Dmitry Orlov: How the Technosphere Threatens the Biosphere and our Freedoms

Geopolitics & Empire · Dmitry Orlov: How the Technosphere Threatens the Biosphere and our Freedoms #088 Dmitry Orlov rejoins us to discuss his book on the technosphere and how it threatens the environment or biosphere, limits our economic freedoms, and can become weaponized as a political technology. He gives some recommendations on ways to mitigate against the overarching influence of the technosphere. Transcript Podcast: Returning to the Geopolitics and Empire Podcast is author Dmitry Orlov. We'll be discussing his book, Shrinking the Technosphere: Getting a Grip on Technologies that Limit our Autonomy, Self-sufficiency, and Freedom, which touches on ways technology or this thing known as technosphere limits our economic and political freedoms as well as threatens the biosphere and environment. I'd also like to remind listeners to subscribe to all of our social media and weekly newsletter, all of which can be found at geopoliticsandempire.com, and thank the few of you who have left a tip via Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin, and ask new listeners for continued support because it does cost a considerable amount of time, energy, and money to produce this podcast. Without further ado, thanks for coming back on, Dmitry. [spoiler] Dmitry Orlov: Thank you for inviting me. Glad to discuss this topic. Podcast: Yeah, and I purchased this book from you a year ago, and only got around to reading it recently. You put to paper succinctly a lot of thoughts I've had on this subject of the technosphere, but let's start with what is the technosphere. The term, for me, evokes different themes, such as the technocracy, the 1930s scientific dictatorship movement, which I suppose is still alive today in some form. Some people talk about the term globalism, an elite who wield technology to tighten their grip on power, perhaps private corporations who wield greater power than states, such as Silicon Valley, who, at this moment, are purging any anti-establishment voices from their online platforms. It also, the technosphere reminds me of the Belgian utopian Paul Otlet who wanted to classify the world and create some sort of world city, as well as it evokes images of science fiction dystopian literature in film, such as The Matrix. Could you tell us what is the technosphere? Dmitry Orlov: Well, what got me thinking about it initially was this thought that there are systems that human being evolve at various points that are not necessarily in their individual or group interest and that these systems behave as emergent intelligences and as agents independent of the human will, that they manipulate people as opposed to people controlling them.Probably, the first one is agriculture. It made people sicker. It bound them to the earth. It made them unable to move around as they have before, but it increased population density and allowed more powerful systems of control to develop. It gave rise to empires, whereas before, we had basically bands and tribes. That took over. Then, later on, we had the development of the financial realm and money lending, which was only made possible by agriculture and by the accumulation of harvests, of harvested wealth. Eventually, this way of handling wealth involving money and debt took over and grew out of control, so that money became this necessary evil that people required to keep people at bay.Then later on, with industrialization and especially with the development of fossil fuels, we had the full development of the technosphere, which is now a realm onto its own, an emergent intelligence that we have no chance outside of that we must allow to take priority over our own interests, even if our basic interest is just elemental survival in terms of not destroying the biosphere or what's left of the biosphere. Podcast: Just, again, to clarify that note on your definition of the technosphere. It's not any sentient being, but I suppose it can be wielded by political elites? Dmitry Orlov: Yes, well,