50 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. Résumé de la vidéo [00:00:00][^1^][1] - [01:58:53][^2^][2]:

      La vidéo est une table ronde sur l'Anthropocène et ses enjeux didactiques, avec Angela Mart, professeure à Aix-Marseille, et Philippe Hertig. Ils discutent de l'éducation à l'Anthropocène, des approches curriculaires et de la formation des enseignants.

      Points forts: + [00:00:18][^3^][3] Introduction de la table ronde * Présentation des intervenants + [00:00:53][^4^][4] Angela Mart * Géographe, spécialiste de la sociologie du curriculum + [00:02:52][^5^][5] Philippe Hertig * Professeur de didactique en géographie + [00:03:57][^6^][6] Contexte de l'Anthropocène * Impact des activités humaines sur la planète + [00:10:06][^7^][7] Éducation et mondialisation * Influence des organismes internationaux + [00:31:36][^8^][8] Approches pédagogiques * Importance de la prospective territoriale + [00:42:43][^9^][9] Bouleversements sociaux * Conséquences de l'Anthropocène sur la société + [00:53:54][^10^][10] Formation des enseignants * Nécessité d'une approche systémique et épistémologique

      • Prekäre Verbindung von Anthropozän-Geschichte und Politik.
      • Geschichte der Freiheit ist zugleich Geschichte ökologischen Krisen.
      • Spezies als negatives Universale
      • Zufälligkeit des Kapitalismus

      Chakrabarty formuliert sehr klar, worin die Neuartigkeit und Einzigartigkeit der historischen Situation des Anthropozän besteht, und damit auch, was die Herausforderung dieser Situation für Politik und Geschichtsschreibung ausmacht. Politik ist ohne die Dimension der Spezies Geschichte nicht mehr zu verstehen, und umgekehrt lässt sich diese Geschichte aber nur als auch politische Geschichte, und damit als Geschichte von Machtverhältnissen begreifen. Diese Dimension der Geschichte wird in der aktuellen westlichen Politik so gut wie nicht begriffen oder gar berücksichtigt.

      Chakrabarty spricht in diesem Text immer nur von der einen Spezies Mensch. Möglicherweise kann man die Besonderheit dieser Spezies als einer historischen Entität besser verstehen, wenn man ihre Beziehungen zu anderen Spezies mitdenkt. Diese Beziehungen sind immer auch räumlich und lassen sich in der kritischen Zone der Erde lokalisieren. So lässt sich vielleicht auch Geschichte der Spezies und Geschichte der Globalisierung leichter in Verbindung bringen.

      Die Globalisierung geht von der Möglichkeit eines positiven Universale "Menschheit" Ist. Die Geschichte der Spezies ist dagegen die Geschichte unterschiedlicher lokale Beziehungen zu anderen Spezies. Die Globalisierung als ein Prozess, durch den die als Einheit unsinnige Menschheit den Planeten überall in der gleichen Weise ausbeutet, ist nur als Fiktion zuende zuführen.

      Am Anfang schreibt Chakrabarti über die Nachvollziehbarkeit der Geschichte durch Verständnis und Rekonstruktion der Intentionen von Akteuren, die damit als nicht natürlich begriffen werden,. Als Naturwesen sind sie nicht Gegenstand der Geschichte. Diese Überlegung erinnern mich an den von Chakrabarty nicht erwähnten Max Weber, der vom subjektiven Sinn als Voraussetzung der verstehenden Wissenschaften ausgegangen ist. Ihre Geschichte im anthropozän ist dagegen eine ganz andere als die von ihnen intendierte und nachvollziehbare. Natur würde vielleicht sagen, dass ich die Akteure vervielfachen und das Geschichten mit diesen vervielfachten Akteuren geschrieben werden müssen. Ein Beispiel wäre die Geschichte der Nutzung der fossilen Brennstoffe, wie sie Timothy Mitchell geschrieben hat.

  2. Jan 2024
    1. four different types of initiators of new community projectsbased in neighbourhoods:local government,governmental organisations,non-governmental organisations or activists andexisting communities.
      • for: types of initiators of community projects, SONEC - initiators of community projects, question - frameworks for community projects, suggestion - collaboration with My Climate Risk, suggestion - collaboration with U of Hawaii, suggestion - collaboration with ICICLE, suggestion - collaboration with earth commission, suggestion - collaboration with DEAL

      • question: frameworks for community projects

        • If our interest is to attempt to create a global collective action campaign to address our existential polycrisis, which includes the climate crisis, then how do we mobilize at the community level in a meaningful way?

        • I suggest that this must be a cosmolocal effort. Why? Knowledge sharing across all the communities will accelerate the transition of any participating local community.

        • This means that we cannot rely on citizens living in small communities to construct an effective coordination framework for rapid de-escalation of the polycrisis. The capacity does not exist within small communities to build such a complex system. The system can be more effectively built before the collective action campaign is started by a virtual community of experts and ready for trial with pilot communities.
        • To meet this enormous challenge, it cannot be done in an adhoc way. At this point in time, many people in many communities all around the globe know of the existential crisis we face, but if we look at the annual carbon emissions, none of the existing community efforts has made a difference in their continuing escalation.
        • The knowledge required to synchronize millions of communities to have a unified wartime-scale collective action mobilization to reach decarbonization goals that the mainstream approach has not even made a dent in will be a complex problem.
        • In other words, what is proposed is a partnership.
        • Since we are faced with global commons problems that pose existential threats if not mitigated in 5 to 8 years, the scope of the problem is enormous.
        • Super wicked problems require unprecedented levels of collaboration at every level.
        • The downscaling of global planetary boundaries and doughnut economics seems the most logical way to think global, act local.
        • Building such a collaboration system requires expert knowledge. Once built, however, it requires testing in pilot communities. This is where a partnership can take place

        • 2024, Jan. 1 Adder

          • My Climate Risk Regional Hubs
            • time 29:46 of https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Funfccc.int%2Fevent%2Flater-is-too-late-tipping-the-balance-from-negative-to-positive&group=world
            • https://www.wcrp-climate.org/mcr-hubs
            • Suggestion:
              • SRG has long entertained a collaborative open science project for grassroots polycrisis / climate crisis education - to measure and validate latest climate departure dates
              • This would make climate change far more salient to the average person because of the observable trends in disruption of local economic activity connected to the local ecology due to climate impacts
              • This would be a synergistic project between SRG, LCE, SoNeC, My Climate Risk hubs, ICICLE and U of Hawaii
              • Our community frameworks need to go BEYOND simply adaptation though, which is what "My Climate Risk" focuses exclusively on. We need to also engage equally in climate mitigation.
        • reference
        • I coedited this volume on examples of existing cosmolocal projects
  3. Nov 2023
    1. Algorithmocene noun /ˈalɡərɪð mə si:n/ — presumably the next geological epoch following our short-lived Anthropocene

      I'm beginning to prefer the term Algorithmocene to Robotocene.

  4. Aug 2023
      • for: gene culture coevolution, carrying capacity, unsustainability, overshoot, cultural evolution, progress trap

      • Title: The genetic and cultural evolution of unsustainability

      • Author: Brian F. Snyder

      • Abstract

      • Summary
      • Paraphrase
        • Anthropogenic changes are accelerating and threaten the future of life on earth.
        • While the proximate mechanisms of these anthropogenic changes are well studied
          • climate change,
          • biodiversity loss,
          • population growth
        • the evolutionary causality of these anthropogenic changes have been largely ignored.
        • Anthroecological theory (AET) proposes that the ultimate cause of anthropogenic environmental change is
          • multi-level selection for niche construction and ecosystem engineering.
        • Here, we integrate this theory with
          • Lotka’s Maximum Power Principle
        • and propose a model linking
          • energy extraction from the environment with
          • genetic, technological and cultural evolution
        • to increase human ecosystem carrying capacity.
        • Carrying capacity is partially determined by energetic factors such as
          • the net energy a population can acquire from its environment and
          • the efficiency of conversion from energy input to offspring output.
        • These factors are under Darwinian genetic selection
        • in all species,
        • but in humans, they are also determined by
          • technology and
          • culture.
        • If there is genetic or non-genetic heritable variation in
          • the ability of an individual or social group
        • to increase its carrying capacity,
        • then we hypothesize that - selection or cultural evolution will act - to increase carrying capacity.
        • Furthermore, if this evolution of carrying capacity occurs - faster than the biotic components of the ecological system can respond via their own evolution,
          • then we hypothesize that unsustainable ecological changes will result.
    1. To preserve our wildlife as nature evolved it, the machinery of biological evolution must be protected from the homogenizing effects of cultural evolution.
      • for: cultural evolution, cumulative cultural evolution, speed of cultural evolution, progress trap, Freeman Dyson, Anthropocene
      • comment
        • while Freeman spoke to the direct dangers of genetic engineering,
          • he neglected to point out the broader threat of progress itself, which has already placed our species in the position
            • of playing God with the evolution of many species on the planet already, via the enormous impacts of organized human activity - ie. the Anthropocene
  5. Jul 2023
    1. It does not make sense for   one species to command most of the energy flow  through the ecosystems of which it is a part.   That's a very destabilizing situation. And  the wise species would do everything possible   to reestablish some kind of balanced energy and  material throughput. If we don't do that, again,   01:15:52 I keep harping on this, people hate me for it,  but we will go down
      • for: anthropomorphism, apex species
      • quote
        • it does not make sense for one species to command most of the energy flow through the ecosystems which it is part of. That's a very destabilizing situation and the wise species would do everything possible to reestablish some kind of balanced energy material throughput.
    1. the Great Conversation coversmore than twenty-five centuries.

      Broadly the entirety of the documented existence of mankind...

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    1. finite time singularity
      • finite time singularity

        • when the mathematical solution to the growth equation becomes infinitely large at some finite time
      • comment

        • this is also salient for the accumulation of unresolved progress traps
        • the Anthropocene can perhaps be viewed as the occurence of finite time singularities due to unresolved problems arising from progress traps that innovation is too slow to solve
  6. May 2023
    1. I think we are very good at honing in on the ways in which the world remains imperfect and there are ways in which it is egregiously unfair today 00:43:57 but we discount the fact that so many of the gains of the last 100 to 250 years have been enabled by the Industrial Revolution
      • "I think we are very good at honing in on the ways in which the world remains imperfect and there are ways in which it is egregiously unfair today but we discount the fact that so many of the gains of the last 100 to 250 years have been enabled by the Industrial Revolution have been enabled by harnessing the hubris of harnessing fossil fuels harnessing more energy from the environment allowing us to agglomerate in cities which when you do this when you collect all of people in a room like this you're actually creating a more powerful hive mind by bringing intelligence together so that it can share ideas at closer range and it can innovate faster and through that for all the trade-offs which are undeniable there's many negatives that have come from that we're very quick to Discount when we talk about future biomedicine very quick to Discount things like polio vaccines and the virtual eradication of that disease along with smallpox of the fact that we have got so many infectious diseases under control we struggle with the big Killers like cancer and heart disease at the moment those are sort of like the biggest Global threats um but through basic Innovations through Modern Sanitation through better housing all of which the Industrial Revolution enabled we have lifted so many people out of poverty and yes we created new tears of poverty but overall fewer people are living in abject poverty today than in the past we have the higher average global life expectancies child mortality is plummeted the fact that you can give birth by cesarean section rather than in the case of my mother giving birth to a dead child which is what would have happened to me because my umbilical cord was wrapped twice around my neck the fact that technology can intervene and bring us so many of these Spoils of modernity that we readily take for granted I don't know where there's obviously attention but I don't know at what point you say we want to hit pause or indeed we want to go backwards again the challenge sort of remains like we agree we're barreling on this trajectory if we're not going to get off it then we need to think about how we manage it as well as possible and that means we need to think about how AI becomes a healthy part of our world or indeed if it can cut it can we co-exist with AI"
      • Comment
  7. Mar 2023
      • Title: Buddhism and Money: The Repression of Emptiness Today
      • Author: David Loy

      David Loy explains how - the denial of ego-self, also known as anatma - becomes the root of a persistent sense of lack - as self-consciousness continues to try to ground itself, reify itself and make itself real - while all the meanwhile it is a compelling mental construction

      A good paper on the role (non-rational) relational ritual can play to help us out of the current polycrisis is given here: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrill.com%2Fview%2Fjournals%2Fwo%2F25%2F2%2Farticle-p113_1.xml%3Flanguage%3Den&group=world

    1. It has been suggested that - the human species may be undergoing an evolutionary transition in individuality (ETI).

      there is disagreement about - how to apply the ETI framework to our species - and whether culture is implicated - as either cause or consequence.

      Long-term gene–culture coevolution (GCC) i- s - also poorly understood.

      argued that - culture steers human evolution,

      Others proposed - genes hold culture on a leash.

      After review of the literature and evidence on long-term GCC in humans - emerge a set of common themes. - First, culture appears to hold greater adaptive potential than genetic inheritance - and is probably driving human evolution. - The evolutionary impact of culture occurs - mainly through culturally organized groups, - which have come to dominate human affairs in recent millennia. - Second, the role of culture appears to be growing, - increasingly bypassing genetic evolution and weakening genetic adaptive potential. -Taken together, these findings suggest that human long-term GCC is characterized by - an evolutionary transition in inheritance - from genes to culture - which entails a transition in individuality (from genetic individual to cultural group). Research on GCC should focus on the possibility of - an ongoing transition in the human inheritance system.

  8. Jan 2023
    1. The deep AnthropoceneA revolution in archaeology has exposed the extraordinary extent of human influence over our planet’s past and its future

      !- Title : The deep Anthropocene - A revolution in archaeology has exposed the extraordinary extent of human influence over our planet’s past and its future !- Author : Lucas Stephens - researcher at archaeoGLOBE project

    1. The issue of human dominance is not simply climate change (as bad as that is), it is the whole capitalist development paradigm that is at the dark heart of maldevelopment—that which undermines and destroys the very foundations of all life on earth.

      !- Anthropocene vs Symbiocene : Key statement -The issue of human dominance is not simply climate change (as bad as that is), it is the whole capitalist development paradigm that is at the dark heart of maldevelopment—that which undermines and destroys the very foundations of all life on earth.

      !- Anthropocene : comment - In this essay, the term "Anthropocene" itself is critically questioned as being embedded within the structural thinking of the Anthropocene itself - Hence, a new term that is more expansive than just the human species is proposed - Instead of "a Good Anthropocene", the authors suggest "The Symbiocene" replaces it - It is aligned to the argument William McDonough, founder of Cradle-to-Cradle often makes "less bad is not the same as good" - Albrecht & Van Horn are aligned to the following authors and their work: - Cognitive Scientist, Buddhist scholar Jay Garfield: Losing the Self: https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2FE5lW5XedNGU%2F&group=world - Physicist Tom Murphy: civilization and the program of control as the root structural problem of our polycrisis https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2Ff6yFrh1X6DI%2F&group=world - Buddhist scholar David Loy: On the Emptiness at the heart of the human being that cannot be filled by consumerism & materialism https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2F1Gq4HhUIDDk%2F&group=world - Korean / German philosopher Byung-Chul Han: The Burnout Society https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2FbNkDeUApreo%2F&group=world

  9. Dec 2022
    1. the foundation on which we are building right now is seriously flawed and conducive of nothing but great waves of ennui, grief, dread, solastalgia, mourning, and melancholia. We must rapidly exit the Anthropocene with its non-sustainability, its perverse resilience, its authoritarianism, and its corrumpalism.

      !- inadequacies : of the Anthropocene

  10. Nov 2022
  11. Sep 2022
    1. “We have known as humans for thousands of years that it is critical to understand humankind’s place on this planet, even before we understand the essence of who we are, and we do this by looking at where we have come from. This fulfils an obligation of wisdom. You cannot hope to look at the rest of the world and understand it without understanding yourself. There is no more important question, especially in the light of some of the big questions which face us in relation to climate change. “We have floundered about observing the world without understanding truly that we are part of this system. We have an evolutionary history as complex as any other animal but likely no more so. That is the beauty that naledi brings to the table. It takes away this human arrogance which has been much of the cause of our destructive behaviour, this right to ownership, this right to destruction, the territorial nature of our behaviour towards this planet. “We have seen ourselves as superior, as special, we’ve told ourselves a special origins story that isn’t true. What can be more important than taking yourself off that pedestal and removing some of the destructive behaviours that manifest in humans?

      !- for : zoomorphism - Berger's new finding could reduce our anthropomorphic tendencies and take a broader zoomorphic perspective - a philosophical paradigm shift that makes us feel more PART of nature rather than standing out like a sore thumb.

  12. Jul 2022
    1. Is our planet doubly alive? Gaia, globalization, and the Anthropocene’s planetary superorganisms

      Title: Is our planet doubly alive? Gaia, globalization, and the Anthropocene’s planetary superorganisms Author: Shoshitaishvili, Boris Date: 25 April, 2022

    1. The post-1950 acceleration of the human imprint on the Earth System, particularly the 12 graphsthat show changes in Earth System structure and functioning, have played a central role in thediscussion around the formalisation of the Anthropocene as the next epoch in Earth history.Although there has been much debate around the proposed start date for the Anthropocene, thebeginning of the Great Acceleration has been a leading candidate (Zalasiewicz et al., 2012).

      The Great Acceleration of socio-economic and earth system indicators after 1950 make it a good candidate as a Golden Spike for the start of the Anthropocene.

    2. The trajectory of theAnthropocene: The GreatAcceleration
      • Title: The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration
      • Author: Steffen, Will; Broadgate, Wendy; Deutsch, Lisa; Gaffney, Owen and Ludwig, Cornelia Date: 2015
    1. We did not find strong evidence to suggest that climate, climatic fluctuations, rainfall, or vegetation over the last 1.5 million years, influenced the size of animals hunted and consumed by humans. Rather, mean body size declined linearly on a backdrop of multiple glacial-interglacial cycles. New human lineages subsisted on smaller prey than their predecessors and used more advanced tools to cope with hunting smaller prey. We suggest that hominins were likely the leading cause of Pleistocene

      The evidence suggests that humans were responsible for extirpating the largest prey fauna at the time, resulting in intergenerational decline in prey fauna body mass.

      This early finding has implications for modern human behavior. In fact, it explains our tendency to overshoot resources until we extirpate them is not a new behavior but one that dates back millions of years. The implications for our current polycrisis suggests we are dealing with an entrenched behavior that may be difficult to change and that technology has amplified our ability to mine natural resources, extirpating them at a faster rate. From this perspective, the Anthropocene can be seen as a logical result of an ever decreasing extirpation rate brought about by increasing efficacy of technological tools for resource extraction.

    1. this is going to be a really critical year uh for public goods uh generation um and here at year i'm using 00:00:40 you know starting from now through the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. uh so what i'm going to go through is a case for why this year really matters and why this decade really matters in 00:00:53 the century

      Why is 2022 a critical year to fund projects that build the commons?

      From a scientific, commons and Stop Reset Go perspective, humanity now stands at the doorsteps of the Anthropocene and we as a species have collectively shaped the planet in a way that is harming many species on the globe, including our own.

      We are at a bifurcation point in human history, a fork in the road and the next few years will determine the course of humanity for the next thousands of years to come.

      The funneling of human resources to the few elites at the top leaves the majority of humanity little agency to determine our own future and carbon emissions are also related to structural inequality: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.oxfam.org%2Fen%2Fpress-releases%2Fcarbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity&group=world

      See Jason Hickel's arguments against the overly optimistic story that Neoliberal capitalism has alleviated poverty. Hickel finds the opposite when critical analysis is applied to the rosy claims that Steven Pinker and Bill Gates make: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjacobin.com%2F2019%2F02%2Fsteven-pinker-global-poverty-neoliberalism-progress&group=vnpq69nW

      Funding projects in the commons counters the wealth of elites, a trend that is counter to planetary health because it continues degrading the environment through carbon inequality:

      https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity#annotations:8gdC3ht8EeyWyQ-BBdinXw

      and wealth inequality.

  13. Jun 2022
    1. It’s as if we need the gravitational pull of both worlds to keep us on track, locked on a good and righteous path. Without both worlds pulling on us, we would crash into one, or simply lose our way, hurtling through the universe on our own, intersecting nothing, helping no one.

      As neuroscietist Beau Lotto points out, the Anthropocene is creating greater and greater uncertainty and unpredictability, but the one human trait evolution has created to help us deal with this is the sense of awe. See my annotation on Beau Lotto's beautiful TED Talk: How we experience awe and why it matters https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2F17D5SrgBE6g%2F&group=world

      In short, the sacred is the antidote to the increase in uncertainty and unpredictability as we enter into the space of the Anthropocene. Awe can be the leverage point to the ultimate leverage point for system change that Donella Meadows pointed out many years ago- it can lead to rapid shift in paradigms, worldviews and value systems needed to shift the system.

  14. Mar 2022
    1. LeCain (2015) - Against the Anthropocene. A Neo-Materialist Perspective - https://is.gd/pUqNmj - urn:x-pdf:ba8ad0181bbfae49b319f835281d61f7

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  15. Oct 2021
    1. Michael Saup

      The work of Michael Saup explores the unintended consequences of design: Orbis Lumen.

      +b (ORBIT) shows Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Map of the earth built from multiple layers of white industrial sugar cubes and illuminated by the complete sequence of all nuclear explosions from 1945 until now. Using the cubes as three-dimensional pixels, +b emphasizes the intimate relationship between information, energy, resources and their impact on society and nature. +b stages the most extreme power released by humankind, irreversibly transforming the atmosphere and igniting the epoch of the nuclear Anthropocene with its application and supposed mastery of atomic power.

      The work illustrates how this mastery is really the reiteration of a profound error and the subsequent compounding of that error. We keep on making mistakes. Some of these errors are extraordinarily beautiful and useful, some are terrifyingly destructive with long-term planetary impact, and many are both.

    1. +b (ORBIT) shows Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Map of the earth built from multiple layers of white industrial sugar cubes and illuminated by the complete sequence of all nuclear explosions from 1945 until now. Using the cubes as three-dimensional pixels, +b emphasizes the intimate relationship between information, energy, resources and their impact on society and nature. +b stages the most extreme power released by humankind, irreversibly transforming the atmosphere and igniting the epoch of the nuclear Anthropocene with its application and supposed mastery of atomic power.The work illustrates how this mastery is really the reiteration of a profound error and the subsequent compounding of that error. We keep on making mistakes. Some of these errors are extraordinarily beautiful and useful, some are terrifyingly destructive with long-term planetary impact, and many are both.

      The epoch of the nuclear Anthropocene

  16. Mar 2021
  17. Aug 2020
    1. The most quoted and probably most fundamental essay by Peter Haff about the technosphere. The argumentation is clearly opposed to an argumentation that sees technology as something controllable by humans. It's about the whole world, or sphere of artifacts, and people, in so far as they are part of that sphere. In essence, Haff argues by starting from the different layers of a system (stratum 1, 2, and 3). From a certain layer (stratum 2) the components of the lower layer (stratum 1) are inaccessible and the components of the higher layer (stratum 3) are not to be influenced. Only components on the same layer can be influenced. - The sphere belongs to the prerequisites of its parts: Without biosphere no organisms, without semi-sphere no signs, without technosphere no techniques (Haff does not speak of semi-sphere here, but see Towards a semiotics of the technosphere). The technosphere depends on energy and is threatened by entropy. It needs to recycle the waste it produces in order to maintain its functions.

      After the first reading, much of this argument reminds me of conservative authors like Arnold Gehlen, Martin Heidegger (Gestell), and perhaps Ernst Jünger (who, as far as I know, has a similar understanding of the relationship of the worker to technology). I suspect that an actor-network theoretical argument would criticize the concept of closed spheres—although these spheres are not super-systems.


      Der am meisten zitierte und wohl grundlegende Aufsatz von Peter Haff über die Technosphäre. Die Argumentation ist klar einer Argumentation entgegengesetzt, die Technik als etwas von Menschen Kontrollierbares ansieht. Es geht um die gesamte Welt oder Sphäre der Artefakte und die Menschen, insofern sie Teil dieser Sphäre sind. Im Kern argumentiert Haff, indem er von den verschiedenen Schichten eines Systems ausgeht (Stratum 1, 2 und 3). Von einer bestimmten Schicht aus (Stratum 2) sind die Komponenten der niedrigeren Schicht (Stratum 1) unzugänglich und die Komponenten der höheren Schicht (Stratum 3) nicht zu beeinflussen. Zu beeinflussen sind nur Komponenten auf derselben Ebene. - Die Sphäre gehört zu den Voraussetzungen ihrer Teile: Ohne Biosphäre keine Organismen, ohne Semiosphäre keine Zeichen, ohne Technosphäre keine Techniken (wobei Haff hier nicht von Semiosphäre spricht, siehe aber Towards a semiotics of the technosphere). Die Technosphäre ist auf Energie angewiesen und wird von Entropie bedroht. Sie muss den waste den sie erzeugt, selbst recyceln, um ihre Funktionen weiter aufrechterhalten zu können.

      Nach der ersten Lektüre erinnert mich vieles in dieser Argumentation an konservative Autoren wie Arnold Gehlen, Martin Heidegger (Gestell) und vielleicht auch Ernst Jünger (der, so weit ich weiss, das Verhältnis des Arbeiters zur Technik ähnlich verstanden hat). Ich vermute, dass eine Actor-Network-theoretische Argumentation das Konzept der geschlossenen Sphären kritisieren würde—wobei diese Sphären aber keine Über-Systeme sind.

    1. otion of ‘technosphere’ has gained analytical traction. It is loosely defined as the conjunction of all technological systems embodied in artefacts that have been created by humans since the domestication of fire and the invention of the first tools.

      Definition of technosphere

    1. Essay von James Dyke. Hypothese (als "ernstes Gedankenspiel"): Wir haben die Kontrolle über die weitere Entwicklung des Erdsystems bereits verloren, der eigentliche Akteur ist die Technosphäre, die die Menschheit ganz oder teilweise ersetzen kann. Nach der ersteh Lektüre habe ich in Die Klimakrise als Tragödie—zwei Essays darüber geschrieben.

  18. Nov 2019
    1. Theexhaustion of forest cover by aboutad1000 obliged iron smelters to usecoal instead of charcoal in coke-burning blast furnaces.

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  19. Jul 2019
    1. across ecosystems? To take just one example, when fish stocks fall in Ghanaian seas, hunting of bushmeat goes up and 41 land-based species go into decline. As hyperkeystones, we unite the entire world in a chain of falling dominoes
    2. humans, the hyperkeystone

    1. Fear of humans as apex predators has landscape-scale impactsfrom mount ain lions to mice (2019)

      Apex predators such as large carnivores can have cascading, landscape-scale impacts across wild-life communities, which could result largely from the fear they inspire, although this has yet to be experimentally demonstrated.

      Humans have supplanted large carnivores as apex predators in many systems, and similarly pervasive impacts may now result from fear of the human ‘superpredator’.

      We conducted a landscape-scale playback experiment demonstrating that the sound of humans speaking generates a landscape of fear with pervasive effects across wildlife communities.

      • Large carnivores avoided human voices and moved more cautiously when hearing humans,
      • medium-sized carnivores became more elusive and reduced foraging.
      • Small mammals evidently benefited, increasing habitat use and foraging.

      Thus, just the sound of a predator can have landscape-scale effects at multiple trophic levels.

      Our results indicate that many of the globally observed impacts on wildlife attributed to anthropogenic activity may be explained by fear of humans.

  20. Apr 2019
    1. Although ostensibly inert, like Chernobyl’s ‘undead’ isotopes, plastics are in fact intensely lively, leaching endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
    2. The ‘uncanny’ might serve us better. One of the most chilling traces of the Anthropocene is the global dispersal of radioactive isotopes since mass thermonuclear weapons testing began in the middle of the 20th century, which means that everyone born after 1963 has radioactive matter in their teeth. The half-life of depleted uranium (U-238) is around 4.5 billion years, roughly the same as the age of the Earth, while that of the plutonium in Chernobyl’s nuclear reactor is 240,000 years. Such timescales resist the imagination, but exist as a haunting presence in our daily lives.
    3. The concept of ‘deep time’ was first described in 1788 by the Scottish geologist James Hutton, although only coined as a term 200 years later, by the American author John McPhee. Hutton posited that geological features were shaped by cycles of sedimentation and erosion, a process of lifting up then grinding down rocks that required timescales much grander than those of prevailing Biblical narratives.
    4. Deep time represents a certain displacement of the human and the divine from the story of creation. Yet in the Anthropocene, ironically we humans have become that sublime force, the agents of a fearful something that is greater than ourselves. A single mine in Canada’s tar sands region moves 30 billion tons of sediment annually, double the quantity moved by all the worlds’ rivers combined. The weight of the fresh water we have redistributed has slowed the Earth’s rotation. The mass extinction of plant and animal species is unlikely to recover for 10 million years.
  21. Jan 2019
    1. Anthropocene

      My understanding of this term is that it refers to the epoch or age in which human beings began impacting their environment. However, I didn't think that its origins were settled. Is there an agreed-upon originating point for the Anthropocene, and is this a scientific designation?

  22. Oct 2017
    1. e concept of the Anthropocene and sharing some key ways it has been discussed by scholars and has entered the public consciousness.

      Claim we have entered a new geological epoch, Anthropocene first made by Paul Crutzen & Eugene Stoermer in IGBP Journal, May 2000 Pg 17-18 [] (http://www.igbp.net/download/18.316f18321323470177580001401/1376383088452/NL41.pdf)

      Crutzen elaborated on this in article published in Nature in 2002. NB : Stresses humanity have become the crucially significant factor in potentially cataclysmic changes to our planet. [] (http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/387H/PAPERS/Crutzen2002.pdf)

    2. ‘Truly it would seem as if “Man strews the earth with ruin.”4 But this conclusion is too flattering to human vanity. Man's most permanent memorial is a rubbish-heap, and even that is doomed to be obliterated’ (Sherlock, 1922, p. 343

      CO2 atmospheric concentration used as simple indicator for many years to track great acceleration / progression in Anthropocence, this now joined by long list of other indicators, escalating at an alarming rate, population, water use/ shortage, paper consumption, global warming, increase in number and ferocity of storms .......

    3. In 1873, the Italian geologist and priest Antonio Stoppani suggested that our technologies, infrastructures, and patterns of land use had created fundamental changes in Earth’s systems, propelling us into what he called an ‘anthropozoic era’

      Note : Read over Article again by Will Steffen, Paull J Crutzen & John R McNeill. [] (https://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/public-events/archiv/alter-net/former-ss/2007/05-09.2007/steffen/literature/ambi-36-08-06_614_621.pdf)

      Explore development of Anthropocence. How do we track progression of Anthropocene? CO2 Emissions??

    4. Ted Talk by Will Steffen . Journey through science measuring humanity effect on the planet. important for me, while i had heard and read about debate on climate change, Anthropocene is a new concept for me. Irrefutable change, cannot be ignored.

  23. Apr 2016
    1. But I have emphasized many times that ”modernism” carries with it another idea, that of emancipation from some stagnant, archaic and stifling past, so that ”modern” is always a way to orient action according to an arrow of time that distinguishes the past from the future. An essential component of the concept of modernity is the idea of a future toward which we travel after a radical rupture with the past.

      The crucial formulation of Latour's argument—in tandem with the corollary, below, that "we have never been modern in the very simple sense that while we emancipated ourselves, each day we also more tightly entangled ourselves in the fabric of nature."

    2. ”Nature” isolated from its twin sister ”culture” is a phantom of Western anthropology. What we are dealing with instead are distributions of agencies with which we are all entangled in ways which are highly controversial and the reactions to which are almost always highly counterintuitive. Or to put it in my language, the world is not made of ”matters of fact” but rather of ”matters of concern”. ”Nature is but a name for excess”.

      "Matters of concern": I want to align this with my understanding of the dappled nature of the world.

    3. Now for the definition of ”nature”. I think we could easily agree in this assembly that since nature is not ”wilderness” nor the outside, nor the harmonious providential balance, nor any sort of cybernetic machine, nor the opposite of artificial or technical, it would be much more expedient to forget entirely the word “nature” or to use it in William James’ definition: ”nature is but a name for excess”.

      This quote from James by Latour is priceless, and deep: nature is but a name for excess. I need to track down the source.

  24. Feb 2016
    1. Everyday interactions replay the Turing Test over and over. Is there a person behind this machine, and if so, how much? In time, the answer will matter less, and the postulation of human (or even carbon-based life) as the threshold measure of intelligence and as the qualifying gauge of a political ethics may seem like tasteless vestigial racism, replaced by less anthropocentric frames of reference.

      That's beautiful. I only hope the transition isn't jarring and the rate of expansion for compassion matches or exceeds that of cognition.