Hide this

What is Next Nature?


Mapping the Utilisphere

Earth has had a geosphere, atmosphere and biosphere for a few billion years. Only within the last several thousand years has earth gained a global noosphere, the intangible ‘sphere’ of human thought and communication on earth. Now, anthropologist Félix Pharand has mapped an even newer addition to the Anthropocene’s profusion of next natural spheres.

The utilisphere consists of the planet’s utilities and transportation networks: highways, railroads, pipelines and fiber optic cables. By making his animation without labels or city names, Pharand invites us to view the spiderweb shape of the utilisphere as something more organic, approaching the freshwater hydrosphere in complexity.

Via Gizmodo


  1. natinja

    To the image of the Utilisphere as map of the ordained matter, aka hardware for fixed purpose, should be opposed the image of the Futilisphere as map of the aethereal waves, aka software for reality bending/binding purpose, mastered since aeons through human speech and scaled up to satellite uplinks.

  2. natinja

    There is no straight line from point A to point B in the Futilisphere, its map looks like a dull sphere from any vantage points. The Futilisphere is all about leaks, to a point that it could be renamed the Leakysphere without being noticed.

    Recent news events have shown that whereas military and diplomatic cables usually follow the safe routes of the Utilisphere, from one authorised outpost to another, some may leak their way out to the Futilisphere by the all-around seize for use school of activism, aka Usurpaedia. Paradoxically, these cables are themselves the consignment of leaks, things overheard, purposefully or inadvertently, by agents of the Utilisphere. As counterleak measures, more and more computing and automated daemons are being poured into the Leakysphere for turning mood of the mud into intelligence, developing new routes in the Utilisphere.