Distinctions that mystify: Technology versus economy and other fragmentations |
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Authors: | Alf Hornborg |
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Institution: | (1) the University of Lund, Sweden |
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Abstract: | The separation of technological and economic science has maintained the illusion that knowledge itself, when applied to nature,
can generate industrialization. The implicit equation “TECHNOLOGY=NATURE plus KNOWLEDGE” ignores the social component of (UNEQUALO
EXCHANGE. A global, thermodynamic perspective reveals that world market prices are an intrinsic aspect of the reproduction
of industrial technomass. Global exchange rates have to guarantee a net transfer of “exergy” (free energy) to industrial sectors,
and industrial technology, as the art of managing these thermodynamic profits, thus remains confined to a restricted social
space. The accelerating destruction of the biosphere can only be checked by breaking the entropy-rewarding logic of general-purpose
money.
The ideas on which this article is based have grown out of a research project sponsored by the Swedish Council for Research
in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSFR). |
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Keywords: | |
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