Abstract

Technology involves artifacts, both in its etymology, from the Greek tekhne, “art” or “skill,” and in its central idea, the body of knowledge available to a culture for fashioning and using implements. This has so dramatically escalated in modern times, with the coupling of science and industry, that we have entered the first century in the 45 million centuries of life on Earth in which one species can aspire to manage the planet’s future. Since Galileo, Earth seemed a minor planet, lost in the stars. Since Darwin, humans have come late and last on this lonely planet. Today, on our home planet at least, we are putting these once de-centered humans back at the center. We have entered the Anthropocene Epoch, the...