the techno-animist
robotamerica is a concept i've held for over two decades. it evolved from my childhood obsessions with astro boy, ghost in the shell, and transformers. all manga and cartoons dealing with some form of techno-animism. i realised early that western colonial thought and tech treats nature as inert, tools as property, and the maker/material relationship as one of ownership and extractionism. that's not a neutral design choice: it's ideology, and it's one that is destroying the planet.
i thought it was time to revisit my early thoughts on what robotamerica was, is, and will become in contemporary thought. below is some reading that aligns well with my past and present conceptions of robotamerica.
should we treat robots morally? ⇲ — hayate shimizu, 2025
- japanese animism as ethics.
- the mind isn't a fixed property, it's built through relation.
- reminds me of the kanshasai ceremonies for a retired machines in japan. they aren't about sentiment, but the acknowledgement of the spirit/soul of each machine and respecting the work they have done during their lives.
indigenous futurisms and ai ⇲ — ambelin kwaymullina, 2024
- palyku scholar and artist. in indigenous knowledge systems, there is probably no such thing as "artificial" intelligence.
- the colonial model extracts. the alternative is to build nurturing and caring relations.
reawakening kin: blurring boundaries through techno-animism ⇲ — juleana enright, 2025
- lakota writer, working through the contradiction of wanting to be a cyborg while holding indigenous teachings of responsibility to the land.
- techno-animism is a practice, not a metaphor.
maker culture and diy technologies ⇲ — emit snake-beings, 2017
- a diy practitioner in his workshop, building tools and instruments from recycled materials.
- the faulty component doesn't get fixed, it gets kept. the material starts directing the design.
i'm not really a techno-optimist. i am suspicious of anyone who is. i'm more of a techno-animist. what i believe is simple: everything we produce becomes nature, for good or for worse. it enters the world and stays here.
treating your tools as if they have a life, a soul, and neighbours and consequences isn't mysticism. understanding the virtue and liveliness of the things we create and use, and treating them as a part of the natural world endowed with being, helps us to build a system of care that owes debt to the life cycles of our things. we shouldn't want to make or buy things that won't outlive us, things we tend to throw away. we should be making and building with partnership in mind. our relationship with stuff should be based on care and respect. this relationality can help save the environment.
this is robotamerica: technology isn't what we need to fear. it is the bastard makers with their bastardised sense of profit before environment we need to fear. they rob the soul of the things we purchase from them. it is easy to disregard and discard things without a soul, they become things we can't care for. so makers of the world, let's flip the script. give your things a life and a soul, even if it is just sharing a bit of your own. put yourselves out there.