast of what will happen to the undersea cable system, internet infrastructure, and the content it circulates in the wake of climate change. Virtual Event Bennington College

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | This talk is a forecast of what will happen to the undersea cable system, internet infrastructure, and the content it circulates in the wake of climate change. It outlines how climate change could disrupt the cable system—ecologically, logistically, and geopolitically. Environmentally, subsea sediment circulation will increase, storm surges will be more common, and floods will threaten the cable station. Logistically, climate change will intensify existing chokepoints in the cable system. Geopolitically, climate change will alter the topography of internet infrastructure. Collectively, this sets the stage for disaster capitalism on the level of network infrastructure. It will be an opportunity to disrupt many of the ways of doing things that have lasted for over a century. The final part of this talk focuses on the ramifications for this in terms of the content and information circulated on the internet.

Nicole Starosielski is Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Her research focuses on the connections between media, infrastructures, and environments. She is author of The Undersea Network (2015) and Media Hot and Cold (forthcoming, 2021), as well as co-editor of Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructure (2015), Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment (2016), Assembly Codes: The Logistics of Media (forthcoming, 2021), and the “Elements” series at Duke University Press.

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