Introduction: Modeling the Pacific Ocean

Abstract

According to climate models, the Pacific Ocean, the body of water that encompasses one-third of the earth's surface, impacts global climate to a large extent. Geographically, the Pacific borders on three continents-Australia, Asia, and the Americas-and it has been up until today the center stage of geopolitical interests and conflicts, cold and hot wars. Because of its dimensions and location, the Pacific is not simply an object of scientific research but also occupies a central place in global history, world literature, and postcolonial theory. Since it never was conceived as a political or a cultural unit such as the Mediterranean, "a landlocked sea," a sea surrounded by mountains Whoever tries to address "the" Pacific has to reckon with a multitude of local and heterogeneous living environments and historiographies, all of which contribute to a scientific "new ocean world picture." As such, the study of the Pacific opens up (and ties together) peculiar perspectives on a whole range of forms of knowledge. Operating on the scale of global interactions, this study explores scientific as well as governmental modes and techniques of Sebastian Vehlken is a media theorist and cultural historian at Leuphana University Lneburg (Germany) and Senior Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study on Media Cultures of Computer Simulation (MECS). His areas of interest include the theory and history of computer simulation and digital media, media cultures of futurology, and oceans as media environments.

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