Beyond the screen lies the Earth's long memory.
From fossils to planetary computing,
Expanding the horizons of media philosophy to planet Earth!
Wires and data, waste and dust—the genealogy of technology begins in the ground.

Recently, as soon as China pulled out the rare earth card to counter the US tariff war, the situation suddenly reversed.
We are helpless against China's strategy of building a meticulous rare earth supply chain over 40 years.
China seems to have known that rare earths would be the ultimate game changer for all media and cutting-edge technology.
Geology of Media is a book by Jussi Parika, a renowned Finnish philosopher and media theorist, that presents radical thinking about media.
According to his argument, media is not just a means of human communication.
This book traces the entanglements of technology and nature, the co-evolution of the Earth and information, and the extractive economics of digital capitalism through the material foundations that make up media: rare earth metals, silicon, minerals, and hazardous waste.
Digital doesn't float in the air.
It is a condensation of deep resources created over hundreds of millions of years, from the ecology of electronic waste created by modern technology, to pre-industrial geological accumulations, to geological materials made of copper, coltan, lithium and silicon.
This book, which simultaneously stimulates ethical and sensory thinking with a new critical spirit that crosses geology, ecology, the philosophy of technology, and media theory, will be an invaluable landmark for readers interested in media archaeology, ecological media theory, and the philosophy of materiality.

All media technologies imply in their models a certain relationship to ecology and nature, whether through resources or otherwise.
Such media technologies utilize specific material production chains.
…at the same time, media technologies are also important technological epistemological devices through which the concepts of ‘Earth’ and ‘planetary’ are constructed.

--- p.9

I invite readers to consider this book within the context of the massive, planetary computing we call artificial intelligence (and its variants) and within the context of a geopolitical framework that defines media beyond interfaces to logistical media, infrastructure, and supply chains.
Through this, I propose to view the contemporary media situation as a system that fundamentally governs the Earth by treating it as a resource, and further as part of the problem of extractivism.

--- p.
10

This short book explores the culture of science, the realities of technology, and artistic perspectives, placing science and technology in a multidisciplinary context related to media studies and the history of media art.
While this book does not claim to be a comprehensive account of the relationship between geology and technology, it aims to share meaningful insights with those in the fields of media, art, and contemporary technology studies, including media archaeology.

--- p.12~13

This book focuses on the connection between media technologies and their materiality, hardware, and energy with geophysical properties.
That property is nature, enduring and bearing the weight of media culture, from metals and minerals to the waste load it produces.

--- p.13

The conceptual foundation that guides this book is geology.
Geology is the science of the ground beneath our feet, its history and composition, and the systematic study of the various levers, layers, strata, and interconnections that define the Earth.
This suggests that geotechnical and geotechnical work is not only a specific way of interacting with the solidity of the Earth, but also a sophisticated measurement technique linked to a broader awareness of the environmental composition of our lives.

--- p.
28

Geology is not only about the soil, crust, and strata that form the foundation of our lives, but also about climate change and the political economy of industrial and post-industrial production.
It connects with the broader world of geophysical life that supports biological life as much as it does with the technological world of transmission, computation, and storage.
Geology has become a way to study the materiality of the technological media world.
It has become a conceptual trajectory of contemporary cultural history and seeks creative intervention in it.

--- p.
28

Various related disciplines and fields of knowledge, such as geology, chemistry, and ecology, frame the modern world and give it a possible scientific structure.
These disciplines are strongly implied in the emergence of technological and scientific culture, which is the source of our media cultural practices.
That is why I am interested in exploring the characteristics of media materialism outside the general definition of media.

--- p.12~13

If the rise of industrialization and the resulting sulfur dioxide emissions from mines, refineries, and coal-fired power plants since the 19th century have been treated by poets as dramatic aesthetic and ecological changes, either celebrated or critically narrated, contemporary technological art is doing similar work (though in many cases, it engages directly with the material world of geophysics on a practical level).

--- p.
38

Our relationship with the Earth is mediated by technologies and techniques such as visualization, sonification, computation, mapping, prediction, and simulation.
Through media, we perceive the Earth as an object of cognitive, practical, and affective relations.
…geology unearths the secrets of the Earth and its planet, offering a perspective not only on the present moment unfolding with its potential for future development, but also on the past buried beneath our feet.
Depth becomes time.

--- p.
44~45

The underground is another important geological site in the geology of media (art).
Hell is located underground, and in Western mythology it is defined as a place with chemical properties such as the smell of sulfur and the toxicity of carbon dioxide.
This is why, since Virgil's Aeneid, the underworld has been known as a place where all animals that approach it die.
The underground is central to the technological imagination of modernity.
It is a space for the future that technology has been implementing since the 19th century, and an artistic avant-garde that breaks away from the mainstream.

--- p.
43

The history of media is a story about the relationship between organic and inorganic matter, as well as the materials needed for production, and the waste resulting from their use and misuse.
Media history engages in the narrative of global expansion through colonialism and the resource rush.
It draws a global map of increasingly depleted territories, including valuable resources like minerals, oil, and other energy resources like uranium.

--- p.
71~72