Seminar: "Complex systems and energy transition: problems caused by energy and information reification"

The seminar "Complex systems and energy transition: problems caused by energy and information reification" will be hold by Nicola Labanca (JRC, Institute for Energy and Transport) on Wednesday 23rd March 2016 (3 pm -5 pm) at Aula 3D440, Campus Luigi Einaudi (Lungo Dora Siena 100/4, Torino). 

The seminar will propose discussing current energy transitions in the light of the insights that can be gained by an historical enquiry on instrumentality. The proposed approach allows interpreting complex systems as the result of some fundamental transformations related to how human artefacts have been conceived in Western societies.

These transformations can be characterised in terms of a progressive process of disembodiment and abstraction whereby, among other things, the notions of energy, time and information have been changed into quantifiable resource units regulating all activities and functions performed by people and any other biological entity. The proposed account will offer, on the one hand, the possibility to discuss how these notions are currently framing the issue of energy sustainability within mainstream research fields and some relevant drawbacks linked to how they are used to organise societies. On the other hand, it will allow illustrating:

•  how energy and information have nowadays to be considered as central metaphors around which the rituals generated by complex systems are arranged 
• how complex systems tend to generate a process of dis-embedding whereby they escape social control while reinforcing a perception of resources scarcity.

For further information please write to [email protected]