Lexicon

Abject
Accretion
Actant
Aeration
Aerobic
Algae-boosted
Animal
Anthropomorphism
Anti-Continuous Construction
Apocalypse
Aquaculture
Aquanaut
Ark
Artificial Intelligence
Autopoiesis
Assemblages
Asymmetry
Atrophy
Attraction
Autarchy
Automata
Automation
Autosymbiosis
Bambassador
Bathyscaphe
Bioconurbation
Biomedia
Bionics
Biosphere
Biotechnique
By-product
Capacity
Actant
Coisolation
Composting
Conservative Surgery
Consumer Envelope
Consumption
Continuous Construction
Conurbation
Correalism
Cultural_Memory
Cybernetics
Cybertecture
Cyborg
Dispositif
Diving Saucer
Dross
Earthship
Ecocatastrophe
Effluvium
Egosphere
End-use
Entanglement
Eutopia
Feedback
Foam
Folk
Gadget
Garbage House
Green Cyborg
Heuristic
Hoard
Holism
Homogenization of Desire
Hostile
Human Affect
Hybridized Folk
Hydroponic
Hyper-Materialism
Information Economy
Inner Space
Interama
Intra-Uterine
Maque
Megalopolis
Min-use
Mobility
Monorail
Multi-Hinge
Non-Design
Oceanaut
Oppositional Consciousness
Organic
Ouroboros
Panarchy
Parasite
Perceived Continuation
Permanence
Place
Prototype
Post-Animal
Reclamation
RI: Data Farms
RI: Garbage and Animals
RI:Shipbreaking
RI: Toxic Sublime
Sampling
Scale
Sensing Structure
Simulacrum
Simulation
Soft Energy
Spaceship Earth
Submersible
Superwindow
Symbiosis
Synthetic Environment
Technocratic
Technological Heredity
Technological Sublime
Telechirics
The Sublime
Thermal Panel
Actant
Thing-Power
Thinking Machines
Tool
Toxic Withdrawal
Turbulence
UV-Transparent Film
Vibrant Matter
Waste
Work

ANTI-CONTINUOUS CONSTRUCTION

While traditionally notions of the sublime have been associated with natural objects - oceans, mountains - and man's relationship to these objects, more recently these sublime feelings have shifted. As the natural landscape has receded as a topic for the sublime as humankind began to demonstrate its ability to assert itself over nature, a new aesthetic phenomenon began to emerge: the technological sublime. Feelings of awe affiliated with the sublime began to be related to human-made objects.

David E. Nye theorized the technological sublime as something that produces awe through recognition of human achievements and abilities such as great industrial leaps like the advent of the railroad or space travel: "Those who stared up at the first skyscraper or watched as Neil Armstrong walked on the moon could not help but feel the weight of human accomplishment1." To Nye, the technological sublime was sign of "the potential omnipotence of humanity"; however, Nye believed that the technological sublime differs from Kant's sublime in that the natural sublime "concerns a failure of representation" whereas the technological sublime "concerns an apparently successful representation of man's ability to construct an ability to construct an infinite and perfect world2."

Mario Costa also notes that the technological sublime is a "tamed sublime" that is open to "socialized and controlled use3." However, for Costa, the technological sublime associated aesthetics with the accelerated use of communications technology and the dissolution of the subject and traditional art aesthetics.

Citations
Peeples, Jennifer. Toxic Sublime: Imagining Contaminated Landscapes." 2011, Environmental Communications 5. pp.373-392
Nye, David. American Technological Sublime." 1994, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Costa, Mario. Il sublime tecnologico." 1990, Rome: Castelvecchi.