The biosphere has budded off a second global “sphere,” the technosphere, a technology-based system on which humans now depend—and which they find hard to control. Which tools are needed to ensure human survival in the technosphere?

The biosphere has budded off a second global “sphere,” the technosphere, a technology-based system on which humans now depend—and which they find hard to control. Which tools, in terms of coevolutionary dynamics between man and machine, are needed to ensure human survival in the technosphere?

For more than 3.5 billion years, the biosphere has been a continuous, highly active component of the Earth, interlinked with the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. As an emergent system, it modulates the conditions of the Earth’s surface, its evolution over time including major innovations such as photosynthesis and the emergence of animals. This dynamic has become more complex with the appearance of the technosphere. In one view the latter is less a conscious construct than an emergent system which humans no longer fully control, with dynamics partly modulated by human actions and needs, and partly by the serendipitous emergence and spread of system-altering components such as computers and their unintended consequences. The technosphere—which like the biosphere is a means to collect, transform, and store energy and matter—co-evolves to maintain itself and appropriate more of the Earth’s surface and materials. Alternatively the technosphere may be viewed as a socio-epistemic, i.e. a knowledge-based system, embodying a fundamental dilemma: individual actions are controlled by thought, while collective actions are controlled by institutions that contain shared knowledge, but cannot think, while participating individuals do not necessarily realize the consequences of collective action. This, together with the limited co-evolutionary dynamics of its epistemic component, lies at the root of the uncontrollability of the technosphere. Collective actions can reach global scale, affecting human survival, with knowledge-production still determined locally. Yet, Enlightenment-style ideas may survive, perhaps, sufficient to ensure human survival.

In this seminar, we wanted to consider the biosphere and technosphere, technological and scientific progress, in terms of co-evolutionary dynamics; the cognitive, material, and social dimensions of knowledge; and the major steps of socio-epistemic evolution in human history.