At the Edge of the Network: A Talk with Nicole Starosielski

“At the Edge of the Network: Undersea Cables and Deep Infrastructure”

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Nicole Starosielski
Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University Steinhardt

March 8th, 6:30-8:30pm
The Skylight Room, The Graduate Center
Free and open to the public

Over 99% of transoceanic data traffic is carried across the oceans by undersea cables—these technologies comprise the backbone of the global internet. This presentation will focus onSurfacing, a digital map that enables users to traverse the social worlds of the cable system and the unseen cultural formations that sustain everyday internet connections. Surfacing is both a project of infrastructural visibility, revealing the geographies of internet systems, and a critical experiment in digital cartography that challenges existing modes of vertical and lateral movement.