Technosphere: when technology colonizes the planet

Translation of a text by Canadian journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, a specialist in energy issues. In this article published in January 2024 in the independent magazine The Tyee, he describes the technological system — the technosphere — and describes how it works. At the end of the article, he explicitly mentions that it is imperative to dismantle the technosphere (at least in part) to stop the sixth extinction and climate change. While Nikiforuk remains far too timid in his concrete proposals to resist, it is encouraging to see that the concept of dismantling is gradually gaining ground.

We built the Technosphere. Now we have to resist it.

Our wonderful world of plastic, cables, and concrete promised freedom. Instead, his cult of efficiency controls and kills.

“People will come to love their oppression for themselves and love technologies that annihilate their ability to think.” - Aldous Huxley

In the 19th century^E century, the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess traveled the Alps to study rock formations and draw up a more accurate map of the geological history of our world. Suess, one of the founding fathers of ecology, liked to say that humans tend to forget “that while the planet can be measured by humans, it is not the measure of humans.”

Suess has also given our planet a new name. He called it the biosphere. By this term, he referred to all the places on Earth where life is possible.

As a geological force, the biosphere has existed for 3.5 billion years. This biosphere is full of wonders, such as forests producing oxygen and whales sequestering carbon in the ocean. The biosphere is complex and diverse, and has the ability to self-regulate. In addition, the biosphere does not generate any waste and works thanks to free energy flows that come mainly from the sun.

Ukrainian scientist Volodymyr Vernadsky fleshed out the following concept:

“During death, life and destruction, the organism restores its atoms to the biosphere and takes them back again and again, but living matter infused with life always draws its genesis from life itself.”

Like animals, humans are the inhabitants of the biosphere; it is our home. But in the last few decades, it has been overshadowed by a construction entirely of human origin. This new artificial environment began to expand as early as the time of the Industrial Revolution. Humans discovered the use of coal, and then oil, in order to use machines to reshape the world^[1]. Today, these machines make and measure everything imaginable; they do this according to the instructions given by their human designers and, increasingly, according to the needs of the machines themselves.

First there was a surge of cities, then roads, railways and finally planes, in order to supply and connect these same cities. New materials and new technologies accumulated at a rapid pace — this process accelerated after the Second World War like an elegant Italian sports car. By the end of the 1950s, it had become obvious that mankind had drawn on fossil fuel reserves in order to build a structure that was very distinct from the biosphere. This new entity has not only consumed the resources of a finite planet; it has become an existential threat to our planet due to the relentless flows of toxic waste regurgitated by machines.

John Milsum, a Canadian systems engineer^[2], during the 1960s, gave a name to this phenomenon based on machine work and machine thinking. He named it Technosphere^[3].

Why such a cold and metallic term to define our current condition? What concrete control do we have over this megamachine created by ourselves? For each individual concerned, what can, what should be their response?

A HUNGER TO SATISFY

Today, technology and its material requirements have colonized every biological zone on Earth and shape virtually all human life. By definition, the technosphere is an artificial (and parasitic) outgrowth of the biosphere — a biosphere brutalized to the extreme. The technosphere includes glass, concrete, asphalt and plastic, roaring blast furnaces, and roaring digital infrastructure. It includes engines, missiles, the internet, and all the energy humans use to power them. As for AI, it has already penetrated almost all economic activities.

However, few people and even fewer leaders realize how far technological development has taken us. The residents of the technosphere, its servants, or its prisoners (choose the most appropriate name) remain largely blind to its size and intentions.

Many people spend more time living in the technosphere than in the real world. They can identify virtual characters in video games, but are unable to name the trees or birds visible from their windows. The average American teenager spends nearly eight hours a day on screens, floating in the virtual universe like an astronaut driven by algorithms. As for their French counterparts, at the age of 18 they already owned five mobile phones.

An American geoscientist at Duke University named Peter Haff has written extensively about the technosphere and its powers. In a fascinating article released In 2013^[4], he broadly defines this universe mediated by machines as an interconnected system of communication, transport and administrative technologies that exploit, metabolize and consume fossil fuels as well as any other energy source that may be useful to it.

For every ton of fossil fuels consumed by the technosphere, it extracts another six tons of materials, including sand, metal, rock, wood, and stone. Haff writes that

“On Earth, the technosphere carries large quantities of solids farther and faster than any natural process, except for the transport of sediments by rivers.”

That is why the technosphere has its own metabolism. It continuously appropriates resources like a conquering Napoleonic army. By itself, its consumption of fresh water consumes the equivalent of a Mediterranean Sea every year.

In Haff's words, the perpetual transformation of Earth by the technosphere is “an emerging geological process that exploits humans as essential components supporting its dynamics.” The word “component” is instructive. If a citizen (or component) refuses to serve the technosphere, it can be scrapped or, as Haff explains, subject to repairs.

“Occasionally, a few individuals choose to voluntarily flee the technosphere to live as hermits. Because of a mental or physical disability, other individuals fail to do their part in the service of the technosphere. From the point of view of the technosphere, these people are faulty pieces. They are removed from the system unless they can be repaired, that is, put back in working order.”

As Haff notes, Old World lights still exist in some scrubby hinterland, but there really isn't a safe haven.

“By controlling the last remnants of mass resistance to assimilation, the technosphere seems to be approaching a mathematical limit, to the dominance of 100% of the world's population.”

The biosphere is paying a heavy price for technological progress by being cannibalized, fragmented, exploited, deforested, and polluted. And so are we.

The technosphere spits up wastes such as pesticides, mining residues, nitrogen, plastic, electronic gadgets, eternal chemical pollutants, and phenomenal amounts of carbon dioxide. She eats and purges like rich Roman aristocrats during a lavish dinner.

Haff notes that the technosphere is a “poor recycler” of all the resources it appropriates. That is an understatement.

In 1900, the mass of human civilization represented about 3% of the world's biomass. Today, the weight of the technosphere exceeds that of all living beings on the planet.

In 2020, a group of Israeli researchers calculated that the mass of all living beings in the biosphere was 1.12 trillion tons [1 trillion = 1 trillion], NdT]. But in the same year, the weight of the concrete, asphalt, glass, glass, vehicles, and plastic that make up the technosphere exceeded the mass of the living world. That year, the mass of the technosphere reached 1.15 billion tons.

The animals on the planet collectively weigh about four gigatons, but all the plastic on Earth already weighs twice as much. Buildings and infrastructure, including roads, represent a mass greater than all the trees and shrubs on the planet.^[5]. If megacities continue to expand and human societies consume more and more finished products, the mass of the technosphere, including its gigantic waste streams, will exceed three teratons by 2040. That's almost triple the dry biomass on Earth.

“There is now enough concrete on the planet to produce a 2 mm thick, life-size replica of Earth, and enough plastic to completely wrap that replica in cling film^[6] ”, wrote scientists Gabrielle Hecht and Pamila Gupta six years ago.

CRITICS AND PROMOTERS

At different times, thinkers have given various names to this expanding technosphere. In the 1930s, the technical historian Lewis Mumford spoke of the rise of the “megamachine”^[7] and considered it a deadly force, while the novelist Aldous Huxley called it Brave New World. Social critic Neil Postman called it Technopoly in 1992, and ecologist Nate Hagens calls it “Superorganism.”^[8] ”. A group of modern geologists is talking about the “Anthropocene” or the age of sapiens.

The most insightful and the most prophetic of these criticisms was Jacques Ellul.^[9]. In the 1950s, as the technosphere increasingly appeared to be a global geological force, Ellul wrote The Technique or the Challenge of the Century. He warned that technology and its cult would homogenize all cultures, sterilize faith, centralize power, dominate all economic and political affairs, and replace natural landscapes with artificial and sterile environments.

Ellul predicted that there could be only one solution to all problems in a technological society: applying more techniques in the name of efficiency. And that the growing cult of efficiency would banish ideals such as beauty, truth, and virtue.

Of course, every innovation comes with a series of unwanted effects. Ellul warned that if technology continues to develop, “the disorder will continue to grow, and the more the disorder increases, the greater the existential threat.”

As Ellul predicted, the disorder and danger facing the biosphere and those who depend on it are fundamental. In what scientists call the sixth mass extinction, plants and animals are being eradicated due to the appropriation of habitats and water by the technosphere and its eight billion human components.

Scientists estimate that at least one million species of plants and animals are at risk of disappearing in the coming decades. Nearly half of the missing will be insects. Vertebrate populations have already declined by 60% since 1970.

The technosphere has also attacked and transformed humanity, fragmenting our thinking and killing our attention spans. Social media has eroded democracies and polarized political debate. As humans increasingly communicate with machines, social epidemics of anxiety and loneliness are getting worse.

But techno-optimists claim that an app will soon be created to respond to this growing alienation. Because to date, the technosphere has many more defenders than detractors. The optimism advocated by digital experts and politicians is amplified by complicit media that rarely recognize that there should be limits to growth and, by extension, to our consumption patterns. Techno-optimists want Disruptions All around, they dream of merging with machines and even seek to defeat death. They want us to see robots as our friends. And they swear that more technology will heal the wounds of previous technological assaults.

A recent manifesto from Silicon Valley sounds like religious exaltation.

“Technology is the embodiment of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress and the realization of our potential.”

And to add:

“Combine technology and markets and you have... the techno-capitalist machine, the engine of perpetual material creation, growth, and abundance.^[10].”

Some people dream of having butter and money. According to some thinkers, a mature technosphere will, in the future, have “coevolved with the biosphere into a form that will allow the technosphere and the biosphere to thrive.”^[11] ”.

Kevin Kelly, co-founder of the magazine Wired, uses the word “technium” when talking about the technosphere, and invites people to adopt it. As the technosphere requires constant data collection, we shouldn't be afraid of being constantly monitored and controlled by connected machines, says Kevin Kelly^[12]. He considers it our destiny.

“Technology is a way to create new problems. It's a way to produce new solutions, but the fact that we have a choice between the two tilts the balance very, very slightly in favor of the long-term good.”

A CALL FOR RESISTANCE

Such words suggest that we can collectively choose our relationship with the technosphere and get rid of its negative aspects. But it is far too late to engage in these kinds of debates.

“Humans collectively have no choice but to keep the technosphere active, because it is now indispensable to our collective existence.^[13] ”, notes the British geologist Jan Zalasiewicz [a very Western point of view, because the level of dependence of humans on the technosphere varies greatly in different places on the planet, NdT].

What about the promises of the technosphere in the face of a person who is locked in it while being aware that its pollution stream threatens humanity? Techno-optimists make it seem defeatist to doubt that green technologies such as electric cars, solar panels, direct capture of CO2 from the atmosphere, and geoengineering will prevent disaster.

The promise of perpetuating the technosphere using renewable energies comes up against a phenomenon called the Jevons paradox.^[14]. Each time the technosphere makes a product or form of energy more efficient, it leads to an increase in overall consumption. By being 90% more efficient than incandescent bulbs, LED bulbs were a model of efficiency. But as their use explodes, net energy savings are dwindling. The technosphere believes there is no need to worry: more lighting everywhere, all the time, and the blinding effects that go with it, have “immense economic value”^[15] ”.

As we have seen, the technosphere, eager for energy, is clearly insensitive to taming.^[16]. It is therefore important not to confuse the technosphere, which is increasingly the product of machines talking to machines, with a mechanism directly under the control of humans. In a way, the technosphere has its own will^[17], which “exploits humans” in order to pursue its own imperatives, as Mr. Haff explains.

“Trying to solve the climate problem by turning to renewable energies could therefore lead us in an unexpected direction,” writes Mr. Haff. “This will be the case if the opportunities offered by renewable energies seem different for the technosphere and for humans.”

Regardless of the future of some renewable energy sources, Mr. Haff adds, “the driving forces are already in place for a transition to higher, or even much greater, rates of energy consumption than the current power level achieved with the use of fossil fuels.”

The American environmental sociologist Richard York has already documented this trend.^[18]. Energy production trends suggest that “as renewable energy sources increase their share in the global energy mix, they do not replace fossil fuels but rather lead to an increase in the overall quantity of energy produced.” Global oil demand hit a record high in 2023^[19], as is electricity consumption per inhabitant. And global energy consumption from all sources continues to increase by 1 to 2% per year^[20].

All of this does not bode well for those who believe that the only real way to escape climate disaster is to transition to a shrinking economy that consumes much less energy and materials.

To do this, you must start by defending a radical heresy: physically reducing the technosphere.

In reality, this would require a revolutionary awareness of this difficult situation. Because the technosphere has colonized every aspect of our lives as completely as the siege and brutal conquest of the city of Tenochitlán by Hernán Cortés. We are all Aztecs now, but they, at least, resisted this submission by foreign forces. We seldom did that.

So what course of action is left for everyone?

Jacques Ellul, a man who loved life, offered three choices. He wrote in 1989 that one can accept technology as a fatality, denounce its transgressions or resist its dominance in all human affairs.

Only the last two paths, he wrote, are bearers of promise, hope and, finally, liberation.

And if we want to “get out of this terrible swamp that is ours,” he said, “we must above all avoid the error of believing that we are free.” First, we need to recognize our confinement in the technosphere. Then, “faced with the head of Hydra of cunning and the face of Gorgon of high technology, the only thing to do is to put them at a critical distance, because it is by being able to criticize that we show our freedom” [for more concrete strategic proposals, read Theodore Kaczynski, NdT]

Neil Postman took Ellul's advice to heart, recommending consistent and persistent resistance. According to Postman:

“A resister understands that technology should never be accepted as part of the natural order of things, that every technology — from an IQ test to an automobile to a television or a computer — is the product of a particular economic and political context and carries within it a program, an intention, and a philosophy that may or may not improve lives and that therefore needs to be examined, criticized, and controlled.”

Postman set rules for resisting. First of all, the person who is critical of the technosphere and its requirements refuses to accept efficiency as the main compass in human relationships. Information and knowledge should not be confused, or older people should not be considered obsolete. Nor should major religious stories be denigrated. They deserve to be taken seriously because they challenge the idolatry of technology in all human affairs, writes Postman.

Finally, a resister understands that technology should never be accepted as part of the natural order of things. Human communities, not machines or markets, should adopt or reject tools.

In other words, resistance preserves what matters: the biosphere.

Andrew Nikiforuk