The Technosphere and Earth Stewardship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 271

technological systems) that should guide our conceptualizing, is that once put in
place, it creates a powerful path dependency, meaning that it has enormous infl u-
ence over subsequent decisions. Part of that derives from the fact that it is usually
long lasting, and has a large upfront cost that diminishes the subsequent cost of
utilizing it. Because of this infrastructure (or technological systems), once in place
it is a major barrier to alternative solutions (high cost of entry), thereby encouraging
future investments for extending or enhancing the original infrastructure. The exis-
tence of infrastructure almost always gives rise to institutions that are oriented
toward building, managing, and advancing this infrastructure and the services it
provides (or disamenities it buffers against). Similar to the path dependency the
physical infrastructure creates, associated institutions and their members create a
social path dependency, further encouraging the continuation and expansion of this
particular infrastructural/technological solution.
A wide variety of concepts drive infrastructure/technology system thinking.
Some of them have to do with the design of the infrastructure and how it will pro-
vide the desired services. Fundamental laws and principles of the physical world are
the building blocks of the infrastructural world, such as the second law of thermo-
dynamics, laws of gravitation, momentum, aerodynamics, and general properties of
materials. Given these physical characteristics and the parameters of the services
desired and the cost requirements, designers of infrastructure believe that there is an
optimal solution, or at least a small series of optimal solutions, to be selected among.
Moreover, given desired outcomes, it is believed that there may be more than one
way or set of materials that could provide similar services. This principle of substi-
tutability is central to the design sciences, but is controversial when the substitution
replaces a natural or ecologically provided service, with one that is human con-
structed or implies an equivalence between two alternate social outcomes.
Designers of infrastructure increasingly have attempted to incorporate into infra-
structural/technological thinking, issues that are important to those in the social or
environmental domains. In an effort to go beyond the relatively restricted view that
“form equals function,” practitioners have considered indirect impacts of the fabri-
cation, use, and disposal of their products. Industrial ecology and life cycle analysis
take this broader view and refl ect ideas borrowed from ecological sciences (Allenby
2005 ). Similarly, measurement and efforts to redesign urban metabolism, are efforts
to think of formerly separate infrastructures/technologies as interdependent wholes.
With other concepts such as resilience, whose traditional interpretation is that of
being an object's ability to return to its original form or condition after being
stressed, some practitioners have borrowed elements of the SES use of the concept
to describe a broader phenomenon in risk management for designing systems able
to cope successfully with external stresses, rather than resisting them (that is, safe-
to-fail rather than fail-safe; see Park et al. 2011 ). Other innovative areas include the
actual merging of these domains, such as green infrastructure that attempts to maxi-
mize the use of natural features and processes to provide services previously pro-
vided by built (hard) infrastructure, or efforts to maximize the use of real time data
and elements of artifi cial intelligence to solve the problems arising from the move-
ment of goods, people, and services in smart cities of the future.