Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Wikimedia Commons)

Anthropocene development technological fix

Technology Fetishism in the Anthropocene. Global Inequality, Environmental Destruction, and the Problem of Functionality

If we understand technology in the context of the Anthropocene only through its technical aspects, we miss how modern technology is itself a social phenomenon that depends on a global ecologically unequal exchange of energy, labor time, land, and resources.

Von

Maximilian Pieper

In my PhD project, I develop a critical understanding of technology in the context of global environmental crises. In the so-called Anthropocene – the age of the human – humans have become a key influencing factor on the earth system. In this context, there is global political consensus that technological solutions will play a key part in confronting global environmental crises such as climate change or biodiversity collapse. Thereby, technology apparently assumes a new role. It is no longer a tool of benefit for its local user, but a global strategy for humanity as a whole.The key argument that I aim to develop from different perspectives throughout my PhD project is that this changed understanding of technology depends on technology fetishism.

Differently put: the Anthropocene gives new context and heightened relevance towards framing and understanding technologies as solutions for humanity’s problems. Technology fetishism then gains in importance: Only if we understand technologies primarily as neutral contraptions of applied knowledge can we brush over the global social inequalities that make their existence possible. The goal of this thesis is to analyze three philosophical and sociological concepts that are central for understanding technology fetishism: (1) extension, (2) production, and (3) extractivism.

In the first paper, I look at the concept of ‘extension’, central in the philosophy of technology. I compare in which ways the concept of technology as an extension of human capabilities differs from the concept of technology as a fetish. I find that the concept of extension understands technology only with regards to a single actor, such as ‘the human’ or ‘humanity’. Thereby the extension concept, contrary to the fetish concept, cannot capture the global inequality and social conflicts inherent in the construction of modern technologies.

In the second paper, I look at the concept of ‘production’, trace back its historical roots and argue that its abstract creationary meaning hinders efforts to understand and address concrete environmentally destructive processes. Out of the historical analysis, I formulate a critique of three central environmental sociological theories (metabolic rift theory, the world ecology conversation, and ecologically unequal exchange theory) and their usage of the production concept.

In the third paper, I look at the concept of ‚extractivism’. I venture into the digital realm by looking at AI technologies and how their extractivism is conceptualized in critical social science literature primarily as ‘data extractivism’. I argue that the often referred to dual process of abstraction and extraction offers insight how we can understand the functioning of technologies as not only physically but also socially constructed. This dual process also enables us to conceptually bring together digital data as well as ‘analog’ resources, energy, and labor.

Technology fetishism recasts social relations as inevitable physical matters of fact. To consistently oppose this tendency would have wide ranging consequences for how societies tackle the multiple planetary crises. A first step towards different political responses is to properly carve out this concept of technology fetishism and thereby deconstruct what it means for a technology of global scale to function. A well-defined concept of technology fetishism is needed to be able to identify and name its manifestations in society’s communication about and action against ecological catastrophes. The central aim of this thesis to provide such concept.

Maximilian Pieper is a Ph.D. student at the Wissenschaftszentrum Umwelt, Augsburg University. Contact: maximilian.pieper@uni-a.de