The Technocene or Technology as (Neo)environment

While putting forward the proposal of a “philosophy of technology in the nominative case,” grounded on the concept of Neoenvironmentality, this paper argues that the best definition of our current age is not “Anthropocene.” Rather, it is “Technocene,” since technology represents here and now the “subject of history”. This proposal culminates in a new definition of man’s humanity and of technol¬ogy. Switching from natura hominis to conditio humana, the peculiarity of man can be defined on the basis of an anthropic perimeter, the core of which consists of man’s worldhood: man is that being that has a world (Welt), while animal has a mere envi¬ronment (Umwelt). From this anthropological premise, technology emerges as the oikos of contem¬porary humanity – and so gives birth to a Technocene – insofar as assimilates man to an animal condition, i.e., an environmental one. Technocene corresponds on the one side to the emergence of technology as (Neo)environment and on the other to the feralization of man. Finally this paper proposes the strategy of an ‘anthropological conservatism,’ i.e. a pathic desertion understood as a possible (pre)condition for the beginning of an authentic Anthropocene: the age of an-at-last-entirely-human-man.