Technology as a planetary phenomenon
Bronislaw Szerszynski
In this talk, I firstly explore four possible interpretations of the use of the term ‘planetary’ to describe contemporary technology: (i) that modern technology is increasingly globally distributed and networked, (ii) that technology is developing the dynamic characteristics of an autopoietic, self-steering planetary system, (iii) that technology ‘enframes’ and thereby ontologically diminishes the planet and (iv) that technology in the broadest sense is always already planetary: that it has its roots, its conditions of possibility, in the very nature of what Nigel Clark and I (2021) call ‘planetary multiplicity’ – the capacity and tendency of planets to constantly self-differentiate, to become other to themselves at all spatial and temporal scales. Secondly, I turn to the specific form that this always-already planetary technicity manifests in human life, using the concept of ‘earthly multitudes’: human collectives that have learned to work in skilful ways with processes of planetary self-differentiation. Thirdly, I turn to the distinctive evolutionary path taken by human technology, which has led to a contemporary technosphere that seems to follow its own endogenous and self-reproducing laws of development. Fourthly and finally, I explore how we might identify latent possibilities in the planetary present that indicate alternative planetary futures, involving new kinds of earthly multitude and different relations with technology.