From layers of rock and layers of records

A commentary on stacking

Abstract

This commentary on the article by Manuela Bojadžijev and Alexander Harder considers how their proposed approach of ethnographic thinking in layers and stacks could be further developed to more effectively challenge common narratives of the digital. Drawing on anthropological multiscalar research approaches and on infrastructure research, the author suggests two directions.First, through stack inversion, attention is drawn more strongly to the work required to keep stacking, and specifically the functioning of the internet, running at all. Secondly, building on this, a geology of digitality can be developed that analyses digitality as part of a global geography of the digital, always considering the exploitation of planetary resources.