Your Computer is on Fire!

January 15, 2020     #publication

In a forthcoming edited volume from MIT Press (spring 2020) called Your Computer is on Fire, I have a chapter that explores the role of supply chains and logistics in the digital economy. I expect the book to be available online very soon now!

UPDATE: The book is now out! For more information, visit MIT Press

See also this discussion of the book and its reception on my main faculty blog. https://homes.luddy.indiana.edu/nensmeng/posts/2021/02/14/yciof/

For an excerpt of the book, published in Fast Company, see https://homes.luddy.indiana.edu/nensmeng/posts/2021/05/20/yciof-excerpt/

Currently Reading (summer 2019)

August 24, 2019     #readings

Here is what I am currently reading. You can find the complete archive here.


DeLoughrey, E. M., & Handley, G. B. (Eds.). (2011). Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment. Oxford University Press.

Schwoch, J. (2018). Wired into Nature: The Telegraph and the North American Frontier. University of Illinois Press.

Freeman, J. B. (2018). Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World (First edition). W.W. Norton & Company.

Mattern, S. C. (2017). Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media. University of Minnesota Press.

Elvin, M. (2006). The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China. Yale University Press.

Lecture at Princeton

April 17, 2019     #talk

On April 17 I will be giving a lecture on my work on the environmental history of computing at the Princeton University Environmental Humanities Forum

The Environmental History of Computing

December 30, 2018     #publication

I have a new article in the latest issue of the journal Technology & Culture on “The Environmental History of Computing. T&C is the premier journal in the history of technology, and so this is a wonderful opportunity to get this material out in front of the broader scholarly community.

Graduate Seminar on Computing & Environment

August 07, 2018     #teaching

This semester I am offering for the first time a graduate seminar on computing and the environment. The syllabus and reading list can be found here.

Currently Reading (summer 2018)

June 12, 2018     #readings

Here is what I am currently reading. You can find the complete archive here.


One of my goals this summer is to catch up on the long list of reading that I had to defer this past semester because of other responsibilities.

Little, P. C. (2014). Toxic Town. NYU Press.

Gabrys, J. (2013). Digital Rubbish. University of Michigan Press.

Carruth, A. (2014). The Digital Cloud and the Micropolitics of Energy. Public Culture, 26(2 73), 339–364.

Dourish, P. (2017). The Stuff of Bits: An Essay on the Materialities of Information. The MIT Press.

Abraham, D. S. (2016). The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age.

Ingulstad, M., Perchard, A., & Storli, E. (2014). Tin and Global Capitalism, 1850-2000: A History of "the Devil’s Metal". Routledge.

Müller, S. (2016). Wiring the World. Columbia University Press.

Amoore, L. (2016). Cloud Geographies: Computing, Data, Sovereignty. Progress in Human Geography, 030913251666214.

Golumbia, D. (2016). The Politics of Bitcoin. University of Minnesota Press.


© 2015 Nathan Ensmenger