Climate & Environment
Solutionism
The belief that complex social and environmental problems can be solved by technology alone — a critique of technological overconfidence.
Definition
Solutionism is the tendency to recast complex social, political and environmental problems as neatly defined technical puzzles with computable, optimisable solutions — while neglecting their structural causes, distributive stakes and unquantifiable dimensions. Popularised by Evgeny Morozov's critique of Silicon Valley ideology, the concept is applied in sustainability to warn against techno-fixes — apps, offsets, geoengineering, smart-city dashboards — that treat symptoms while leaving consumption patterns, power and inequality untouched.
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