Abstract

It is not only the physical digital media that pile waste upon waste in an era of built-in obsolescence driven by over-production attempting to balance the falling rate of profit. Energy used in the manufacture, employment and recycling of devices belongs to a system where waste is not merely accidental but integral to the operation of cognitive capitalism. Oil and gas, uranium and hydroelectricity all prey disproportionately on indigenous peoples, who are turned into economic externalities along with their lands. A parallel is drawn between the waste of power in generation and transmission, and the exploitation of human energy as excess under a cyborg capital that increasingly treats all humanity as external.