About this item
When we speak of clouds these days, it is as likely that we mean data clouds or network clouds as cumulus or stratus. In their sharing of the term, both kinds of clouds reveal an essential truth that the natural world and the technological world are not so distinct. In The Marvelous Clouds, John Durham Peters argues that though we often think of media as environments, the reverse isjust as trueenvironments are media. Peters defines media expansively as elements that compose the human world. Drawing from ideas implicit in media philosophy, Peters argues that media are more than carriers of messages they are the very infrastructures combining nature and culture that allow human life to thrive. Through an encyclopedic array of examples from the oceans to the skies, The Marvelous Clouds reveals the long prehistory of so-called new media.
About the Author
John Durham Peters was born in 1958 in the mountains of Utah, grew up on the east coast in the Greater Boston area, studied in Utah and California, and has spent at least five years abroad, mostly in Europe. He has taught many things to at least two generations of students at the University of Iowa, and learned many more from them. His books mostly ask questions about who we humans are and the many ways we connect to each other.
