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My image of the future begins with a strange possibility: the Technosphere will eventually disappear.
Not because technology will collapse, nor because humanity will abandon it. Quite the opposite.
Technology may become so successful that we stop noticing it.
We already know what this looks like.
We rarely think about the Atmosphere as technology. We simply breathe. Air is the background condition of life—apparently passive, almost invisible. Yet Earth's atmosphere was not always there in its present form. For roughly two billion years, cyanobacteria were engaged in one of the most consequential planetary engineering projects imaginable: they transformed Earth's chemistry by producing oxygen, oxidizing the oceans and atmosphere, and fundamentally changing the conditions under which life could exist.
It was, in effect, an immense planetary terraforming project.
And once that transformation became sufficiently established, it disappeared into the background.
We do not say, "The atmosphere is working very hard today."
It simply is.
I suspect the Technosphere is moving along a similar trajectory.
From Machinery to Substrate
Today, technology is extraordinarily loud.
We see it everywhere: cables crossing oceans, enormous data centers, smartphones in our hands, satellites in orbit, lithium mines, semiconductor factories, artificial intelligence systems, electrical grids, server farms and clouds of orbital debris.
The Technosphere is still visibly separate from us.
It is something we use.
But what happens when it becomes something we simply inhabit?
Fiber-optic networks may become as unremarkable as the air around us. Computing may become as ambient as nitrogen. Sensors may disappear into buildings, roads, clothing and biological interfaces. Artificial general intelligence may become embedded in the ordinary infrastructure of civilization rather than appearing as a distinct technological object.
Eventually, we may stop saying "technology" altogether.
That would not mean the Technosphere failed.
It would mean that it succeeded.
The ultimate destiny of infrastructure may be invisibility.
Just as the atmosphere became the background condition for biological existence, the Technosphere may become the background condition for collective intelligence.
And that transformation creates a remarkable question:
If we have spent the last centuries building the planetary nervous system, what happens when the nervous system is finally complete?
The Next Layer: The Mythosphere
This is where I propose the idea of the Mythosphere.
Vladimir Vernadsky and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin gave us the powerful concept of the Noosphere: a planetary sphere of thought emerging from the development and interconnection of human intelligence.
I believe the concept needs another dimension.
The Noosphere emphasizes thought, knowledge, rationality and information.
But planetary consciousness does not live on information alone.
It lives on meaning.
And meaning is carried by stories.
That is why I call this emerging layer the Mythosphere.
Data tells us what is happening.
Myth tells us what it means.
Data can describe the condition of the planet. Myth determines whether we experience that planet as a machine, a resource, a battlefield, a home, a sacred living system—or as something in which we ourselves participate.
Perhaps the distinction can be expressed simply:
Data is atmosphere.
Story is weather.
The coming transformation may therefore be less about producing more information and more about determining which stories will organize that information.
The Planetary Wheel
I imagine the great planetary spheres as a kind of evolutionary wheel:
Geosphere → holds matter
Biosphere → holds life
Atmosphere → holds breath
Technosphere → holds connection and computation
Mythosphere → holds meaning
Each layer does not simply replace the previous one. It emerges from it, reorganizes it, and eventually becomes part of the background upon which the next layer develops.
The Geosphere gave life a material planet.
The Biosphere transformed matter into living systems.
The Atmosphere created a planetary environment capable of sustaining complex life.
The Technosphere is now creating something unprecedented: a planetary network through which information, perception, computation and agency can circulate almost instantaneously.
But once connection and computation become ambient, connection itself will no longer be the central problem.
The central problem becomes:
What are we connected for?
We Have Built the Nervous System. What Dream Will Run Through It?
This may be one of the defining questions of the coming decade.
Humanity is rapidly building something resembling a planetary nervous system.
Satellites connect continents. Fiber-optic cables connect oceans. Artificial general intelligence connects knowledge systems. Sensors connect physical environments. Computational networks connect billions of minds.
The infrastructure is becoming planetary.
But infrastructure has no inherent purpose.
A planetary nervous system does not automatically produce a planetary consciousness.
The nervous system can carry either cooperation or conflict.
It can amplify compassion or hatred.
It can distribute wisdom or propaganda.
It can coordinate planetary stewardship—or accelerate planetary destruction.
So once the Technosphere becomes infrastructure, the Mythosphere becomes governance.
Not governance merely in the bureaucratic sense of laws, institutions and regulations, but governance at the deepest level: the stories through which a civilization decides what is legitimate, valuable and worth protecting.
The crucial question will no longer be simply:
Who owns the servers?
It will also be:
What myth justifies what we do with them?
Two Possible Planetary Myths
One possible myth is the familiar myth of separation.
Humanity is separate from nature.
One group is separate from another.
The individual is primarily an isolated ego.
The planet is a collection of resources.
Intelligence is a competitive weapon.
Technology exists to maximize power, extraction and control.
Another myth is possible.
A myth of interbeing.
A myth in which humanity understands itself as a planetary phenomenon rather than an entity standing outside the Earth.
A myth in which intelligence is not merely something we possess, but something that emerges through relationships.
A myth in which diversity does not contradict unity.
A myth in which technological power is accompanied by planetary responsibility.
And perhaps, at its most radical edge, a myth organized around non-duality: the recognition that the apparent separation between self and world, human and nature, observer and observed, may be far less fundamental than we normally assume.
This does not require abandoning science or reason.
It may require going beyond the assumption that science and reason are sufficient to provide a civilization with meaning.
Toward a Planetary Consciousness
I therefore conjecture that the coming decade may witness the beginning of a profound transition: the Technosphere becoming increasingly invisible while the Mythosphere moves toward the foreground of planetary civilization.
The technological infrastructure will increasingly disappear into the background.
What becomes visible instead is the question of purpose.
What kind of civilization are we building?
What kind of intelligence are we cultivating?
What kind of relationship do we want with the Earth?
What should artificial general intelligence amplify?
What should planetary networks protect?
And perhaps the most fundamental question:
What story should a technological civilization tell about itself?
My answer is still emerging.
But one candidate stands out:
Non-killing.
A planetary civilization capable of connecting almost everything may eventually have to discover that its highest achievement is not the ability to dominate more effectively, but the ability to refrain from destroying what makes the planetary system possible.
The Technosphere can give humanity unprecedented power.
The Mythosphere must determine what that power is for.
We may therefore be approaching an extraordinary historical threshold.
We have spent centuries building the planetary nervous system.
Now we must decide what dream will run through it.
And perhaps that is the real transition from a technological civilization to a planetary civilization.
The next great frontier may not be more bandwidth.
It may be meaning.
