Technology as Nature

Technology changes the stories we tell about the world, and those stories shape what we believe is possible, desirable and inevitable. Our understanding of emerging technologies begins with these stories. Digital technologies are surrounded by the language and imagery of nature.

We speak of surfing the web, streams, ecosystems and the “cloud.” Operating systems borrow names from landscapes and animals. Apple Stores are filled with trees. AI models are described as learning, agents as acting, and technological systems as evolving. At the same time, digital infrastructure is increasingly treated as natural and essential, something that simply exists and must continue to expand rather than something societies have chosen to build in particular ways.

Yet behind these metaphors lies a profoundly material system of data centres, energy grids, mines, cables, factories, water and land. The stories we tell about technology can make these material relationships, and the political choices behind them, harder to see.

This first event in the What On Earth...? series explores what happens when technology comes to occupy this symbolic space. Technological systems begin to appear inevitable and organic, while nature itself is increasingly understood as something to measure, model, manage and optimize, as well as infrastructure for technological expansion.

It considers this question in relation to the current narrative moment, marked by growing concerns around the rise of a form of “technological authoritarianism” and the corporate push for AI. At the same time, environmental narratives are shifting away from climate and nature and towards energy security and resource management.

Bringing together thinkers and practitioners from different fields, we trace the roots of these stories and examine what they obscure, as well as their influence on the technologies we build and the environmental futures we imagine.

Speakers: José-Carlos Mariategui, Noortje Marres und Annette Zimmermann.

Hosted by Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski.
 

This series is a collaboration between Spore Initiative, Tactical Tech, and Adrienne Russell of the University of Washington.