Endorsements

Despite local and international efforts promoting sustainable development and design, little progress has been made in reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases and averting catastrophic climate change. In his wide-ranging study of architecture and cultural evolution, the author contends that, underlying the inertia is a general resistance to changing personal and social identities shaped by a technological culture and its energy-hungry products. The book traces the roots of that culture to the coevolution of Homo sapiens and technology, from the first use of tools as artificial extensions of the human body, to the motorised cities spreading around the world, whose uncontrolled effects are fast changing the planet, and latterly, the Internet, with its own radical impacts. Advancing a new concept of the meme, called the 'technical meme', as the primary agent of cognitive extension and technical embodiment, the author proposes a theory of the 'extended self' as a complex and diffuse outcome of that coevolution. Challenging conventional ideas of the self as a separate and autonomous being, the extended self, he argues, encompasses material and spatial as well as psychological and social elements, including the built environment and artifacts, and now reaches out into the virtual worlds of cyberspace. Drawing upon research into extended cognition and embodied minds from philosophy, psychology and the neurosciences, together with other relevant fields of knowledge, the book presents a new approach to environmental and cultural studies. Written in a clear and engaging manner, it will also appeal to the general reader searching for insights into the most pressing issues of our time. -