What do you think?
Rate this book
Dark Mountain #8
Dark Mountain: Issue 8 – Technê
We are at a strange moment in human history. Things that once belonged to the outlandish fantasies of science fiction – from killer robots to nanomachines – are becoming reality. At the same time, ecological and social costs of this technological revolution are becoming clearer each day.
The eighth Dark Mountain book is a special issue on the theme of Technê. Through essays, artwork and how-to guides, this issue confronts the difficult questions of our time: Where are these tools and technologies leading us? What does it mean for the natural world and our own humanity? And how do we live through this?
Familiar names – Paul Kingsnorth picking apart the devotional underpinnings of transhumanism, or Charles Foster ruminating on the materiality of writing – and established figures like David Graeber and Bill McKibben rub shoulders here with new contributors and fresh perspectives: Sarah Perry considering the role of ritual in an automated world, James Bridle wayfaring around our ever-suffocating electromagnetic blanket, or Catrina Davies writing on the technosphere of her live-in shed. At the same time, we look back at the thinkers of the past who tried to warn us of the perilous path we were travelling – Chellis Glendinning recalls the neo-Luddites of yesteryear, while Jan van Boeckel writes of the documentary he made on 20th century techno-sage Jacques Ellul.
The eighth Dark Mountain book is a special issue on the theme of Technê. Through essays, artwork and how-to guides, this issue confronts the difficult questions of our time: Where are these tools and technologies leading us? What does it mean for the natural world and our own humanity? And how do we live through this?
Familiar names – Paul Kingsnorth picking apart the devotional underpinnings of transhumanism, or Charles Foster ruminating on the materiality of writing – and established figures like David Graeber and Bill McKibben rub shoulders here with new contributors and fresh perspectives: Sarah Perry considering the role of ritual in an automated world, James Bridle wayfaring around our ever-suffocating electromagnetic blanket, or Catrina Davies writing on the technosphere of her live-in shed. At the same time, we look back at the thinkers of the past who tried to warn us of the perilous path we were travelling – Chellis Glendinning recalls the neo-Luddites of yesteryear, while Jan van Boeckel writes of the documentary he made on 20th century techno-sage Jacques Ellul.
426 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2015
1 person is currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
Paul Kingsnorth
40 books621 followersPaul Kingsnorth is an English writer and thinker. He is a former deputy-editor of The Ecologist and a co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project. He lives in the west of Ireland.
He studied modern history at Oxford University, where he was also heavily involved in the road protest movement of the early 1990s.
After graduating, Paul spent two months in Indonesia working on conservation projects in Borneo and Java. Back in the UK, he worked for a year on the staff of the Independent newspaper. Following a three year stint as a campaign writer for an environmental NGO, he was appointed deputy editor of The Ecologist, where he worked for two years under the editorship of Zac Goldsmith.
He left the Ecologist in 2001 to write his first book One No, Many Yeses, a political travelogue which explored the growing anti-capitalist movement around the world. The book was published in 2003 by Simon and Schuster, in six languages across 13 countries.
In the early 2000s, having spent time with the tribal people of West Papua, who continue to be brutally colonised by the Indonesian government and military, Paul was instrumental in setting up the Free West Papua Campaign, which he also helped to run for a time.
Paul’s second book, Real England, was published in 2008 by Portobello. An exploration of the changing face of his home country in an age of globalisation, the book was quoted in speeches by the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury, helped inspire the success of the hit West End play ‘Jerusalem’ and saw its author compared to Cobbett and Orwell by more than one newspaper.
In 2009, Paul launched, with Dougald Hine, the Dark Mountain Project – a call for a literary movement to respond to the ongoing collapse of the world’s ecological and economic certainties. What began as a self-published pamphlet has become a global network of writers, artists and thinkers. Paul is now the Project’s director and one of its editors.
In 2011, Paul’s first collection of poetry, Kidland, was published by Salmon. Since the mid-1990s, Paul’s poetry has been published in magazines including Envoi, Iota, Poetry Life and nthposition. He has been awarded the BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year Award and the Poetry Life Prize, and was narrowly pipped to the post in the Thomas Hardy Society’s annual competition.
Paul’s journalism has appeared in the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, Le Monde, New Statesman, Ecologist, New Internationalist, Big Issue, Adbusters, BBC Wildlife and openDemocracy, for which he has also worked as a commissioning editor. He has appeared on various TV and radio programmes, most shamefully ‘This Morning with Richard and Judy.’ He is also the author of ‘Your Countryside, Your Choice’, a report on the future of the countryside, published in 2005 by the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
He studied modern history at Oxford University, where he was also heavily involved in the road protest movement of the early 1990s.
After graduating, Paul spent two months in Indonesia working on conservation projects in Borneo and Java. Back in the UK, he worked for a year on the staff of the Independent newspaper. Following a three year stint as a campaign writer for an environmental NGO, he was appointed deputy editor of The Ecologist, where he worked for two years under the editorship of Zac Goldsmith.
He left the Ecologist in 2001 to write his first book One No, Many Yeses, a political travelogue which explored the growing anti-capitalist movement around the world. The book was published in 2003 by Simon and Schuster, in six languages across 13 countries.
In the early 2000s, having spent time with the tribal people of West Papua, who continue to be brutally colonised by the Indonesian government and military, Paul was instrumental in setting up the Free West Papua Campaign, which he also helped to run for a time.
Paul’s second book, Real England, was published in 2008 by Portobello. An exploration of the changing face of his home country in an age of globalisation, the book was quoted in speeches by the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury, helped inspire the success of the hit West End play ‘Jerusalem’ and saw its author compared to Cobbett and Orwell by more than one newspaper.
In 2009, Paul launched, with Dougald Hine, the Dark Mountain Project – a call for a literary movement to respond to the ongoing collapse of the world’s ecological and economic certainties. What began as a self-published pamphlet has become a global network of writers, artists and thinkers. Paul is now the Project’s director and one of its editors.
In 2011, Paul’s first collection of poetry, Kidland, was published by Salmon. Since the mid-1990s, Paul’s poetry has been published in magazines including Envoi, Iota, Poetry Life and nthposition. He has been awarded the BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year Award and the Poetry Life Prize, and was narrowly pipped to the post in the Thomas Hardy Society’s annual competition.
Paul’s journalism has appeared in the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, Le Monde, New Statesman, Ecologist, New Internationalist, Big Issue, Adbusters, BBC Wildlife and openDemocracy, for which he has also worked as a commissioning editor. He has appeared on various TV and radio programmes, most shamefully ‘This Morning with Richard and Judy.’ He is also the author of ‘Your Countryside, Your Choice’, a report on the future of the countryside, published in 2005 by the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 24, 2016
I like the direction DM seems to be moving in having more themed issues like this one. There were lots of neat instructions here on making bread, oak gall ink, and smithing, though too many essays consisted of little more than "I hate being a grad student, I wish I could work with my hands more, here's some theory." There was a lot of interesting criticism of the Singularity and other technocrat lingo.
September 14, 2016
Usual 6-star yumminess.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews