As humans have colonised and modified the Earth’s surface, they have progressively developed more sophisticated tools and technologies. These underpin a new kind of stratigraphy, for which Jan Zalasiewicz (Chair of the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy) coined the term “technostratigraphy.” This is marked by the geologically accelerated evolution and diversification of “technofossils” – the preservable material remains of the “technosphere.” Almost all electrical appliances are made out of electronic circuit boards that all have copper wiring, which, in many cases, originates from copper mines located in D. R. Congo. Most workers in the mines (les creuseurs) don't know themselves what the materials they are extracting are used for. The global information revolution and knowledge distribution – which has been made possible thanks to computers and smart phones, in connection with the Internet – does not connect to the material point of origin. The gap between the beginning and the end, between cause and consequence, is unbelievably big.
Technofossils brings both worlds closer together by sculpting the telephones directly into the rocks, as if they were always there and were waiting to be discovered or liberated.
