The Anthrobscene is a provocation. Parikka argues, with eloquence and force, that we need alternative contexts and better frameworks in which to discuss media. Though we may experience our digital age as heady, there are ethical risks to being too consumed by abstractions.
Exploring the anthrobscene potentially offers a new “techno-political vocabulary of the geophysical and the underground.” This new vocabulary would more clearly describe the story of what is done, and who is exploited, to extract, excavate and warp minerals into the digital.
It would also frame our earnest efforts to tap, sound, siphon and overturn the earth, within the staggering Big Picture Frame of erosion, condensation, cycling back to erosion.