The Technoecology Foundation is a fledgling organization dedicated to the study of technoecology.
Technoecology is an attempt to unify our understanding of natural systems, including biological systems, and systems of human interactions. Technoecology is not the first attempt to develop analogies between the biological world and the world of human interactions. Scientists have looked at economics and markets in non-human populations for many years. However technoecology is more rigorous and general, and seeks to identify the underlying dynamics that govern both realms, while developing a bidirectional rather than unidirectional analogy.
Our goal of developing technoecology is to better our understanding of our world, and to seek out solutions to the sociological, economic, political, and environmental problems that we face.
We must stress that technoecology is in its early stages of development. Much of the discussion involves a combination of cutting edge theory and conjecture. This site hopes to bring awareness of the field, as well as promote discussion on how we can improve it.
Core Concepts
At the heart of technoecology is the analogy between the biosphere and the technosphere. The biosphere is generally well understood as the entirety of life on this planet, while the technosphere is the system incorporating all human interaction, as well as the material and cultural inventory that they produce and use.
It’s also important to realize that the “technosphere” is a fairly anthropocentric concept in and of itself. One reason why a bidirectional analogy is so important is because there really is no clear divide between systems of human interactions and the natural environment. The boundary can be said to exist, but it is quite fuzzy. One of the reasons why we can generate more fundamental theories that apply by natural and human systems is that humans and our material and cultural inventory are really part of the broader natural world.
With this realization, we can look at a final key feature of this field: the realization that evolutionary dynamics that play out in the biosphere are essentially the same ones that play out in the technosphere, and stem from more fundamental principles that can be realized through a study of probability, energetics, thermodynamics, and complex systems.
The Invisible Hand of Evolution
When Darwin developed his theories on natural selection, they seemed revolutionary. And in many ways, they were. However, Darwin was not the first to realize that natural selection occurred. In 1759, roughly 100 years before On the Origins of Species, Adam Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments in which he first discussed “the invisible hand.” We’re now discovering that the invisible hand that drives the market is not so dissimilar to natural selection. D.P. Johnson, M.E. Price, and M.V. Vugt discussed this idea in Darwin’s invisible hand: Market competition, evolution and the firm, however we have to contest the terminology, since it was Smith that first introduced this dynamic, rather than Darwin.
Variety
Variety, The Law of Requisite Variety, and its multiscale variant are also important to understanding technoecology. In this context, a system’s variety is simply the number of potential states in that system. The Law of Requisite Variety, developed by Ross Ashby suggests that a control system must have a greater variety than the variety of the system that it controls, if the system is to be stable.
As a potential application, consider two societies, with two different governments. We can say the following about the two governments. If the variety of one society is greater than that of the other, the the minimal variety of the government must also be greater, assuming both governments are stable. This idea has real world consequences if one were to attempt to take a successful governmental operation in one society and apply it to a less homogeneous society.
Contact
The main point of contact for this project is Daniel Goldman. You can reach him at [email protected] with any questions or comments, or if you’re interested in supporting this project in any way.
We’re also trying to set up a subreddit in order to promote discussion of technoecology.