Grounding Digitalization: Technologies. Materialities, and Spaces

Abstract

Digitalization is usually perceived as an invisible process and its cultural embeddedness as well as its material, spatial, and environmental grounding are often neglected. However, digital technologies and transformations are shaped not only by cultural values, practices, and imaginaries, but also by network infrastructures and spatial orders. They consume environmental resources and cause high carbon dioxide emissions and electronic waste. At the same time, these materialities intervene in spaces, thereby reconfiguring socio-spatial arrangements. The contributors to this volume analyze digitalization from a »grounding« perspective that explores involved cultural practices, technologies, materialities, and spaces.