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Jürgen Renn’s Followers (8)
Jürgen Renn
Born
in Moers, Germany
July 11, 1956
Website
More books by Jürgen Renn…
“While the technosphere concept stresses that most humans lack the potential to influence the behavior of large technological systems, the ergosphere concept makes this possibility dependent on the existence of appropriate social and political structures and knowledge systems, and also on the individual perspectives of human actors. One cause for hope is that a knowledge economy produces and distributes not only the knowledge needs for its functioning (and often less) but, to varying degrees, an excess of knowledge (an 'epistemic spillover') that may trigger unexpected developments.
Humans must certainly maintain and preserve their tools, technologies, and infrastructures, but they also change them with each implementation. The material world of the ergosphere consists of borderline objects between nature and culture that may trigger innovations as well as unpredictable consequences. The ergosphere has a plasticity and porousness in which materials and functions are not so tightly interwoven as to exclude the repurposing of existing tools for new applications. In principle, each aspect of the ergosphere can be transformed from an end into a means, which is then available to emerging intentions and functions. Repurposing a given tool is, however, a double-edged sword - it may have disastrous consequences. Thus, the responsibility for using and developing technical systems must always be assumed anew.”
― The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene
Humans must certainly maintain and preserve their tools, technologies, and infrastructures, but they also change them with each implementation. The material world of the ergosphere consists of borderline objects between nature and culture that may trigger innovations as well as unpredictable consequences. The ergosphere has a plasticity and porousness in which materials and functions are not so tightly interwoven as to exclude the repurposing of existing tools for new applications. In principle, each aspect of the ergosphere can be transformed from an end into a means, which is then available to emerging intentions and functions. Repurposing a given tool is, however, a double-edged sword - it may have disastrous consequences. Thus, the responsibility for using and developing technical systems must always be assumed anew.”
― The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene
“System knowledge alone tends to favor technocratic visions; transformation knowledge by itself may encourage blind activism; orientation knowledge without system and transformation knowledge is idle. But even the combination of these types of knowledge will be useless as long as they are not implemented within a suitable knowledge economy, comprising research, education, public discourse, and political action.
Much of the needed knowledge is unavailable - either because it is inaccessible, suppressed, or unimplemented, or because it does not yet exist or has been lost. Even in the face of global challenges, there will not be just one way into the future, but various modes of bringing together the richness and diversity of human experiences. New form of knowledge, as well as new forms of individual and social life ready to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene (including new strategies for knowledge production and energy provision, for dealing with social justice and the flow of materials, for health care en traffic, etc) will not simply follow from a radical 'paradigm shift'. They will rather result from exploration processes that may eventually form a matrix. thus giving birth to new insights and forms of life that we could not have anticipated.”
― The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene
Much of the needed knowledge is unavailable - either because it is inaccessible, suppressed, or unimplemented, or because it does not yet exist or has been lost. Even in the face of global challenges, there will not be just one way into the future, but various modes of bringing together the richness and diversity of human experiences. New form of knowledge, as well as new forms of individual and social life ready to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene (including new strategies for knowledge production and energy provision, for dealing with social justice and the flow of materials, for health care en traffic, etc) will not simply follow from a radical 'paradigm shift'. They will rather result from exploration processes that may eventually form a matrix. thus giving birth to new insights and forms of life that we could not have anticipated.”
― The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene
“The problem is also not, as suggested by the technosphere concept, that human beings are incapable of controlling systems that have a larger range of behaviors than they do themselves. The problem rather lies in the question of what 'control' means in the first place. The stewardship of technological systems and infrastructures always depends on their specific nature (in particular, the way they are embedded in natural and cultural environment) as well as on their representation in knowledge and belief systems. Human cognition is always embodied cognition. There are historical examples showing that humans have been able to manage and sustain extremely complex ecologies and infrastructures of their own making over the long term. The systems' potential behaviors always far exceeded those of their human components, but these were typically ecologies and infrastructures in which the relevant regulative structures of human behavior had themselves been coevolving over long periods, including in their representation by knowledge and belief systems.
As recent work on Japanese ecologies during the Tokugawa period (between 1603 and 1868) shows, age-old traditions had accumulated knowledge on how to sustainably manage a complex landscape providing humans with food, shelter, clothing, and energy. The knowledge was implemented through a complex system of governance and material practices ranging from sanitation to publishing.”
― The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene
As recent work on Japanese ecologies during the Tokugawa period (between 1603 and 1868) shows, age-old traditions had accumulated knowledge on how to sustainably manage a complex landscape providing humans with food, shelter, clothing, and energy. The knowledge was implemented through a complex system of governance and material practices ranging from sanitation to publishing.”
― The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene
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