Escaping the Technosphere

One superpower of our species is the ability to quickly adapt to technological breakthroughs. We invent things, make them widely available, build platforms on which we can see further, do more. The speed at which we incorporate breakthroughs into our lives — from semiconductors to GPS — is breathtaking and inspiring. We are very good at standing on the shoulders of giants.

But there is a dark side to platforms.

We can be seduced — and become dangerously dependent — on technology. Greater connectivity leads to new forms of warfare. Energy and transport infrastructure makes us dependent on planet-wrecking fuels. Bacteria quickly evolve to outflank the antibiotics that save lives.

These platforms allow us — metaphorically — to live at a higher level. Consequentially we have much, much further to fall if they fail.

The technosphere (coined by Peter Haff) refers to the ‘stuff’ humans have created to keep us alive on the planet, from factories and farms to planes and plastic bags. But it also includes the processes that support and maintain this stuff.

Unconsciously the technosphere can ensnare us. We now need to consciously take it apart and repurpose it so it solves our problems, not makes them worse.

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Read more: a wry look at how the Technosphere impacts on something specific, like the width of the Space Shuttle rocket booster. Although the truth ‘is slightly more complicated than that’ it’s undeniable that a combination of US pork-barrel politics and its transportation infrastructure defined a maximum diameter for the rocket.

Deep dive: Dmitry Orlov is a Russian engineer who coined ‘The Collapse Gap’ as a metaphor to describe how resilient a society is if its uppermost platforms (economic, technical, political) collapse, as happened to the Soviet Union in the early 90s. It’s a sobering read — but a good one when considering what might happen as we navigate through the worst impacts of the climate emergency (and now the pandemic).

Book recommendation: If This Be A Man by Primo Levi. Anyone who has visited Auschwitz (once they have come to terms with the human tragedy) cannot fail to be struck by the scale of the extermination. The organised and systematised dehumanization, segregation, slow starvation, transportation and the factory-like organisation of the death camps made them in effect a horrifyingly efficient platform for systematic murder. Primo Levi’s book explores what it was like to be inside the murderous infrastructure, and should be read by anyone seeking to avoid history repeating itself.