The Technosphere, Now
In our current age of climate change, bioengineering, and communications at the speed of light, technology increasingly takes it place amidst the earthly and biological forces formerly known as nature. How did we end up in this world of technological vertigo? What kind of agency and outlook is equal to its challenges? The dilemma of global technology and its identity will be the main theme of THE TECHNOSPHERE, NOW, a showcase held on October 2, 2015 investigating origins and future itineraries of this technical world.
Photo: Andreas Meichsner
Much of the twentieth-century celebrated technology as a way to fulfill dreams of global unity and human control. But somehow these dreams morphed into a disorienting composition of technics, nature, human and non-human actors. In our current age of climate change, bioengineering, and communications at the speed of light, technology increasingly takes it place amidst the earthly and biological forces formerly known as nature. How did we end up in this world of technological vertigo? What kind of agency and outlook is equal to its challenges? The dilemma of global technology and its identity will be the main theme of THE TECHNOSPHERE, NOW, a showcase held on October 2, 2015 investigating origins and future itineraries of this technical world.
Scientists coined the term technosphere to describe the mobilization and hybridization of energy, material, and environments into a planetary system. But where is that ominous technosphere to be found? How does it impact the everyday passions and experiences of humans, animals, a nation, or an ecosphere? These and other questions were addressed in lectures, dialogues, and performances investigating the hybrid networks of the technosphere, today. This event kicked off a larger series of international events, seminars, and conferences that took place at HKW over the next four years.
This program took place on October 2, 2015.
- projectPeter K. Haff, Mark Hansen, Erich Hörl, Jürgen Renn, Birgit Schneider
Triggers: Introducing the Technosphere
What triggered the technosphere? This lightning-round presents a visual and aural panorama of events that catalyzed the rise of our contemporary technical worlds.
Communicating, Consensus Building, Intervention, Storytelling, Teaching, Modeling, History, Technosphere, Anthropos, Carbon, Agriculture, Capitalism, Climate change, Critical materials, Cybernetics, Data, Settler Colonialism, Disaster, Contingency, Extraction, Pollution, Network
- projectLino Camprubí, Zachary Caple, Gregory T. Cushman, Heather Davis, Scott Gabriel Knowles, Arno Rosemarin, Katrina Schwartz, Frank Uekötter
Phosphorus: An Apparatus of the Technosphere
Within the technosphere, earth becomes energy, people become populations and space becomes sphere. But how to make visible this network of flows coursing through our bodies?
Communicating, Intervention, Conversation, Reflection, Storytelling, Teaching, Anthropos, Agriculture, Biosphere, Capitalism, Critical materials, Degradation, Complexity, Commodities, Embodiment, Energy, Landscape, Mining, Waste, Violence, Technosphere
- projectJennifer Gabrys, Peter K. Haff, Mark Hansen, Donald MacKenzie, Birgit Schneider, Mushon Zer-Aviv
Datum: On the Calculus of the Technosphere
Data defines the relationship of the technosphere to itself and the world around it. But where is it? How does it rework the body politic or our biological substratum itself?
Conversation, Engagement, Monitoring, Teaching, Storytelling, Big data, Calculation, Autonomy, Complexity, Computation, Cybernetics, Data, Engineering, Infrastructure, Perception, Model, Socio-ecological design, Technosphere
- projectRana Dasgupta, S. Løchlann Jain, Clapperton C. Mavhunga, Matteo Pasquinelli, Lucy Suchman
Trauma: The Language of the Technosphere
How is the technosphere inscribed into individual human bodies? How are they restructured along a complex machinery of instruments, techniques, simulations?
Communicating, Engagement, Intervention, Monitoring, Storytelling, Teaching, Adaptation, Care, Anthropos, Anthropology, Cosmologies, Deep time, Embodiment, Education, Calculation, Future, Imaginary, Inequality, Settler Colonialism, Technosphere

