Information, Technology, and Society in Asia 321

While publics and governments across the world remain fixated by consumerist globalisation, the consequences of climate change accelerate exponentially. In this eco-philosophical light, capitalist globalisation – itself an extension of (Western) modernity grounded in coloniality – is part of the problem of the Anthropocene, the current geological epoch superseding the Holocene due to the human (anthropos) becoming the most powerful force impacting the earth system. Tipping points are immanent, too, when the qualitative nature of the vital elements of the earth’s biosphere will no longer sustain human existence, yet the intangibility of these existential Armageddons fosters political indecision and allows the moral postponement of responsibility. How did it come to this and what are we to do? These interrelated questions, essentially of power and ethics, define the focus of the course: the first part considers several interpretations of power that seek to explain our present predicament; and the second part looks at several reimaginings of ethics to exit it in post-human, re-earthed ways.