This Emergence Magazine interview with James Bridle—artist, writer, and author of “Ways of Being” and “New Dark Age”—offers a profound meditation on what technology might become when designed from ecological rather than industrial principles. Bridle argues for technology as relationship, entanglement, and mutual transformation between human and more-than-human worlds, challenging the extractive separation between “nature” and “culture” that shapes contemporary tech. The conversation weaves together Bridle’s artistic practice, indigenous knowledge systems, mycorrhizal networks, and speculative design to envision technologies that acknowledge interdependence rather than asserting dominance—offering rare depth in thinking beyond sustainability toward genuinely ecological approaches.
Key Highlights
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Technology as Ecological Relationship: Bridle reframes technology not as tools humans use to act upon nature but as practices of relationship with an animate, responsive world. This shift from instrumental to relational understanding opens radically different design possibilities—technologies that listen, adapt, and participate in ecological systems rather than extracting or controlling.
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More-Than-Human Intelligence: The interview explores intelligence beyond human cognition—mycorrhizal networks, forest communication systems, bacterial colonies—showing how recognition of distributed, non-human intelligence transforms what technologies might learn from and collaborate with. This challenges anthropocentric assumptions underlying AI and automation.
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Indigenous Knowledge Systems: Bridle discusses how indigenous technologies have always been ecological—developed through multi-generational relationship with place, embedding care and reciprocity rather than extraction. This positions indigenous practices as sophisticated technological traditions rather than primitive precursors to Western innovation.
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Opacity and Mystery: Contra demands for total transparency and explainability, Bridle argues that ecological technologies must embrace opacity—acknowledging limits to human understanding and creating space for mystery, emergence, and the autonomy of other-than-human beings. This challenges surveillance capitalism’s demand for total knowability.
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Slowing Down and Attention: The conversation explores how ecological technology requires different temporalities—observing across seasons, attending to subtle shifts, valuing slowness over optimization. This temporal reorientation fundamentally challenges speed and scale obsessions in contemporary tech development.
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Systemic Thinking and Interconnection: Bridle emphasizes how ecological approaches require grasping systems rather than isolating variables—understanding that changes ripple through interconnected webs in ways linear causality cannot capture. This systemic lens reveals how apparently separate technologies (energy, communication, food) form integrated wholes.
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Art as Technological Research: The interview discusses Bridle’s artistic practice as technological investigation—using creative methods to explore possibilities unavailable to conventional R&D. This positions art not as decoration but as essential to imagining alternative technological futures.
Practical Applications
Bridle’s ecological framework offers generative provocations rather than direct implementation:
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Technology designers and developers can use ecological principles as evaluation criteria—asking whether systems acknowledge interdependence, embrace appropriate opacity, operate across adequate timescales, and participate in rather than dominate ecological relationships
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Sustainability practitioners can apply Bridle’s critique of “sustainability” as maintaining extractive systems, shifting toward ecological approaches that fundamentally reimagine relationship between human technologies and living world
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Indigenous-led technology projects can reference the interview when articulating why their approaches differ from Western tech paradigms—the conversation provides accessible language for sophisticated indigenous technological traditions
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Artists and creative technologists can engage Bridle’s practice as model for using art to investigate technological possibilities, creating speculative prototypes that explore alternatives unavailable to market-driven development
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Educators can use the more-than-human intelligence examples to challenge anthropocentric assumptions in computer science and engineering curricula, showing how diverse life forms process information and coordinate without central control
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Policy advocates can draw on ecological technology concepts to argue for regulation focused on systemic health and relationship quality rather than narrow metrics like efficiency or growth
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Community technology practitioners can slow down implementation to enable multi-season observation and relationship-building with place, resisting pressure for quick deployment
The interview’s value lies in expanding imaginative possibilities rather than providing actionable steps, enabling practitioners to question fundamental assumptions.
Connection With SuperBenefit
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Bridle’s ecological technology framework challenges SuperBenefit to ensure regenerative approaches engage relationship with the more-than-human world rather than merely optimizing extractive systems—suggesting that genuinely regenerative coordination must acknowledge interdependence with living systems and bioregional contexts, not just reduce carbon footprints or improve social equity within fundamentally extractive structures.
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The emphasis on different temporalities and slowness offers critical counterpoint to Web3’s speed obsessions, resonating with SuperBenefit’s experience that trust-building and relationship work in experiments like AIFS required patience across seasons and cycles rather than rapid iteration toward predetermined outcomes—some coordination emerges through attention and care rather than efficiency optimization.
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Bridle’s respect for indigenous technological traditions as sophisticated multi-generational practices grounds SuperBenefit’s decolonial commitments, showing why indigenous knowledge must fundamentally inform regenerative design rather than being consulted as validation for predetermined Western approaches.
Related Concepts
- Sustainability - Ecological approaches to technology
- Coordination - Alternative organizing mechanisms
- Community - Digital and local organizing
- Regeneration - Restorative systems design
- Governance - Democratic technology frameworks