Technometabolism: Technology, Society, and the Anthropocene

The technosphere - the global sum of all infrastructure - metabolizes energy, materials, and information to feed human consumption. It runs on fossil fuels and solar energy, metabolized through such processes as photosynthesis (agriculture), photovoltaics, wind, and hydroelectric power. The technosphere also metabolizes information, ingesting some kinds of data as inputs and producing other data as outputs. Techno-metabolism's waste products, such as greenhouse gases, microplastics, and nuclear waste, are currently transforming the atmosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere, with radically different effects on disparate peoples and places. Scientists, historians, engineers, and others have proposed new ways to conceptualize techno-metabolism, seeking to reduce its energy requirements and material waste. In this group-project-centered course, students will develop creative ways to visualize, understand, and change the interplay of energy, materials, and information to respond to environmental crises in the Anthropocene era.