Onto-cartography: An Ontology of Machines and Media

This is a study of how space and time create objects, and how these objects interact. Using real-world examples, Bryant shows how a networked concept of space and time is at the heart of our central political concerns. What sort of interaction is there between, for example, slow-moving objects like climate and comparatively fast-moving objects like governments? How can they interact with each other given their very different lifespans? How do the Amish interact with the members of the stock market, and vice versa? How do members of congress, who always exist, interact with the temporally discontinuous objects of Congressional sessions that only meet during a certain session each year – flitting in and out of existence? It proposes a new form of social and political analysis – ‘onto-cartography’ – that looks at how relations between objects are forged by communication and causation. It draws on the social sciences, geography, new materialist thought and object-oriented ontology.