數位文化的環境脈絡：身處於人類世的人文研究

Environments of Digital Culture: The Humanities in the Anthropocene

本場講座將探討為何需要將數位文化與運算視為當代環境議題與生態挑戰的一部分。我們可從兩個角度理解「數位文化的環境」：一方面，在不斷變化的地景中觀察數位化在具體場域中的影響；另一方面，數位文化的環境同時構成我們的生態處境，理解運算活動本身也涉及其對生態的影響與利害關係。
這種關注運算文化的行星尺度視角始於特定的地點：從芬蘭東南部的企業伺服器農場到臺灣的科技產業。這種視角既能揭示數據化在全球各地的影響，也有助於理解媒介研究不僅應關注傳統的人類溝通議題，也同樣有必要探討水資源與能源等環境問題。
近年來，環境媒介研究逐漸關注「人類世」下的地理面向。我希望延續這一脈絡，討論媒介與傳播研究，以及更廣泛的人文學科，在當前情境中能作出何種貢獻。當我們開始正視自身所留下的物質足跡時，我們生產知識的方式會發生哪些變化？例如，農業數據化等新興研究領域，如何與人文學科關注的核心議題——即大規模環境變遷時代的人類世——建立關聯？此外，我們是否也可基於這一主題探討方法論上的問題？

This talk will elaborate on why digital culture and computing need to be understood as part of our environmental questions and struggles. Environments of digital culture are approached in two ways: as the locations and places where digitality is visible in the changing landscapes; and how this environment is also our ecological situation and the ecological stakes of understanding computation.
This planetary scale focus on computational culture starts from specific places: corporate server farms in South-East Finland to tech industries in Taiwan. This perspective helps to investigate sites across the planet where the impact of datafication can be seen. It also helps to see why it makes sense for media studies to investigation questions of water and energy as much as it does traditional themes concerning human communication.
Recent years of environmental media research have started to focus on such aspects of geography of the Anthropocene and in a similar vein, I want to address what the field of media and communications, as well as the Arts and Humanities in general, can contribute. How do our ways of knowledge production change when we look at our own material footprint, and how do emerging new research fields, such as the datafication of agriculture, link to the biggest topics discussed in the Humanities, namely indeed the Anthropocene, the epoch of mass-scale environmental change. Can we also raise methodological questions based on this thematic investigation?