CONTAINER TECHNOLOGIES AS LOGISTICAL INFRASTRUCTURE: HOW MARIE KONDO, THE CONTAINER STORE, HOLLINGER BOXES, AND DOCKER SHAPE OUR WORLD

Abstract

This dissertation is situated at the intersection of digital studies, critical information studies, and cultural studies—I argue that containers undergird the logistical infrastructures of modern capitalism and social life, and they shape the way we think. By understanding our world through this framework, we can apply the perspective to understand problems we face in memory institutions, cloud computing, the retail sector, the culture industry, and even in the ongoing global pandemic, COVID-19. The first chapter considers physical containers, with a focus on the ‘Hollinger box’ (an omnipresent cardboard storage box at memory institutions), which has a design history rooted in World War II and the US’s fight against fascism. The second chapter focuses on Docker, a digital container system, which accelerates containers in cloud computing—I present a protohistory of digital containerization in computing history and look to the role of speed to accelerate information and global capital. The third chapter locates its discussion at a retail site, The Container Store, which facilitates consumerism and the commodification of containment. The fourth chapter looks to Marie Kondo and her KonMari Method. Kondo’s ‘joy’ is rooted in consumer culture, individualism, and storage in containers; her ‘tidying festivals’ are celebrations of capitalism. By tracing the interconnected histories behind these container systems, the dissertation demonstrates how the logic of containerization becomes embedded in our memory institutions, digital technologies, retail systems, and consumer culture. Containers in our society are subsumed by preexisting systems in capitalism: logistics and consumerism, in particular. Container technologies play a central role in our logistical infrastructures: wielded properly, containers hold the power to help us resolve many of our most pressing problems, and they can help us to improve the way we allocate resources equitably, rather than the reverse. But containers do not afford us a quick fix—rather, they offer us insight and a framework to understand the world we live in. Containers, when understood as key to the logistical infrastructure that undergird modern life, offer us the tools to reorganize our world and build it into something better.