Castles in the Air [Luftschlösser]

Abstract

In the context of proposed large-scale technological fixes for climate breakdown, unwanted symptoms and unintended effects of the digital revolution may be perceived as salutary. Reading through the lens of a critical philosophy of technology such as that of Ivan Illich, we can become more clearly aware of the propensity of Big Data and Big Planetary Tech to envelop life. These planetary-level megatechnological infrastructures are ‘radical monopolies’ in Illich’s sense, insofar as their uptake or implementation diminishes possibilities of opt-out, prompting us to ask: What do we desire from our technologies? What do they give us instead? Where are we located within them? Even the most ardent advocates of the mega-technologies proposed for climate mitigation acknowledge that these are likely to give us more, or other, than we bargain for. I argue that literary texts offer resources to help us contemplate the conundrum posed by Big Planetary Tech, and to orient ourselves with greater ethical clarity in the imaginary of a climate-engineered techno-biosphere. In a purposefully anachronistic reading of Kafka’s Das Schloß [The Castle], twinned with a discussion of the final section of T. C. Boyle’s novel Blue Skies (2023) and with reference to Illich’s techno-critical philosophy and other works by Kafka, I reflect on the strange mesh of inscrutable power, illegible effects, unintended consequences and subjective disorientation that attends the roll-out of ungraspable technologies. The linguistic intensities of literature and the vital pleasures of reading stand as a moment of conviviality in Illich’s sense, alerting us anew to our own aliveness as readers as well as to the ambivalent structures of planetary-scale prosthesis.