Techno-humanity is staring down a once-in-a-century opportunity. Over the next three decades, it now looks increasingly certain that the inhabitants of earth will do the hard work of ripping out the beating industrial heart that powers the global economy and replacing it with more sustainable energy alternatives. Here’s the thing, though. That effort is not just an exercise in swapping out our choice of fuels or replacing one set of technological systems that produce, distribute, and consume energy with another. We are techno-humans. We live in petrocultures and carbon democracies and automobile societies. Altering these realities is as much a project in human re-engineering as it is technological re-engineering. As we imagine, design, and build new energy systems grounded in carbon-free technologies, we kinda also want to ask: what kind of photoncultures and solar democracies are we imagining, designing, and building along the way. And, at least as some of us are approaching it, we want to inquire into our design options and to open up deliberation about those options to wider and more inclusive groups of techno-humans than we have in the past. That’s the central motivation behind the Solar Tomorrows project. Join us in imagining just how flexible and awesome a tool the humble solar cell can be as an instrument for imagining and building more inclusive futures that truly do belong to everyone.
Solar-Powered Societies
This collection was inspired by a simple question: what would a world powered entirely by solar energy look like? In part, this question is about the materiality of solar energy—about where people will choose to put all the solar panels needed to power the global economy. It’s also about how people will rearrange their lives, values, relationships, markets, and politics around photovoltaic technologies.
To imagine the post-carbon city entails inquiry into far more than the technologies that will power its diverse activities. It requires exploring what carbon neutrality will mean for the people who live in the cities of the future and wander their boulevards and alleyways. The stories, essays, and art in this collection explore the challenges, opportunities, and irreducible complexities of transitioning our cities away from carbon-intensive fossil fuels and toward a clean, renewable energy economy.
Socio-Energy Systems Design
Through time, energy policy choices reconfigure societies, even as societies reconfigure energy systems, especially at moments when new energy systems are brought into being or during periods when existing systems are significantly rearranged through the persistent evolution, growth, and embedding of energy into human affairs.
Clark A. Miller, Jennifer Richter, and Jason O’Leary, “Socio-Energy Systems Design: A Policy Framework for Energy Transitions,” Energy Research and Social Science 6:29-40. 2015.
Techno-Human Transitions
Energy is a harbinger for a new era in human history. We are now moving from an era of constructing large-scale technologies to one of re-constructing complex, socio-technological systems that link energy to a wide range of other systems such as water, transportation, food production, and housing. This transition will challenge engineers, societies, policy-makers, and the social and policy sciences to develop new approaches to innovation that integrate both technological and human dimensions together.
Clark A. Miller, Alastair Iles, and Christopher Jones, “The Social Dimensions of Energy Transitions,” Science as Culture 22(2): 135-148. 2013.
Techno-Humans and Their Habitats 