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Taking on the Technosphere: A Kitchen Debate

In his original writings on the technosphere from the early 2010s, Peter Haff identified its existence as a grand metabolizing system. Back in early 2016, spurred on by the preparation for HKW’s Anthropocene Campus: The Technosphere Issue, a vehement debate sprang up in the home of science and technology scholars Gabrielle Hecht and Paul N. Edwards: How valid is Haff’s approach? What is its overall reality? And what is its heuristic purpose? In this republication of their dispute, you, the reader, can engage alongside Hecht and Edwards in the ongoing question of whether the concept of the technosphere is indeed “a useful tool,” “silverware,” or “a barren gadget” in understanding the current and future condition of planet Earth.

Dopamine Fracking

The act of pumping immense, disproportionate resources into a previously casual or complex and layered activity to forcefully extract and squeeze out the purest, most concentrated dopamine hit

Don't Frack. Precipitate!

Don’t Frack. Precipitate! Two opposing approaches to create soft software for the age of AI Author: If you stop someone on the street and ask them to imagine the canonical piece of software, what will they say? Almost certainly something like “Instagram.” An app. Apps have become such a dominan...

What technology takes from us – and how to take it back | Rebecca Solnit

The long read: Decisions outsourced, chatbots for friends, the natural world an afterthought: Silicon Valley is giving us life void of connection. There is a way out – but it’s going to take collective effort

What can a technologist do about climate change? A personal view.

This started with a tweet. I’m embarrassed how often that happens.

Self-Burn

Thanks to Trump, people around the world are scrambling to get out of fossil fuels.

Hyperstition

A hyperstition is a self-fulfilling idea that becomes real through its own existence.[1] The price of Bitcoin,[2] Roko's Basilisk,[3] accelerationism,[4] and the QAnon conspiracy theory[5] have all been described as hyperstitions. Self-fulfilling prophecies are a kind of hyperstition where predictions are made about the future that become true by being known.[6] The concept was coined by Nick Land in 1995 as a portmanteau of hyper- and superstition,[7] during his time at the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit developing the philosophy of accelerationism.[3][8]

AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China - Carbon Brief

The “data-centre boom” is driving a surge in gas investment in the US, pushing its fossil-power spending ahead of China, according to the IEA

Permacomputing

Permacomputing is a term originating from the demoscene, known for squeezing the most out of very restricted computing resources, such as the 4k intro with a maximum executable file size of 4096 bytes. Artist programmer Ville-Matias Heikkilä, aka Viznut, coined the term in a text he published on his website in 2020 1. What stands out in this writing is the holistic approach to computing and sustainability by taking inspiration from permaculture. In both computing and agriculture, problems are usually solved by increasing control over a process, which often goes hand in hand with an increase in resource use. Permaculture uses methods that lets nature do the work, minimizing the reliance on artificial energy. Heikkilä sees similarities between how both permaculture practitioners and hackers find clever solutions to problems. He writes that the existence of computers can only be justified by their ability to augment the potential of humans to have a strengthening effect on ecosystems.

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth is being an absolute crayon again

Hegseth may be the biggest crayon alive, and somehow America’s nuclear codes are in his hands — apparently, “bro-science” is policy now

Kyle Booten

Noöhacking1 is the title of my current research program. I use this term for ways that artists and everyday digital media users build and repurpose algorithmic tools in order to take care of their own minds/spirits, an especially challenging and important task amidst a digital milieu that seems designed to make us alienated, unintelligent, and miserable.