Abstract
People and the socio-technical systems they constitute are being literally identified with motors and information processors in the present age of complex systems. This means, among others, that (a) energy and information are seen as actual ontological entities whereon the survival and the evolution of social aggregates depend and that (b) these entities entirely frame mainstream research and policy approaches aiming to increase the sustainability of human activities. This chapter (1) discusses how and why these extremely useful conceptual entities should be considered as metaphors when applied to study societies; (2) identifies some main social dynamics causing that these metaphors are instead constantly taken literally; (3) describes the implications of this literal interpretation for the ongoing energy transition. In particular, it shows how the literal interpretation of these metaphors reinforces dependency on abstract resource units supplied by energy and information technologies as well as a continuous growth in their consumption. In addition, this chapter illustrates how the unwanted effects of this literal interpretation can be effectively escaped by researchers, policy makers and all people involved in the current energy transition by focusing on the design and implementation of policy actions where the installation of technical solutions with reduced energy input and/or emissions is made complementary or subordinated to a reorganization of the energy outputs. This chapter also shows how this can allow exploiting an otherwise neglected huge variety of context dependent policy solutions relying on people capacities and on their more active involvement in policy making.
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- 1.
The reasons for this can be understood by reading, for example Durkeim (1915).
- 2.
By energy technology it is generally meant here any energy end-use technology or technology used to produce, transmit or distribute some type of energy carrier (e.g. electricity, gas, etc.).
- 3.
See Feynman (1964).
- 4.
See Bridgman (1961).
- 5.
It remains, however, extremely interesting to follow the evolution and the transformations undergone by the formulations of the energy conservation principle, for example in the account provided by Mirowski (1989). This account illustrates how. during the first decades of the nineteenth century, the verification of the constancy of the ratios between the amounts of heat, mechanical work, electricity, radiation, etc., that can be generated from given amounts of these same physical quantities within specific physical transformation processes conducted under very controlled conditions provided the experimental basis to interpret these transformations as conversion processes whereby amounts of a same and conserved ontological entity were converted from a form to another. This account also shows how the energy conservation principle has undergone after that time a series of reformulations that have transformed it into a consequence of specific fields symmetries and of time homogeneity up to the quite recent and serious cosmological theories that have proposed that the universe has been generated from a vacuum fluctuation and that there is no globally conserved energy (Mirowski 1989, p. 129). What would then remain of the ontological entity named energy and of its conservation principle would just be the previously mentioned conversion factors widely employed by engineers to calculate how much mechanical work, heat, electricity, etc., can be generated within specific transformation processes of given natural resources together with the possibility of measuring these different physical quantities by using a same unit of measure.
- 6.
It may be interesting to observe that the disability consisting in not being able to distinguish among different contexts is associated with schizophrenia (see Bateson et al. 1956). It has then to be pointed out that the example and the considerations presented here result from a specific way of intending metaphors, myths and rituals. Put it shortly, metaphors are seen as small myths telling a story that is embodied by people through a ritual. This interpretation of metaphors, myths and rituals can be found, e.g. in Vico (1744), La Scienza Nuova.
- 7.
The word “work” is being used here to refer to a motor/machine like conception of the organization of productive activities that prevailed after the invention of the energy concept. The word “labour” is instead used to refer to a pre-existing conception of the human activities whereby goods and services were provided within economies. The decision to use these two words to denote these two radically different ways of intending human activities is not accidental. Compared to work, labour denotes indeed a type of activity where the body of persons and their physical effort is more directly involved and needed. A similar distinction is also present in French (travail vs. oeuvre), Italian (travaglio vs. lavoro), German (Geburtswehen vs. Arbeit).
- 8.
For an historical account concerning how this identification between human and motors has developed, see Rabinbach (1992).
- 9.
For an explanation concerning how this identification is realized, see for example Goerner et al. (2015).
- 10.
- 11.
Illich (1983).
- 12.
For further information concerning how energy and other abstractions undertaking a similar roundtrip can be characterized and distinguished by the abstractions generated within common languages see (Poerksen 1995). Before describing 30 criteria allowing characterizing a series of science abstractions like energy, Uwe Poersken explains how they differ from other abstractions, like e.g. the concept of “love” as used within common parlance. He explains how the meaning of the word “love” can be expanded to embrace a wide range of meanings (from affection within families, to physical love, to pleasure at a piece of music, to the love of humanity, etc.) allowing the speaker to employ it in a series of different ways depending on the context where it is used. The word energy does not instead allow the speaker to define it. It disempowers the speaker, it cannot be replaced by pantomime or gesture, it is like a lego block that can be put everywhere within speech, its meaning is not affected by the context where it is used, etc.
- 13.
See explanations provided in the previous footnote.
- 14.
It is a particular social construction because, contrary to other concepts and categories developed by societies, the possibility of an involvement of common people during the construction and validation of these conceptual artefacts remains very limited. Despite this limited involvement, these latter conceptual artefacts can remain in use within common language due to the indirect validation they can receive from scientists and from technological applications employed on a large scale.
- 15.
Science is axiomatically rooted on abstractions supposed to hold anywhere, at any time and (in principle) for anybody because of the irrevocable application of the principle of repeatability and reproducibility of observed events that must be observed by the scientific method. Due to the strict observance of this principle, science cannot typically tell or suggest anything in relation to how explain particular and unique events. Relationships with single and unique entities can be explained by science only by referring to qualities that are shared with other entities, i.e. by neglecting what makes these entities unique. On the temporal side, not repeatable events occurring in a specific instant are considered by science either as never happened or (in case they produce durable and detectable changes) are considered as the result of pure “chance”.
- 16.
Homogenization is seen here as the somehow inevitable outcome of the application of solutions based on an identification with energy motors and informed by measurability and efficiency principles.
- 17.
Scientific developments concerning the notion of time and related social implications are closely interwoven with those of the energy concept. For information on this point see, for example Perulli (1996). Some considerations on how the social construction of energy and the social transformations that led to conceive time as a resource implicate each other are provided also in the first chapter of this book. Concerning the notion of speed, Illich et al. (1996) provide important elements to perform the proposed study. Concerning the notion of space, Bauman (1998) can instead represent a good starting point.
- 18.
On this point see, for example Chiribella et al. (2011).
- 19.
See Poerksen (1995), p. 38.
- 20.
See the first chapter of this book for further explanations.
- 21.
See for example Bateson (1972) and what discussed in the first chapter of this book for further details.
- 22.
Change can indeed be considered as a “difference which makes a difference”.
- 23.
People can somehow be considered as collectively engaged in a ritual when their habitual actions are informed by given central ideas. The rituals constituted by complex systems are generated through the actions accomplished by using the technologies whereby these systems are being socially constructed (e.g. computer technologies) and are informed by the central ideas whereby these technologies are conceived, used and imagined.
- 24.
See the first chapter of this book for further information.
- 25.
This specific property of information relates also to how sequences of 0s and 1s come to constitute computer programs. 0 and 1 are indeed the two non-entities defined by their mutual relationship that can be used to represent any kind of elementary difference starting from which complex and hierarchical organized pieces of computer codes can be produced.
- 26.
Variations appearing in the world of the observer are supposed to be generated by dynamics studied by science addressing far from equilibrium open systems. Put is shortly, these dynamics are described in terms of structures (i.e. structured/not random patterns of energy and matter flows) emerging through the dissipation of energy gradients. It is as if steep gradients applied to open systems would give open systems “a certain tension that creates a condition of an accident waiting to happen” (see Allen et al. (2003), p. 331. Thinking of a fluid within a box and of the convection currents generated through it because of a temperature difference applied at the two opposite extremities of the box may help to visualize what being described here). This accident generates then a kind of cascade through positive feedback loops whereby structures of energy and matter flows are created. These energy and matter flows would then tend to dissipate the previously mentioned applied gradient. The creation of these energy and matter flows can be equivalently described and studied by information theory in terms of probabilities and creation of information. It is through the establishment of this equivalence between probabilities and energy and matter flows that information theory can incorporate and confirm thermodynamics (for a detailed account of how this incorporation takes place see, for example, Ulanowicz (1997), pp. 63–71).
- 27.
As discussed in the first chapter of this book, this discretization and standardization can be seen as the result of an (at least partly) arbitrary resolution of an otherwise unsolvable allocation problem. This problem inevitably arises whenever the amount of resources (e.g. energy, time, matter, etc.) consumed by a given organism or person to perform given functions has to be established. The solutions that can be found to this problem are inevitably associated with a discretization and standardization of these functions. Complex systems somehow always invite to take decisions in relation to these types of unsolvable allocation problems and make people blind to the distortions they generate in this way.
- 28.
Limitations may relate to the types of explanations that can be provided by referring to dynamics occurring within this membrane when studying natural and social phenomena. As far as the reproduction of human functions is concerned, it has to be stressed that the creation of the artificial prosthesis represented by this membrane through suitable interfaces and information technologies can clearly highly potentiate a number of single and specific human functions. We daily experience this by using computer technologies to purchase goods, write letters, communicate with friends and colleagues, etc. The limitations being discussed relate mostly to the isolation from the external world generated by this membrane and to the variety and the character of the functions that is possible to reproduce thereby. The kind of limitation effect on human functions being described resembles in some respects to the effects produced by a magnifying lens. While magnifying single and particular details, this lens inhibits indeed the vision of all the details allowing constructing the whole picture of the object being observed.
- 29.
These transformations have been discussed under Chap. 1 of this book.
- 30.
On this point see, for example MacCormac (1976).
- 31.
On this point see, for example Lakoff and Johnson (1980).
- 32.
It may be interesting to observe that the capabilities required for the exertion of this habit are the same that Aristotle attributed to artisans. While advancing with their works, artisans are indeed supposed to be able to adapt the ideas they have in their minds to the specificities and particularities unexpectedly emerging within the matter and the materials being used. The ultimate guide for the making of their activity is not reason, but perception (see Mitcham (1994), p. 122; Carl Mitcham produces this description of artisans’ activity based on what reported in Nicomachean Ethics 2.9.1109b23; cf. 2.2.1104a1-9). Same capabilities were considered also essential for politicians. Politics was indeed assumed to be concerned with action and deliberation about particulars. Grounding in law was assumed to be necessary, but law alone could not serve to do justice. Judges, for example had certainly to be educated by the law, but they were also supposed to perfect and complete it while applying it. Judges and politicians were in this respect the functional equivalent of artisans (see Mitcham (1994), p. 125; Carl Mitcham produces this description of politicians and judges based on what reported in Nicomachean Ethics 3.3, 10.9 and in Politics, 2.8.1269a10).
- 33.
This particular role of practical knowledge can probably be verified also within human languages. It can indeed be probably assumed that practical knowledge allows converting own feelings and sensations into utterances that can be understood by others and allows interpreting utterances produced by others by converting them into own feelings and sensations. A noun or a sentence can after all be considered as one part of a metaphor, the other part being constituted by the feelings and the sensations of the speaker pronouncing it. The exertion of practical knowledge for understanding languages could then be identified with the act of interpretation as performed by the listener during the process whereby he understands the words pronounced by a speaker and connects in this way to the speaker’s internal world. Due to the way in which science can attach particular operative meanings to some words, the above mentioned process can be inhibited (see, what mentioned in subsequent parts of this section).
- 34.
These examples have been taken from Illich (1983).
- 35.
These information flows may concern, e.g. the elaboration of risk profiles based on the continuous monitoring of socio-technical systems and related feedback loops needed to timely respond to emerging threats (wars, nuclear accidents, environmental accidents, etc.), or management systems for transport networks used within large cities and regions, or the elaboration of consumers profiles whereby investment decisions are taken by companies, or the monitoring of the GDP of national economies, etc.
- 36.
See the first chapter of this book for further information. Important insights concerning the mutual reinforcement taking place among the energy, information and money metaphors can be found in Mirowski (1989).
- 37.
This idea of dis-embeddedness has been taken from (Polanyi 1944). Polanyi argues that the large scale application of the international gold standard and the transformation of land, labour and money into fictitious commodities that can be sold within a market regulated by Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” has been at the root of the upheavals and violent disorders that took place in the North Atlantic Community and its periphery at the beginning of the twentieth century and has led to the World War I and the subsequent Great Depression. According to Polanyi these disorders would be the consequence of a “double movement” of long duration made of the expanding application of the above mentioned abstractions on the one hand and of the spontaneous resistance to the pressure they generate within civil societies on the other hand. As suggested by other scholars, in this chapter it is being assumed that this double movement of long duration can be generated also in other social spheres where scientific abstractions are largely applied (e.g. within social arrangements established to regulate energy and natural resource consumption).
- 38.
See Illich (1976).
- 39.
See Dupuy and Robert (1976), p. 55.
- 40.
The presence of these critical thresholds has been subsequently questioned by the same scholars who hypothesized their presence. This probably happened when they acknowledged that the achievement of given ends can be socially delegated to different instruments. Besides schools, the task of educating people has been, for example socially delegated also to TV programmes, the Internet, etc.. This possibility probably renders the concept of counterproductivity threshold practically inapplicable.
- 41.
For a description of this transition see the first chapter of this book.
- 42.
On this point see for example Samerski (2002).
- 43.
On this point see, for example, Taleb (2001).
- 44.
The interplay of conservation principles artificially established for different abstract resource types is crucial for the generation of this situation of scarcity and the associated social dynamics combining increased resource efficiency and increased consumption. The following imaginary story may perhaps help clarify this point. Let us assume that on our planet there is still a land whose inhabitants are not aware of the fact that whatever action they accomplish requires the consumption of some units of energy, time, information or money. Let’s then assume that one person of this land decides to move, e.g. to New York City, London, or Rome. Once arrived in one of these cities, the first thing he learns is probably that he cannot do anything without some amount of money and that he is not allowed to get this money for free. The second thing he learns is that he has to work to get this money and that this means that during each day he will have to spend given amounts of time while producing something that can be valued and rewarded with the money he needs. Unfortunately, however, the amounts of time he can spend each day are limited and this will oblige him to divide his time into a part that can be used to get money and a part that can be used to spend this money and do what he wants to do. In addition, most of the things he could do while working, or during his leisure or while at home, necessarily require the utilization of complex devices consuming units of energy (that, overall, is available in limited amounts and cannot be got for free either) because these devices can do in less time what he or other persons could do and people cannot spend too much of their time while producing what they want, otherwise the time remaining to use it will be too few. The third thing he might probably have to learn is that he has to be trained and receive the necessary information to properly use the previously mentioned machines, to be able to work, to get money and to be finally able to do what he wants to do. Unfortunately, these information cannot be get for free either. If he is lucky, it might be allowed to download this information from the internet. He might even manage to work and get money and the things he wants through the internet. The information and the things he gets through the internet however also require money, energy and other types of resources units. Overall, he would then learn that he must find a way to maximize the amounts of money, energy, time, information and other indispensable resource units he receives or employs because his survival and well-being depend on them. This, however, will require that he has to be very efficient while using these resource units, because these resources, when taken individually or all together, are necessarily scarce. The anxiogenic condition described in this very simplified and imaginary account could not certainly be referable to all persons living in the cities taken as an example. Some of them might have important amounts of the previously mentioned resources and manage to escape this condition. There might even be entire cities and nations depending on these resources where all the inhabitants could manage to escape this condition. The above mentioned conservation principles imply, however, that situations of particular abundance in one part of the system where these principles are enforced determine situations of exacerbated scarcity in another. The previously mentioned dynamics have indeed to be referred to the whole system, the system at stake being probably already represented by our whole planet.
- 45.
On this point see, for example Jarvis et al. (2015).
- 46.
The description of the proposed approach in terms of a profanation has been derived from a series of considerations on how persons should relate themselves with technological artefacts as formulated in (Agamben 2009).
- 47.
See Rifkin (1998).
- 48.
These examples have been taken from Agamben (2007).
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Labanca, N. (2017). Ontological Fallacies Linked to Energy, Information and Related Technologies. In: Labanca, N. (eds) Complex Systems and Social Practices in Energy Transitions. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33753-1_8
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