The Automaton of the Anthropocene

On Carbosilicon Machines and Cyberfossil Capital

Bibliographic Data

ID4440254
AuthorsMatteo Pasquinelli (0000-0001-9626-3371, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume116
Issue2
Pages311-326
Publication date2017-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSouth Atlantic Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-2876 • E-ISSN: 1527-8026
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00382876-3829423
OpenAlexW2607416939
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited29

This essay proposes a definition of industrial labor as the composition of energy and information, in order to weave the issue of labor back into the fabric of the Anthropocene paradigm. The essay illustrates the industrial machine as the forgotten bifurcation of energy and information and follows such a bifurcation along three stages: the industrial factory, the cybernetic society, and planetary computation. More generally, the essay tries to recombine the energy theory of labor (labor as manual and energetic activity) with the information theory of labor, that is, labor as a source of information and intelligence that gives form to energy. The notions of carbosilicon machine and cyberfossil capital are sketched in order to rethink social autonomy also as autonomy of energy and information

Anthropocene · Archaeology · Automaton · Autonomy · Capital (architecture) · Capitalism · Economics · Energy (signal processing) · Environmental ethics · Factory (object-oriented programming) · Industrial Revolution · Order (exchange) · Political science · Sociology · Theory of computation · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Cybernetics and Technology in Society · Embodied and Extended Cognition · History · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy

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