Recently, the term ‘technosphere’ is increasingly used in a slightly different sense than in the Earth system context (see the new issue of ‘The Economist’ and the briefing that inspired and informed this post). The technosphere would be the world of the internet, roughly defined. This refers to the global and comprehensive connectivity and the growing inclusion of all other kinds of technology, i.e. the ‘internet of things’, which suggests the vision that eventually technology is being integrated into one ‘sphere’, which is increasingly controlled via artificial agents that emerge from the development of artificial intelligence. Clearly, this use of the term harmonizes well with the Earth system view, in the sense that the important aspect of the regulatory mechanisms of the technosphere is highlighted. The digital part of the technosphere is limited as long as we still use a hammer to hit a nail into the wall, but once even the hammer would be equipped with some fancy digitalized mechanism connected to our smartphone, such that an app helps us to improve our technique of hammering, the ‘technospheres’ in the two senses would indeed merge into one. The visionaries of our digital future would point to the fact that smart homes already exist, so places to hide will be more and more difficult to find.
However, we are also increasingly aware of the obstacles in realizing such visions. These obstacles are human. There are two major domains where the growth of the technosphere appears to be limited. The first is political economy, the other is the concern about human freedom and autonomy.
Regarding the latter, technosphere evolution raises important questions about privacy and autonomy which has linspired various demands and initiatives that would build firewalls against the encroachment of the technosphere into our individual lives, such as the European Union regulations on data privacy. To a large degree, this is indeed akin to instituting constitutional protections against political power, such as claiming and safeguarding private property in data. In other words, there is a growing concern about demarcating the human domain vis-à-vis the technosphere via explicit institutional design. Of course, this does not directly impose constraints on technological evolution, but on human actors employing the technology. In that sense, we can speak of spillovers from the human domain to the technosphere. However, and this relates to the first domain of political economy, obviously there are differences across countries which reflect their respective political system. This is most evident in the differences between China and the Western democracies: Apparently, the ‘Chinese technosphere’ can expand without constraints because the authoritarian Chinese state has built an alliance, exploiting the technosphere for controlling the population, moving towards a Benthamite panopticon. Most Chinese do not express concern about this development, because they mainly experience the advantages offered by the Chinese internet companies, such as Alibaba. The Corona crisis also seems to demonstrate that Chinese digital governance has been crucial for avoiding a second wave of infections.
Things have become messy with the open competition between the US and China over controlling the future of the digital technosphere, as both sides recognize that digital technologies define competitive advantage both in the economy and the military. However, this produces the side effect of constraining the global integration of the technosphere. The scenario evokes the various stages in globalizing the world economy, currently apparently falling back on protectionism and hostile ‘digital policies’. The solution may be similar, i.e. creating a global institutional framework, such as the Bretton Woods institutions after WWII. But that was accompanied by the transition to cold war divisions. Hence, the basic political differences between China (and other authoritarian countries, such as Russia) and Western advanced democracies will block any attempt at establishing a global institutional framework for the technosphere. As a consequence, the technosphere may remain fragmented, which has the side-effect of leaving ‘interstitial’ spaces for human freedom independent from explicit and formal institutional design.
How about the forces of global capitalism which so far drove the integration? Clearly, Chinese internet behemoths act like capitalist enterprises, and Alibaba founder Jack Ma was on the verge to launch the global expansion of Ant, the most successful fintech company so far. But the Chinese government stopped the Ant IPO, concerned about the power balance between party and business. This reveals an interesting paradox in the alliance between political power and the technosphere. As I have argued in other posts, global capitalism can be conceived as the core of technosphere regulation, as far as the expansionary forces are concerned. As we see, this stays in tension with the political instrumentalization of the technosphere. Hence, the alliance can only go so far.
At the same time, though, global competition in the digital technosphere can erode the constitutional safeguards in Western democracies. Many analysts point towards the fact that China’s authoritarian system is a competitive advantage in developing artificial intelligence, because there are no legal or factual constraints to collecting and exploiting user data. Currently, Europe is ahead of the US in protecting individual rights in the digital technosphere. But Europe is also perceived as a laggard in that most dynamic part of the global economy.
The conclusion? It is our human messy life that constrains technosphere expansion. Don’t expect much from any attempts at constructivist and constitutional measures to control the technosphere. It is the contradictions, the tensions, the conflicts, the craziness of our human ways of life that will protect our freedom and dignity vis-à-vis the technosphere. Perhaps we just stubbornly stick to our hammer and hit our thumb, but we keep human.
The technosphere, our agency, our planet 
Perhaps what we see as messy is actually exploration, digging around across the problem space such that the wider system gets to know where the opportunities are? But you are right, I could certainly see AI replacing humans in this activity given a more directed search could ‘find’ more productive configurations, and faster.
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But more directed searches are always prone to getting stuck in a corner, whereas the messy humans are diverse, exploring across the frontier. So perhaps the Earth system’s experiment with AI is brief?
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Perhaps I did not express myself clear enough. My concern is how we can preserve humanity or what defines us as ‘human’ against the growing reach of the technosphere. And that this is an UNINTENDED consequence of our messiness. But you are right: This is also a way to discover entirely new trajectories of search.
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As I have argued in the previous post that I agree with the opinion that the concern about losing autonomy over technosphere is difficult but the only way to curb its expansion. However, I am skeptical with the argument that territorial political economy has a similar effect. As a matter of fact, the competition and design of different institutions between countries have in a way accelerated the evolving of technosphere to its advanced stage: because of such territorial protection and mutual exclusion. The best example is that the arms race between the United States and Russia during the Cold War eventually led to the development of human lunar landing technology, and no matter how much energy and greenhouse gas emissions are required for each landing, and how much damage to the environment is caused by the completion of this technology. Now the rising star China is catching up: right, the expansion we’re talking about doesn’t make any differences between American version or a Chinese version of such technology. It continues to improve in general even faster among human beings and enhances evolving of technosphere because of regional competition.
It should be reinforced that the surveillance system in China raised in the post is, in my opinion, more likely an application of a well-developed technology, rather than evidence of technosphere expansion. In order to implement such a gigantic surveillance system, we should not overlook the fact that China has developed into the world’s largest Internet country over the past 20 years, and this technology comes from the US military. What I want to argue is that the institutional design, no matter it is an authoritarian or democratic, will have minimal influences on technosphere expansion. Technosphere will, as long as the human beings and other biosystem stakeholders are involved, find a way out, just like biosphere itself.
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Well, I must admit that my post was an expression of pessimism, and I like what you say in your last sentence, perhaps you are right, The current Ukraine drama is a case in point, as this further pushes military technology, development as you analyse. All in all, we must seriously think about what makes us humans human. Perhaps this is less a scientific, but a religious issue.
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