About

Space exploration.
Blankets.
Burritos.
Smartphones.
The hand axe.
Microprocessors.

These are all artifacts of a technological species, and as a source, propellant, and enabler, technology defines us at the most basic and essential level. www.anthrobotic.com is here to explore and share this concept with a greater audience and accelerate and augment humanity’s linear understanding of an exponential phenomenon. And also so that I can give praise and talk trash about technology in sorta oddly punctuated, dorky prose. In public. It’s fun.

So yeah, I’m Reno, and I am an Anthrobotic Sociologist. Unnnn… Kinda. Or a Cybernetic Anthropologist. Or just some guy with a huge passion for human technology and a predilection toward expository technosnark.* It’s a bit ambiguous, but I am working on qualifying and defining and codifying exactly what it is I’m doing here. I cover the subject from southern Japan.

And The Subject
Across every culture, throughout all history, the most fundamental human trait is the creation and implementation of technology. The vast spectrum of what we create, the activity of manipulating our environment to further our survival, comfort, and understanding of life and the world around us – this defines our species at the most basic level – this is where it all starts for us.

And by “all” I really mean ALL of it!
As a student of technology’s role in our civilization and sociology and psychology and social psychology, I used to believe technology was just one among many social forces active in human society. But over lots of years I focused, I looked a bit closer, and like ¡POW! I saw that technology drives everything we do, it is the one universal underlying factor – it is the single most important, vital, and essential social force in human existence. Which makes it like, you know, the most interesting thing possible, yeah?

Love and Religion are Not as Important as Technology. For Reals.
Technology allowed for us to more easily survive, live longer, and develop emotional, not necessarily practical attachments to others – this allowed for the intellectual and emotional concept of love to develop. Does a chimp love other chimps? Maybe – but chimp technology lacks expressiveness!

Additionally, the codification of speech, art, and the written word quite directly allowed for the emergence of organized religion. Even if the Koran/Bible/Bhagavad Gita/Recipe for Rita’s cookies is the word of god, technology allowed it to be written and shared and used both as a tool of civilization… and as a cudgel.

Look around your world, and you’ll see that, in our human lives, technology is pervasive, fundamental, essential, systemic, omnipresent, an other words that mean EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME! Trust me, even hippies need and love technology.

What’s an “ANTHROBOTIC?”
Well, the wordplay is obvious, yeah?
I had the “Anthrobotic” title in my head for years and years – it was actually an original thought, but it was Steam Engine Timed by some others as well, so I’m not the only one using it. One day Brad bought me a URL and 18 months later I started writing. And I’ve got madd passion.

Here at the site, I try to write with something like irreverent oratorical rhetoric, because it seems honester and more in line with how people really think. Or how I think – and I’m in charge around here and I’ll also be overly verbose and put commas wherever the hell I want to. I guess the style is me having a conversation with what I’d consider my ideal audience.

So yeah – Please Enjoy!
Thanks for stopping by. As always, if you’d like to discuss or dispute or refute my fundamental position on technology, please contact me without using any.
Ohhhh, snap!¡

No really, all snark aside, I love feedback – please contact me. I’m easier to communicate with than my writing would suggest. At least I think so.

Word.

Reno J. Tibke

*Technosnark, N. Well, it’s like informed, yet snarky, cheeky, smart-ass writing. See, you can know what you’re talking about and constructively discuss technology without the need to self-edit or adopt some disingenuous academic facade. One of the human brain’s more profound capabilities is the cultivation and appreciation of humor, and intentionally extracting that from serious discourse kinda makes one the opposite of really smart and qualified, namsayen?
-Anthrobotic’s 2012 Dictionary of Useful Terms According to Reno