#stacktivism

Material Politics: Disputes Along the Pipeline

In Material Politics, author Andrew Barry reveals that as we are beginning to attend to the importance of materials in political life, materials has become increasingly bound up with the production of information about their performance, origins, and impact.

Presents an original theoretical approach to political geography by revealing the paradoxical relationship between materials and politics
Explores how political disputes have come to revolve not around objects in isolation, but objects that are entangled in ever growing quantities of information about their performance, origins, and impact
Studies the example of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline – a fascinating experiment in transparency and corporate social responsibility – and its wide-spread negative political impact
Capitalizes on the growing interdisciplinary interest, especially within geography and social theory, about the critical role of material artefacts in political life

:: Must read Sample chapter ::

via textdump

Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life: Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

michaelguse:

Very interesting book, especially in light of today’s social and business networks! It has some technical detail in it, but it should be interesting to anyone who wants to learn about networks, inter-connectedness, and what influences those relationships.
Enjoy!
Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life
A cocktail party? A terrorist cell? Ancient bacteria? An international conglomerate? All are networks

America in Ruins: The Decaying Infrastructure

America in Ruins, Choate and Walter, 1981

On the Grid A Plot of Land, an Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make our World Work Wires, pipes, roads, and water support the lives we lead, but the average person doesn’t know where they go or even how they work. Our systems of infrastructure are not only shrouded in mystery, many are woefully out of date.

In On the Grid, Scott Huler takes the time to understand the systems that sustain our way of life, starting from his own quarter of an acre in North Carolina and traveling as far as Ancient Rome.

Each chapter follows one element of infrastructure to its source – or to its outlet. Huler visits power plants, watches new asphalt pavement being laid, and traces a drop of water backward from his faucet to the Gulf of Mexico and then a drop of his wastewater out to the Atlantic. Huler reaches out to guides along the way, both the workers who operate these systems and the people who plan them.

Mesmerizing and often hilarious, On the Grid brings infrastructure to life and details the ins and outs of our civilization with fascinating, back-to-basics information about the systems we all depend on.

- this book looks great! pure #stacktivism

*adds to reading list*