Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 40, No. 108.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2026-07-31 06:15:39+00:00
From: 이용욱 <icerain@jj.ac.kr>
Subject: The Mechanocene: Artificial Nature, Operational Autonomy, and Cognitive Justice
Dear colleagues,
I am writing to invite critical discussion of a concept I have been
developing in my recent research: the Mechanocene.
I do not claim to have coined the term. Mechanocene and Machinocene
have previously appeared in different contexts in the work of Gavin
Lucas, Predrag Slijepčević, Mark Featherstone, José Hernández-Orallo,
and others. These usages, however, refer to substantially different
objects and do not yet constitute a continuous or stable conceptual
tradition.
My aim is to formulate the Mechanocene as a humanities research
programme connecting Artificial Nature, operational autonomy, the
distribution of sensibility, and cognitive justice.
I currently define it as follows:
The Mechanocene is a recursive techno-ecological regime in which
human-made machines, algorithms, platforms, and data infrastructures
form environments that reproduce their own operating conditions, while
those environments in turn reconfigure human perception, attention,
memory, judgment, and expression, as well as the material conditions
of nature.
Put more simply:
If the Anthropocene names the age in which humans transformed nature,
the Mechanocene names the age in which human-made technological
environments transform humans and nature in return.
The Mechanocene should not be understood as a geological epoch that
begins after the Anthropocene. I regard it instead as both a
civilizational horizon emerging from the technological extremity of
the Anthropocene and an ongoing media-ontological phase.
Its recursive structure may be represented as follows:
Humans -> technological systems -> Artificial Nature ->
reconfiguration of humans and nature
By Artificial Nature, I do not simply mean cyberspace or virtual
environments. I mean an associated technological milieu composed of
data centres, cloud systems, algorithms, platforms, generative models,
interfaces, and user-experience systems. These systems mobilize and
organize the data, electricity, water, labour, behavioural responses,
and attention required for their continued operation.
This argument does not depend on attributing consciousness or
human-like intentions to machines.
Machines do not want. Yet they persist.
I use operational autonomy to describe the effects produced through
three related mechanisms:
1. the inertia of established infrastructures;
2. self-reinforcing feedback loops in which technological outputs
alter human behaviour and return as new inputs;
3. the temporal asymmetry between rapid technological operations and
comparatively slow ethical, educational, and institutional
deliberation.
Operational autonomy therefore does not mean that technology
determines society. It means that technological systems reshape the
timing, cost, and range of possible intervention.
The ecological inequalities of the Mechanocene also operate on two
connected levels.
The first is material: water and energy consumption, mineral
extraction, land use, electronic waste, and data labour.
The second is cognitive and sensory: the unequal distribution of
information, attention, visibility, interpretive resources, sensory
diversity, and opportunities for judgment.
From this perspective, the capture of attention and the extraction of
material resources are not separate problems. They are two dimensions
of the same technological arrangement. Ecological justice must
therefore include not only material environmental justice but also
sensory democracy and cognitive justice.
I also use the term WE, or the Whole Emergent, to describe the
relational field in which humans, algorithms, platforms, interfaces,
and infrastructures jointly produce particular forms of perception,
cognition, expression, and action. WE does not refer to a transcendent
fusion of humans and machines.
Relational entanglement, moreover, does not imply equal
responsibility. My guiding principle is:
The greater an actor's power to design and modify a technological
environment, the greater that actor's responsibility for its
consequences.
The period from late 2022 through 2023 is important in this account,
but not as the absolute origin of the Mechanocene. I understand it as
a social and media-historical threshold at which generative AI entered
everyday practices of thinking, writing, research, creation, and
judgment through conversational interfaces.
Earlier media primarily recorded, stored, transmitted, and selected
existing expressions. Generative media participate in producing
expressions that did not previously exist. The decisive transition is
therefore from media of recording and selection to media of
co-generation.
For me, the Mechanocene is not a declaration of technological
apocalypse. It is intended as a coordinate for intervention: a concept
for identifying what can be changed within technological environments,
who possesses the power to make those changes, and how responsibility
should be distributed.
I would be particularly grateful for responses to the following questions:
- Is it theoretically defensible to treat the distribution of
attention, sensibility, information, and opportunities for judgment as
an ecological problem?
- Can operational autonomy describe the efficacy of technological
systems without falling into technological determinism or machine
fetishism?
- Does the Mechanocene name a genuinely distinct object of inquiry, or
can its concerns be adequately addressed through the Anthropocene,
Capitalocene, or Technocene?
- What methods might make sensory inequality and cognitive justice
empirically researchable?
- Are there related concepts, traditions, or publications that this
formulation should engage more directly?
Critical objections, counterexamples, bibliographic suggestions, and
possibilities for scholarly collaboration would all be most welcome.
Related publications
Lee, Yongwook. 2025. "The Role and Practical Strategies of Humanities
Education in the Age of the Machinocene: Focusing on the Emotional
Competency Development of Adolescents." The Journal of Modern Literary
Theory 99: 147-174. DOI: 10.22273/SMLT.99.6.
Lee, Yongwook. 2025. "Artificial Ecocriticism I: Ecological Inequality
in the Mechanocene." The Korean Language and Literature 213: 285-334.
DOI: 10.31889/kll.2025.12.213.285.
A terminological note: the official English title of the first article
used Machinocene. In my subsequent work, I have standardized the term
as Mechanocene, emphasizing systemic operations, mechanisms, and
technological arrangements rather than machines as autonomous
historical subjects.
Best regards,
Yongwook Lee
Professor, Jeonju University
Digital Humanities | Media Theory | AI-Assisted Research
South Korea
_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted
List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
List info and archives at at: http://dhhumanist.org
Listmember interface at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted/
Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php
