Open Access

Maximilian Pieper

• For questions concerning technology, the Anthropocene suggests a peculiar starting point: as a geological era of the entire planet, it challenges us to consider environmental crises and technological responses in their global totality. One could expect that this situation seriously challenges established understandings of technological functionality. To observe that a technology functions, we must limit our view to certain actors, certain causes, certain effects. Yet, the planetary dimensions of current ecological crises suggest an all-encompassing scope that technological solutions fail to cover. The central question then becomes: How is functionality constructed in the Anthropocene? In other words, how do we maintain a narrow, tool-like understanding of technology when the situation should make it impossible to do so? I argue that the phenomenon of technology fetishism is central to answering this question. By fetishizing technologies, one understands them as primarily physicalFor questions concerning technology, the Anthropocene suggests a peculiar starting point: as a geological era of the entire planet, it challenges us to consider environmental crises and technological responses in their global totality. One could expect that this situation seriously challenges established understandings of technological functionality. To observe that a technology functions, we must limit our view to certain actors, certain causes, certain effects. Yet, the planetary dimensions of current ecological crises suggest an all-encompassing scope that technological solutions fail to cover. The central question then becomes: How is functionality constructed in the Anthropocene? In other words, how do we maintain a narrow, tool-like understanding of technology when the situation should make it impossible to do so? I argue that the phenomenon of technology fetishism is central to answering this question. By fetishizing technologies, one understands them as primarily physical matters of fact and thereby overlooks their social dimension. In the framing text, I anchor technology fetishism in classical sociology by showing how the discipline formed itself through the distinction between social laws and laws of nature while struggling to place technology within this conceptual frame. Further, I trace the understanding of technology through the Anthropocene discourse by engaging with Actor-Network Theory, systems theory, and the concept of the Technosphere, as well as eco-Marxism and ecologically unequal exchange theory. Finally, I propose the perspective of critical functionalism. It acknowledges technology's ambiguous position between the social and the natural realms, avoiding both the matter-of-fact view of positivism and the critical drive to look behind surface illusions. The perspective of critical functionalism underlies all three papers of my dissertation. In them, I examine three central capacities commonly attributed to technology: (1) extending human capabilities, (2) increasing production, and (3) dematerializing production. I argue that extension, production, and dematerialization appear as universal technological capacities to be mastered and controlled. However, as soon as we include the perspectives of other social actors, it becomes clear that extension, production, and dematerialization for some actors come at the cost of curtailment of capabilities, destruction of livelihoods, and materialization of harms for many others.…