Contrasting Futures for Humanity: Technotopian or Human-Centred (original) (raw)
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Human Futures? Consciously Human-Centred or Techno-Dreaming
Abstract: A vital question with regard to the future is how we deal with human futures. While high-tech futures are of interest to some futurists, many futures scholars are focused on the potential social, cultural, and environmental impacts of rapid unprecedented change, including exponential technological developments. ‘Technotopian or human-centred futures?’ describes two contrasting approaches to human futures and their inherent values and ethics: ‘human-centred futures’, which is humanitarian, philosophical, and ecological; and ‘technotopian futures’, which is dehumanizing, scientistic, and atomistic. It also considers the history of the struggle between these two approaches, which has been waged since at least the European Enlightenment, and still challenges us today.
The Anthropocene - The Earth in Our Hands
Refubium Freie Universität Berlin, 2020
An outstanding characteristic of the human species is its ability to think ahead into the future. However, such foresight is a major challenge if it is to go beyond one’s own personal environment. The future is therefore difficult to grasp – also depending on which temporal and spatial scales are adopted. ... Can a new scientific concept derived from the Earth system and geosciences, the Anthropocene, help here? Does it have the right name? Doesn’t it promote an apocalyptic, fatalistic attitude or, quite contrary isn’t it a gateway for positivistic, technocratic delusions? And how is a concept that has grown out of the "deep past", i.e. the history of the Earth, supposed to have any relevance for the future? Once again we seem to be trapped in our simplifying, dualistic "either-or" ideas, into which we want to categorize new concepts as fast as possible. The purpose of this article is to present the concept of the Anthropocene also with regard to its potential for a systemic sustainability analysis and the resulting responsibilities, commitments and design options. Perhaps the most exciting thing about the Anthropocene concept is the challenge of abandoning dualisms in favor of a diverse spectrum of graduations, new approaches and new solution pathways. However, the different levels of the Anthropocene approach should be distinguished, so that it is always clear what we are exactly talking and debating about.
Plausible and desirable futures in the Anthropocene: A new research agenda
While the concept of the Anthropocene reflects the past and present nature, scale and magnitude of human impacts on the Earth System, its true significance lies in how it can be used to guide attitudes, choices, policies and actions that influence the future. Yet, to date much of the research on the Anthropocene has focused on interpreting past and present changes, while saying little about the future. Likewise, many futures studies have been insufficiently rooted in an understanding of past changes, in particular the long-term co-evolution of bio-physical and human systems. The Anthropocene perspective is one that encapsulates a world of intertwined drivers, complex dynamic structures, emergent phenomena and unintended consequences, manifest across different scales and within interlinked biophysical constraints and social conditions. In this paper we discuss the changing role of science and the theoretical, methodological and analytical challenges in considering futures of the Anthropocene. We present three broad groups of research questions on: (1) societal goals for the future; (2) major trends and dynamics that might favor or hinder them; (3) and factors that might propel or impede transformations towards desirable futures. Tackling these questions requires the development of novel approaches integrating natural and social sciences as well as the humanities beyond what is current today. We present three examples, one from each group of questions, illustrating how science might contribute to the identification of desirable and plausible futures and pave the way for transformations towards them. We argue that it is time for debates on the sustainability of the Anthropocene to focus on opportunities for realizing desirable and plausible futures.
Three essays on our planetary future
2010
This thesis propounds a techno-environmentalist position. Seeking to combine the need for natural restoration with human development, the thesis explores to what extent more radical forms of ecological modernization can offer a basis for political compromise and open new paths to global long-term sustainability. Based on three published articles, the thesis engages with existing literature on (a) intergenerational justice, (b) sustainable development, and (c) political economy.
Welcome to The Anthropocene: Humanity's Epoch
Welcome to The Anthropocene: Humanity's Epoch, 2022
We are witnessing a transition in epochs: from the Anthropocene, in which human activities shaped our environment, to what I call the "Automacene" -the epoch that machines will direct what we do and how we do it. My research findings indicates that there's 60 percent chance the revolution will be capable of completing "all human tasks" by 2040, allowing humans to move to a trans-humanist society. Further, the research reflects what it means to be human in the age of technology and artificial intelligence "Cyborgs, Robots, Machines...etc.". By researching how does the artificial intelligence and how does human intelligence can affect the environment in reworking and adapting it to their own needs, we can conclude that the Anthropocene is reshaping our planet in profound ways. Scientific research reflects that the changes that have occurred in the last 50 to 200 years have led scientists to investigate about the anthropogenic and the transhumanist impacts on the Earth
Although both ignorance and denialism still persist in some quarters, it can hardly bedoubted anymore for anyone with the slightest awareness of the Zeitgeist, that humanity is about to enter a phase in its history which will be characterized by massive changes in the earth's biosphere, i.e., in the global ecological system that has up until now silently and robustly supported its cultural-historical projects ( Greer 2008, Martenson 2011, Crutzen & Schwägerl 2011, Barnosky et al 2012). Humanity's largely destructive influence on its unique planetary life support system has gained such a momentum lately that geologists and Earth System scientists have suggested for some time now that we have entered a new geological epoch, the anthropocene, in which the human has become the most influential geological (f)actor, trumping the natural ones in every respect (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000, Steffen et al. 2011, Latour 2014, Schwägerl 2014, Bonneuil & Fressoz 2016). The prime significance of the anthropocene, which presents us with a biosphere that is fundamentally different from that of its microbial and metazoan stages due to the technosphere produced by human techno-cultural evolution (Williams et al. 2015), is that it sets a different trajectory for the planet or what is called the Earth system nowadays (Waters et al. 2014, Hamilton 2015, Davies 2016). Whilst the anthropocene attests to the enormous if not uncanny power of a techno-scientifically potentialized humanity (a power Dominique Janicaud has called a ‘hyperpower’) to radically disrupt the earthly ecosystem upon which it fundamentally depends for its very survival, it simultaneously, and even more crucially, brings to light the ultimate impotence of that power (Janicaud 1994). However that may be, what is clear, as the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler points out, is that the anthropocene reveals the toxic and entropic character of the process of capitalist industrialization and that the big challenge it imposes on us is how to exit from it and invent a negentropic, curative and attentive technological modus vivendi (Stiegler 2014, 2016), if possible (Blok 2015). And since we are massively unprepared for this unprecedented challenge, we might do well to start ‘thinking the unthinkable’, as the American philosopher of technology Langdon Winner has stated using a famous phrase by cold war nuclear conflict theorist/futurist Herman Kahn (Winner 2013). In this track, we aim to explore the question how philosophy of technology should respond to this challenge, i.e., to this new and unprecedented ‘human condition’ that is bound to seriously disrupt the agendas of philosophical and social inquiry in the decades to come and that we would like to characterize as the anthropocenic condition. In particular, we aim to explore what it would mean for philosophy of technology to engage with the earth system and its principles of composition, to consider different technical modalities of fostering and maintaining them, and to adopt an explicitly planetary orientation (Lemmens & Hui 2016, Lemmens 2017). Possible questions and themes to be explored include: • What exactly does the anthropocene – sometimes also referred to as the technocene – as a new and unprecedented planetary condition mean for the philosophy of technology? What are its implications for this discipline? Should it be the cause for a renewed reflection on its aims, goals, focus, methodologies, paradigms, presuppositions, organizational structure, educational guidelines, ‘engagement’, etc.? • What would a planetary orientation, assuming humanity as a ‘geological agency’ (Chakrabarty 2009), imply for philosophy of technology? What should ‘taking care of the earth’ (Steffen et al. 2011) or a ‘reconnection with the biosphere’ (Folke 2011) mean technologically? How should we attune our technologies, for instance the global digital network technologies, the NBIC technologies or the technosphere and noorspehere more generally, to this new situation? What would it mean technologically to heed the ‘planetary boundaries’ crucial for the ‘operating space of humanity’ (Rockström 2015). • What kind of new technologies and social institutions should be invented to deal with the impending energy crisis and climate catastrophes and what kind of changes in our technological thinking are needed for this new age of the anthropocene? • What kinds of technopolitics and ecopolitics are needed and what can we already see emerging on the horizon? How should we include nascent technopolitical movements such as open source, peer-to-peer and commons into an ecological perspective on techno-evolution? • What should we think of proposed solutions like geo-engineering, ecotechnics and atmo-design, and what of new technological paradigms like homeotechnology, biomimicry (Blok & Gremmen 2015) and the biobased economy (Zwier et al 2015)?
The Pandemic Within, 2021
According to many climate and environmental scientists, we are entering a phase in human history which will be characterized by huge changes in the earth's atmosphere and biosphere-global warming of course being the most pressing issue. Humanity's largely destructive influence on its unique planetary life support system has gained such a momentum lately that earth system scientists declare we have entered a new geological era, the so-called Anthropocene, in which the human (anthropos) has become the most influential geological (f)actor, trumping the natural ones in every respect. While the Anthropocene attests to the enormous power of a techno-scientifically empowered humanity to radically disrupt the earthly ecosystem upon which it fundamentally depends for its very survival, it simultaneously reveals that utter dependence, and summons us to radically rethink our residence upon the planet. At this conference we reflect upon, inventory and systematize the challenges posed to us by these developments from the standpoint of SPM's core foci, with a special emphasis on issues of ontology, epistemology, practice and wider societal consequences concerning power and politics.
Welcome to the anthropocene : The Humanity's Epoch
2022
We are witnessing a transition in epochs: from the Anthropocene, in which human activities shaped our environment, to what I call the "Automacene" -the epoch that machines will direct what we do and how we do it. My research findings indicates that there's 60 percent chance the revolution will be capable of completing "all human tasks" by 2040, allowing humans to move to a trans-humanist society. Further, the research reflects what it means to be human in the age of technology and artificial intelligence "Cyborgs, Robots, Machines...etc."