The commodification of contemporary virtual life has led us to believe in immaterial processes, in clouds and wireless connections, as if media weren't necessary. Anthropobscene and Other Essays: Media, Materiality, and Ecology shows the relevance of the earth and the subsoil to the technology that connects us today. It also does so by revealing its dark side: environmental pollution. Seventy-five percent of the periodic table is found in a smartphone, and for this, minerals from all over the world are required. Literally, rather than metaphorically, Parikka conducts an archaeology of media, showing us that this pollution is twofold: on the one hand, the extraction of certain materials alters or depletes the living conditions surrounding a mining operation. On the other hand, media quickly become junk, remnants that remain with us, but we are completely unaware of the effect of the minerals they carry within. Anthropobscene makes explicit the ways in which geological elements constitute media, while also highlighting how the speed of contemporary technology is anchored in the slowness of the Earth's dynamics. And in this work, art will be one of its main interlocutors.