Fracture and Flow: Are Post-Extractive Technologies Possible?
We use language of machinery to talk about ourselves and cast ourselves in the image of the machine, entranced by our own reflections of efficiency and logic and mechanistic predictability.
Machines, once made, make humans. We are strange loops.
What happens when the machines we create unmake us—binding humanity to cycles of extraction, commodification, and control? Technology today mirrors the second law of thermodynamics: a natural drive toward entropy, competition, and consumption with colder objects taking heat from warmer objects. Yet if we see ourselves as apart from nature, as some environmental economists do, are we not also free to transcend this spiral and reimagine our relationship with the systems we have built?
This article sits at the intersection of two convictions: one rooted in pragmatic adaptation—seeking incremental shifts toward decentralised and relational frameworks—and the other in radical rupture—arguing that rotten systems cannot be salvaged and must be abandoned. Weaving critiques and possibilities, it confronts the failures of reform and the moral urgency of collapse. Are we ready to pick up the threads and create anew, or are we still entangled in the patterns we claim to resist?
Perhaps it is time that we look at the ontology that AI is facilitating. Could it be one of command and control; encouraging domination, control and commanding of machines that mimic what we deem human?
To redefine command and control is to dismantle obedience as a virtue and replace it with reciprocity, stewardship, and shared accountability.
Diagnosing Systems of Extraction and Control
Modern technologies are not neutral tools; they reflect the values and hierarchies of those who create and deploy them. Dominated by optimisation, surveillance, and profit, these systems can amplify inequalities and deepen ecological and social wounds. The pursuit of efficiency, while productive in certain contexts, too often becomes a conceited obsession—treating symptoms rather than addressing root causes.
Take, for example, surveillance capitalism. I remember a conversation I had with an ex-employee of a Chinese telecommunications company back in Dublin who describes quitting after being asked to train AI models using facial recognition datasets. Recently, I spoke with an individual about a Canadian CCTV company for which they worked. The company was embedding surveillance backdoors into its products, prioritising access and control over privacy and accountability. This individual quit after learning of this. These are not isolated cases—they are systemic patterns that exploit human (and ecological) vulnerabilities for profit.
Foucault reminds us that systems of power normalise their mechanisms, embedding compliance into their architecture. Even adaptive hierarchies, praised for their flexibility, risk reproducing patterns of domination if they fail to interrogate their foundations. Can governance, as we know it, simply be reformed; or must it be reconstructed or abandoned altogether?
Relational Technologies: Prototypes for Transition
Amid the ruins, relational technologies emerge as prototypes for another way forward. Social technologies are coming to the fore.
Decentralised energy grids, such as microgrids, demonstrate how local networks can operate autonomously while reinforcing resilience and mutual aid. Platform cooperatives like Stocksy United offer ownership structures rooted in collaboration rather than competition. These models hint at incremental pathways for change—but can they scale without losing their ethical core?
Citizens’ assemblies in Ireland further illustrate participatory governance, addressing complex issues like abortion rights and climate change through deliberative democracy. Tools like blockchain and RadicalXChange’s quadratic voting create mechanisms for redistributing power, though they too must resist co-optation.
Such approaches provide bridging mechanisms, enabling transitions from extractive systems to regenerative ones. Yet, as Hui’s cosmotechnics argues, progress must remain culturally specific, relational, and attuned to ecological harmony rather than imposing universalising solutions.
Breaking and Rebuilding: Acts of Refusal
For those who see reform as complicity, rupture becomes the only ethical response. From Buen Vivir in South America, which prioritises reciprocity over accumulation, to regenerative agriculture networks like Kiss the Ground, movements rooted in repair and resistance show how economies can be reimagined without extraction at their core.
The radical position refuses the premise that technologies designed for control can be ethically repurposed. It demands disobedience and dismantling. To reclaim technologies, they must be stripped from the hands of corporations and returned to the commons—decentralised, localised, and governed collectively.
A Framework for Action: Plurality and Resistance
Progress does not require a single path; it demands many. Some threads call for repair, weaving technologies into relational frameworks that emphasise stewardship, mutual aid, and care. Others call for unraveling the fabric entirely, clearing space for the unknown to emerge.
Prototypes for Repair:
- Renewable microgrids – Autonomous, decentralised energy systems promoting resilience.
- Citizens’ assemblies – Democratic deliberation models grounded in collective accountability.
- Cooperatives and DAOs – Shared ownership structures resisting accumulation.
Acts of Refusal:
- Regenerative networks – Agricultural and ecological restoration movements rejecting extractive models.
- Decentralised governance tools – Technologies designed for autonomy and transparency.
- Cultural refusal – Rejecting the language of efficiency and optimisation in favor of complexity and care.
Conclusion: Fracture and Flow
Whether we choose to reform or rupture, the futures we build with technology must grapple with its ambivalence—as both remedy and poison. Stiegler’s pharmakon reminds us that tools must be continuously reshaped, while Hui’s cosmotechnics compels us to resist universality and embrace plurality.
But the time for neutrality has passed. This article issues a dual call: to those committed to reform, it demands vigilance and accountability; to those ready for rupture, it offers prototypes for resistance and rebuilding. In either case, it calls on us to refuse complicity and weave our relationships into webs that honour care, reciprocity, and shared humanity.