Sustainability, democracy and the techno-human future

What is the core problem of sustainability? In this chapter, I argue that sustainability is first and foremost a question of whether humanity will choose to exercise democratic self-governance over the socio-technological systems that form the constitutional foundations of modern societies. Humans have become techno-humans: hybrids with our technologies. The consequences of our decisions and actions ripple outwards in time and space across globe-spanning networks of socio-technological relations, ultimately fashioning patterns of footprints across the planet, its ecologies, and its diverse inhabitants. Those patterns are the consequences of the technological rendering of societies; yet our current forms of governance are ill-suited - indeed often cannot even see or know, and therefore cannot govern - our technologically organised selves. To build a more sustainable future, humans will need to relearn how to exercise democracy in a world made by technology.