[[../writing/Bibliography]] John Durham Peters, *The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media* Media are not only devices of information; they are also agencies of order. They not only send messages about human doings and our relations with our ecological and economic systems; they are also, in the expanded sense of the media concept that I will argue for, constitutive parts of those systems. Humans and their craft have entered into nature and have altered every system on earth and sea, and many in the sky, to the point that “nature,” understood as something untouched by humans, only exists on earth where humans have chosen to set it apart as “natural.” The human steering of nature, of course, does not guarantee smooth sailing, and stormy weather is blowing on the ship from several directions. In light of both the possible irreversible threat to our habitat by climate change and the explosion of digital devices, of both carbon overload in the atmosphere and superabundant data in the “cloud,” it is good to open again the relationship of media to nature. – p.1, John Durham Peters, *The Marvelous Clouds* ^50d6ee Media, I will argue, are vessels and environments, containers of possibility that anchor our existence and make what we are doing possible. The idea that media are message- bearing institutions such as newspapers, radio, television, and the Internet is relatively recent in intellectual history. – p.2, John Durham Peters, *The Marvelous Clouds* ^1ee4b2 In a time when it is impossible to say whether the nitrogen cycle or the Internet is more crucial to the planet’s maintenance, I believe we can learn much from a judicious synthesis, difficult though it be, of media understood as both natural and cultural. If media are vehicles that carry and communicate meaning, then media theory needs to take nature, the background to all possible meaning, seriously.… The ozone layer, the arctic ice, and whale populations all are now what they are not only because of how they are covered by reporters, but because of how their being is altered by media, understood as infrastructures of data and control. -p.2 ^232f27 People have always interacted across distances of time and space, but digital media intensify opportunities and troubles in person- to- person dealings. …Social media invite us to think freshly about the communicative affordances of presence and the many mediations of the body. The body is the most basic of all media, and the richest with meaning, but its meanings are not principally those of language or signs, reaching instead into deep wells stocked with vaguer limbic fluids. The body is not one with itself: it is a network. – p.6, John Durham Peters, *The Marvelous Clouds* ^8e9c20 Digital media reactivate not only these old limbic fluids, but older forms of data use. Unlike the mass media of the twentieth century, digital media traffic less in content, programs, and opinions than in organization, power, and calculation. Digital media serve more as logistical devices of tracking and orientation than in providing unifying stories to the society at large. Digital media revive ancient navigational functions: they point us in time and space, index our data, and keep us on the grid. -p.7 Every medium, whether our bodies or our computers, is an ensemble of the natural and the artificial – p.9, John Durham Peters, *The Marvelous Clouds* ^c11d1a Seeing communication as disclosure of being rather than clarity of signal frees up the notion of “medium” for greater service. The media of sea, fire, star, cloud, book, and Internet all anchor our being profoundly, even if we can’t say what they mean. … Once communication is understood not only as sending messages— certainly an essential function— but also as providing conditions for existence, media cease to be only studios and stations, messages and channels, and become infrastructures and forms of life. These material, environmental senses inform the recent reach of the media concept beyond messages to habitats. -p.14 Media are our infrastructures of being, the habitats and materials through which we act and are. This gives them ecological, ethical, and existential import. -p.15 Infrastructures can be defined as “large, force- amplifying systems that connect people and institutions across large scales of space and time” or “big, durable, well- functioning systems and services.”39 Often they are backed by states or public- private partnerships that alone possess the capital, legal, or political force and megalomania to push them through. From Cheops to Stalin, infrastructures have been the playthings of dictators and tyrants; the Internet might seem a departure because of its apparent lack of centralized control, but there is plenty of state and market power shaping its development. Because of their vast technical complexity and costs, infrastructures are often cloaked from public scrutiny, their enormous risks and unintended consequences shielded from open debate. - p.31, John Durham Peters, *The Marvelous Clouds* ^c31f73 We have the unhelpful habit of isolating the bright, shiny, new, or scary parts of our made environment and calling them “technology,” to the neglect of the older, seemingly duller parts. -p.36, John Durham Peters, *The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media* ^8c3fdb Media and/as Nature The concept of media, as noted, was connected to nature long before it was connected to technology.… *Medium* has always meant an element, environment, or vehicle in the middle of things. -p.46, John Durham Peters, *The Marvelous Clouds* ^3df2b1 Today natural facts are media, and cultural facts have elemental imprint. We can see the Internet as a means of existence, in some ways close to water, air, earth, fire, and ether in its basic shaping of environments. -p.49, John Durham Peters, *The Marvelous Clouds* ^081243 The questions of how to define nature, humans, and media are ultimately the same question. We know and use nature only through the artifacts we make— both out of nature and out of our own bodies— and these artifacts can enter into nature’s own history. -p.51, John Durham Peters, *The Marvelous Clouds* ^834e42