Description: Nicole Starosielski examines the cultural dimensions of temperature and the history of thermal media such as thermostats and infrared cameras to theorize the ways heat and cold can be used as a means of communication, subjugation, and control.
Review Quotes: "In this dynamic and intellectually dazzling book, Nicole Starosielski grapples with complex technical principles of communication while framing them as historically and culturally conditioned and as politically and economically motivated. Starosielski's reconsideration of foundational communication models--looking beyond sender-receiver toward a more ambient and atmospheric sensibility--is necessary in an age when ubiquitous, continuous computing is fundamentally altering the atmosphere that hosts its signals. Media Hot and Cold is a model of innovative and masterful interdisciplinarity."--Shannon Mattern, author of "A City is not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences"