Crisicity: Cyborg Infrastructure in the Anthropocene

In the Anthropocene thesis, nature is partly a human creation. Human activity has affected all ecologic, geologic and biological systems, eroding the boundary between human and non-human life and between nature and culture, producing catastrophic impacts on the Earth that have brought us to a point of climate crisis. As recent texts have argued, the current social and health crises are direct resultants of human actions dating back to the time of Western colonization. “[T]he familiar contrast between people and the natural world no longer holds. There is no more nature that stands apart from human beings. There is no place or living thing that we haven’t changed.”1 Human pollution of the global ecosystem has produced the climate crisis. As the pandemic of COVID-19 continues to show, the health of people, animals, ecosystems and the environment are intimately linked.2 The health crisis has also exposed weaknesses in our global supply chain network for consumer goods and accelerating conditions of food and energy insecurity. As city migration continues on its current trajectory, urban areas will face ever-increasing demands for food and energy supplies.3 The separation of urban centers from their food sources threatens food security, produces pollution, and compromises healthy food supply by the need for preservatives to maintain freshness during transit. Localizing food and fuel production and storage for easy distribution is a key approach to addressing these issues, and indoor vertical farming and biofuel production is quickly gaining traction in urban centers like New York City. Water-based growing techniques like aquaculture, hydroponics and aquaponics can be grown in compact interior spaces without access to natural light, which is ideal for dense urban environments.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Teach.2021.25

Volume Editors
Jonathan A. Scelsa & Jørgen Johan Tandberg

ISBN
978-1-944214-38-8