Toward a ‘Good’ Anthropocene: navigating the vicious circle of technological progress and unintended consequences

Achieving a better, perhaps even a ‘good’ Anthropocene is among the most pressing challenges today. Further technological progress will be of crucial importance for this. However, progress is frequently accompanied by unintended and often undesired consequences. They often give rise to new problems, which, in turn, require innovation and technology. These new technologies will again not only produce the intended but also the unintended consequences. The resulting dynamic leads to a vicious circle: an unending spiral of technological progress and unintended consequences that characterizes the Anthropocene to date. The central aim of this paper is to unfold these broader dynamics of technological progress. Its final thesis is that science, engineering, politics, and society must develop and apply strategies to responsibly navigate the circle between naïve technosolutionism on the one hand and romantic ideas of a return to times before the Anthropocene on the other, while advocating for a better Anthropocene.