Comment on FCJ-116 Media Ecologies and Imaginary Media: Transversal expansions, Contractions, and Foldings ( Marisol Vasquez Non-Core Post 12 / 10 )

For this week, Jussi Parikka’s “FCJ-116 Media Ecologies and Imaginary Media: Transversal expansions, Contractions, and Foldings” constituted one of my choices from the website. I decided to review this work because I have also been contemplating the intersections of media (ecology) and nature. The rhetorical question he posits in the introductory portions have held some tremendous fascination for me: “In this context I find their rhetorical question concerning non-human media intriguing: ‘Can ‘natural media” with its different agencies and sensorium [sic] help to rethink human media, revealing opportunities for action or areas of mutual interest?’” (Parikka 2). However, after reading Parikka’s work, I do feel there is some argumentation missing regarding the processes of labor and abstraction that occur through the production of media. As much of this class has articulated, not every body that draws a relationality to media and the production of technology is created equally, there are various networks of users and devalued laborers who interact with technology. While I do not necessarily contest Parikka’s claims that “Media ecology” encompasses “a number of processes, objects and modes of perception, mobility, and relationality that are not usually seen as media in its modern, cultural sense,” I believe that this “expanded” conception of media he puts forth could include a consideration of the different hierarchies of labor and value that were discussed last week and that Jonathan Beller touches upon. For example, does coltan mining, the extraction of rare earth metals like indium, terbium, and lithium, have a different relationship to both bodies and ecology when considering the devaluation of extracted labor? I know this lengthy discussion is not the goal of Parikka's essay, but it did generate some doubts for me. 

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Edit: I just finished the environmental computation essay and now realize the author addresses more of my concerns mentioned here that Parikka seemed to evade. I honestly feel a little ambivalent about some of Parikka's writing's that I have encountered this semester, either hit or miss for me.