Posted: February 1, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anthropocene, science Leave a comment
Will Steffen’s keynote speech at the Anthropocene Project
Posted: July 22, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anthropocene, thesis Leave a comment
Slavoj Zizek Explains Why Nature Does Not Exist
Posted: July 22, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anthropocene, thesis Leave a comment
At the end of the last ice age, around 11,500 years ago, our planet entered the Holocene, an epoch of climatic stability and warmth. People came out of their caves and took advantage of the new conditions; they started farming and settling in villages and towns, which led to development of cultures and the rise of entire civilizations.
However, since the industrial revolution, human activity has accelerated and become so profound and global that many scientists think we have pushed the planet across a new geological boundary, into what some are calling the Anthropocene (which literally means the “age of man”). Now geologists are considering whether to formally define the new age, recognizing it in the same way as the Jurassic, Cambrian, or Holocene.
The photo is of Bingham Mine, the world’s largest open pit mine (copper), located outside of Salt Lake City and clearly visible from the International Space Station. Is is still growing and in operation today.
Posted: July 13, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anthropocene, thesis Leave a comment
Watch a 3-minute journey through the last 250 years of our history, from the start of the Industrial Revolution to the Rio 20 Summit. The film charts the growth of humanity into a global force on an equivalent scale to major geological processes. The film is part of the world’s first educational webportal on the Anthropocene, commissioned by the Planet Under Pressure conference, and developed and sponsored by
anthropocene.info
Welcome to the Anthropocene ::: Planet Under Pressure (via fromegotoeco)
09_07_2012
Posted: July 9, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anthropocene, thesis Leave a commentThe contemporary discussion on the validity of the anthropocene argument seems to posit [living] humans at the center of planet Earth’s new era.
What do we make of human remains? Beyond, human remains, the artifacts, objects, material that we use, inhabit, and leave behind have perhaps a much more everlasting impact on the planet.
Collective Remains as a Geologic Force [?]
…more thoughts on the pristine-ness of nature
Posted: July 9, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anthropocene, notes, thesis Leave a commentStanford Podcast on the Anthropocene
Toward the middle of the interview, Richard White brings up the philosophical problem with society’s perception of natural lands as pristine. This denial of man’s effects on the entire planet becomes detrimental to engaging the “natural” world, favoring the notion of conservation in its purest form.
If the yearning for pristine-ness ends up doing more harm than good – not concerning the environment directly, rather our holistic understanding of man’s relationship to the planet – how might the perception of the environment and natural processes shift forward to include man in these processes?
Generation Anthropocene Podcast
Posted: July 9, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anthropocene, audio, thesis Leave a comment“Even though many people…think that they’re utterly removed from nature in the way that they live…that’s just not true…we’re all implicated in the natural world.”
Interview with Richard White, Environmental Historian
Generation Anthropocene Podcast
Posted: April 2, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anthropocene, video Leave a comment
Welcome to the Anthropocene
A brief look at the growth of humanity from the Industrial Revolution to the present day.
Posted: April 2, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anthropocene, quotes, thesis Leave a comment
The reality is that modern humanity and human civilization are the fruit of a very tightly banded set of interconnected climate and biological conditions. We need a certain kind of world in order to thrive, and that world is essentially the mild, moderately wet, biologically abundant world of the Holocene. We’ve never left that world, and in fact we are still intimately dependent on its plenty for our very survival. We don’t know of another set of conditions that would allow us to thrive on this planet. There is no human-designed set of planetary conditions that we know of that will suit us better. We don’t want the Holocene to end: the whole point is that we want to go back to lower greenhouse gas concentrations in order to continue the Holocene climate indefinitely, as long as we possibly can.
Alex Steffen, Save the Holocene! Why “the Anthropocene” might not be a useful construct
Urbanism After Mass Media – March 16
Posted: March 15, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anthropocene, notes, thesis, urbanism after mass media Leave a commentTalk with Etienne
Overview of the anthropocene
How do we define a new era if the geologic stratification has yet to occur?
When can we say the anthropocene began? 1784 [invention of steam engine], beginning of agriculture, or end of second World War [use of atomic bomb], 1945 [the great acceleration]
Seth Dennison lecture on TCAUP Lectures
E.T. – Mineralization, biology and geology cannot be separated
Mineralization – dragging minerals from below the earth, bringing them to the surface, and making “things”
Manuel de Landa – the arms race of mineralization
The City Limit
Referencing Timothy Mitchell’s text
How do we know if we are inside or outside the city?
Metabolism – in the most literal sense
Alfred Latka [sp?] “Fire and Memory” [book], any energy production that is beyond the 1:1 ration can be called ‘culture’
That which is unnatural is anything that exceeds the metabolic
Workingman’s Death [movie clip]
Sulfur extraction out of edge of volcano
Extraction tourism = the city in reverse
The path, wooden container, and processes [from movie clip] are the only infrastructure needed
contingent obligations vs. logical necessities [de Landa]
May 1 1886 [May Day] national general strike for eight hour work day
Neo-Industrial
post-industrial, what does that mean?
“How are histories inscribed in spatial products? And how can we make the object ‘speak’ them? […] this meaning of architecture is a tuning in to a complicated reciprocal relationship between forces and forms.” – Eyal Weizman, Political Plastic
Aesthetics of the anthropocene in the neo-industrial context [E.T. Research]
“The Climate of History” [book], disproportionate cause of pollution, while environmental effects are leveled globally.
What is the city but a bunch of things which have been extracted?
Unequal exposure to environmental risks and benefits [ref. Inundation Jakarta]
Make distinction between “urban” and “city,” Everything is urban. [M.C.]
Trying to understand scale, magnitude [Kant],
When we become the ‘mountain’ [scale beyond our understanding]…what is our experience of scale when it is embedded in our everyday objects
How does the body embed itself back into the environment?
How is the body habituated to space, how do we become comfortable at a particular scale? [E.T.]
Scale is dispersed in commodities [E.T.]
Anonymous as the modern-day communard
THE INTERNET IS NOT KILLING THE METROPOLIS
Do cell phones dream of civil war? [essay]
urbanterior blog 
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