Assistant Professor of Communication Mél Hogan, along with Andrea Zeffiro of Brock University, published, “Out of Site & Out of Mind: Speculative Historiographies of Techno Trash,” in NANO Issue 7: The Aesthetics of Trash.

In the project, they consider the ecological and ethical dilemmas posed by the production, consumption, and disposal of technologies.

They write, “…any new technology is always already obsolete. Planned technological obsolescence translates into performance upgrades, additional hardware sales, future profits, and a sense of consumer status that breeds enthusiasm for novelty, as Jonathan Sterne has pointed out (33-35). Within this model of production, the future is equated with economic growth, which is in turn rooted in the quest for the always already new. But, so long as the future is measured in terms of economic models, our future is trash, or as Sabine LeBel suggests, wasted (1-19).”

Read the full essay here.

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