Home Cultural Studies Introduction: The Logistics of Media
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Introduction: The Logistics of Media

View more publications by Duke University Press
Assembly Codes
This chapter is in the book Assembly Codes
media and LogistiCs are gLobaL oPerating systems. They set con-ditions for the circulation of information and culture. They activate invento-ries of materials and networks of infrastructure. They coordinate interfaces between bodies, objects, and environments. Deployed in ongoing projects of capitalization and exploitation, often in the name of global connection, consumption, and security, they affect the day-to-day lives of people around the world. And they are inextricably entangled with one another. Even the text of this book has been enclosed in packets, transmitted, and reassembled innumerable times—a process guided by logistical principles. The materials that constitute it, whether printed on paper or housed in Amazon’s cloud storage, were transmitted via trucks, containers, pallets, and hands, their movement likely managed using logistical software. Logistics—the organ-ization and coordination of resources to manufacture and distribute global commodities—depends not only on software and data infrastructures but on a mass of screens, communications devices, and paperwork.Assembly Codes is the first collection to critically interrogate the specific points of contact, dependence, and friction between media and logistics. We argue that the fundamental interconnections between these two systems are essential not only to understanding both of their operations but to the con-temporary circulation of culture on a global scale. To describe the dynamics of media today—its production and industries, its vast infrastructures, its material forms, and its global movements—a basic conception of the supply MATTHEW HOCKENBERRY, NICOLE STAROSIELSKI, AND SUSAN ZIEGERINTRODUCTIONThe Logistics of Media
© 2021 Duke University Press, Durham, USA

media and LogistiCs are gLobaL oPerating systems. They set con-ditions for the circulation of information and culture. They activate invento-ries of materials and networks of infrastructure. They coordinate interfaces between bodies, objects, and environments. Deployed in ongoing projects of capitalization and exploitation, often in the name of global connection, consumption, and security, they affect the day-to-day lives of people around the world. And they are inextricably entangled with one another. Even the text of this book has been enclosed in packets, transmitted, and reassembled innumerable times—a process guided by logistical principles. The materials that constitute it, whether printed on paper or housed in Amazon’s cloud storage, were transmitted via trucks, containers, pallets, and hands, their movement likely managed using logistical software. Logistics—the organ-ization and coordination of resources to manufacture and distribute global commodities—depends not only on software and data infrastructures but on a mass of screens, communications devices, and paperwork.Assembly Codes is the first collection to critically interrogate the specific points of contact, dependence, and friction between media and logistics. We argue that the fundamental interconnections between these two systems are essential not only to understanding both of their operations but to the con-temporary circulation of culture on a global scale. To describe the dynamics of media today—its production and industries, its vast infrastructures, its material forms, and its global movements—a basic conception of the supply MATTHEW HOCKENBERRY, NICOLE STAROSIELSKI, AND SUSAN ZIEGERINTRODUCTIONThe Logistics of Media
© 2021 Duke University Press, Durham, USA
Downloaded on 8.10.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781478013037-003/html?licenseType=restricted&srsltid=AfmBOopqS5SqvY78o87ZZ9dSXKdn-oVfO2WNeHtmoa1GsoIwy583afCS
Scroll to top button