The Technosphere has been proposed by Peter Haff as a recent geohistorical concept, in addition to the biosphere, and as a defining feature of the Anthropocene. The technosphere comprises not just our machines, but us humans too, and the professional and social systems by which we interact with technology – factories, schools, universities, trade unions, banks, political parties, the internet. It also includes the domestic animals that we grow in enormous numbers to feed us, the crops that are cultivated to sustain both them and us, and the agricultural soils that are extensively modified from their natural state to carry out this task. It comprises our complex social structures together with the physical infrastructure and technological artefacts supporting energy, information and material flows that enable the system to work, including entities as diverse as power stations, transmission lines, roads and buildings, farms, plastics, tools, airplanes, ballpoint pens, and transistors. It includes the world’s large-scale energy and resource extraction systems, power generation and transmission systems, communication, transportation, financial and other networks, governments and bureaucracies, cities, factories, farms and myriad other “built” systems, as well as parts of these systems, including computers, windows, tractors, office memos and humans. What renders strip mines, clear-cuts and beach developments unnatural is not that they are anthropogenic – for, biologically speaking, Homo sapiens is as natural a species as any other – but that they occur at temporal and spatial scales that were unprecedented in nature until nature itself evolved another mode of evolution: cultural evolution.
The geological evidence for the technosphere is provided by technofossils, unrecycled artefacts deposited on the surface of the planet (including nuclear waste), in the atmosphere (including greenhouse gases), and in the seas…as well as in space and on other planets. Like other geological layers, the deposits from the technosphere are physically identifiable and can serve as markers in geological time – in this case very precise ones. The cultural dimensions of the technosphere are the province of archaeologists, but its physical elements and operation have been proposed as a new element in earth systems, and as a feature of the Anthropocene. Unlike the biosphere, whose circular processes recycle most of its material, making its fossils relatively rare, the technosphere to date has reabsorbed only a small portion of its physical debris, making technofossils globally widespread. In fact, technofossil diversity already exceeds known estimates of biological diversity and far exceeds recognized fossil diversity. (Jan Zalasiewicz et al. “Scale and diversity of the physical technosphere: A geological perspective”} The technnosphere’s inefficient recycling is a considerable threat to its own further development and to the parent biosphere.
Nobody knows how many different kinds of technofossils there are, but they already almost certainly exceed the number of fossil species known, while modern technodiversity, considered this way, also exceeds modern biological diversity. The number of technofossil species is continually increasing too, as technological evolution now far outpaces biological evolution.The technosphere is characterized by both active and residual components. Continuous growth, transformation and re-incorporation takes place among these components, and its scope is now global.
In his descriptions of “being human in the technosphere”, Peter Haff highlights some issues with “recycling technologically obsolete humans into new performance roles “ For Haff, these failures call into question the ultimate value of humans to the technosphere. Although today humans may be overwhelming the great forces of nature, Haff brings up another the possibility: that humans are in the process themselves of being overwhelmed by novel forces of an evolving Earth.
One commonly produced potential technofossil is the book, and a more recent, ‘fossilizeable’ example comprises mobile phones, (see illustration this page).In 2021, the number of mobile devices operating worldwide stood at almost 15 billion, up from just over 14 billion in the previous year.
Towns and cities are the most obvious part of the technosphere, including buildings, roads, airport runways, docks, quarries, mines and their associated waste dumps, canals, levees, dams, concreted waterways, paved open spaces, with a complexly engineered substructure of foundations, water and energy supply lines, landfills, sewage tunnels, railway lines and metro systems. Haff points out that the rapid growth of the human population in recent times is directly dependent on the technosphere, and that without it the human population would revert to pre-indusrial levels. In his view, humans are not so much creators and directors of the technosphere, as components within it, and therefore constrained to act to keep it in existence – not least because the technosphere keeps most of the current human population alive, through the supplies of food, shelter and other resources that it provides.
What role do humans play in the Technosphere if it is not articulated as fundamentally anthropocentric concept? Does the Technosphere have non-human agency? According to Haff, human actions are strongly constrained by technological possibilities and dependencies, that include lock-in investments and path dependencies. For his critics, Haff’s concept of the technosphere is incompatible with political or ethical choice on the planetary level. (Donges et al. Technosphere in Earth Systems Analysis). The technosphere today is not evolving because it is being guided by some controlling human force, but because of the invention and emergence of useful technological novelties. There is now a kind of co-evolution of human and technological systems.
Should agency in the technosphere be ascribed to “ontologically diverse assemblages (such as of plants and humans)?
In “Being human in the Anthropocene” Haff highlights the role of humanistic pushback against technospheric encroachment on the human domain. Today humans may be overwhelming the great forces of nature, but there is another possibility: that humans are in the process themselves of being overwhelmed by novel forces of an evolving Earth, many of them unleashed by humans.
While the technosphere still leaves open “free” operating space for humans-qua-humans, for example in art, literature or other dimensions of the humanities, there is no guarantee that this ‘free’ space available for spontaneous human actions unchanneled by the technosphere will remain unaffected, or even that human participation in the technosphere will be sustained in the face of significant technological change, such as widespread emergence of artificial intelligence,
Pfaff sees the two great challenges facing humans in the Anthropocene as, how to influence technospheric function in a direction that is less damaging to the environment, and how to avoid diminishment of their own status as essential components of an efficiency-driven technosphere.
Is the economy is the domain where functions of the technosphere are realized via human action? (in contradistinction to human design)