Computation, data and AI in Anthropocene history
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 14800760 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Adam Wickberg (0000-0003-2616-5826, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, corresponding author), Johan Gärdebo (0000-0002-8532-0876, Uppsala University) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue | 3-4 |
| Pages | 328-346 |
| Publication date | 2023-10-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History and Technology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0734-1512 • E-ISSN: 1477-2620 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/07341512.2024.2330724 |
| OpenAlex | W4394570754 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 34 |
This essay engages with recent scholarship on the epistemology of AI, data and automation, to assert how these practices are becoming increasingly central both to the projects of monitoring and of managing a global environment. We also review Jurgen Renn's recent contribution The Evolution of Knowledge (2020) in relation to the history of environmental data. Using Renn as point of departure, we stake out a way for understanding the Anthropocene through the interaction between data and environment, taking into account the deeper political implications of datafication. We conclude with discussions about how historians of technology and environment could play an important role in assessing the opportunities and risks of AI for global environmental justice before their full-scale implementation is a fait accompli. In face of the Anthropocene, there is a general need today for integrative efforts of bridging knowledge from natural, technical, social and humanistic domains, and therefore a strong imperative for humanistic studies to transposetools, methodologies, and insights into the realms of policymaking, and legislation. Thus, assessments of AI and environment must account for these historical processes in the present as well as offer critical analysis of the full ontological spectrum from object to epistemology via data and mediation
Anthropocene · Data science · Engineering ethics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Humanism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Computer Science · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Engineering · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
The Costs of Connection
Cybernetic Revolutionaries
The role of artificial intelligence in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
Characterising the Digital Twin
Assessing ICT global emissions footprint
Weapons of Math Destruction
Data Is the New What? Popular Metaphors & Professional Ethics in Emerging Data Culture
Where Humans and the Planetary Conflate—An Introduction to Environing Media
A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None
The Honest Broker
The Great Derangement
Environing technologies
The ghost factories
Datafication, Power and Control in Development
The mediated planet
Environing media and cultural techniques
Roundtable
The Evolution of Knowledge
When data is capital
The geology of mankind? A critique of the Anthropocene narrative
The orbital technosphere
The trajectory of the Anthropocene
The Environmental History of Computing
Plantationocene
Media
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 6 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |