Nature Rearranged: What Computers Are Made Of
Image by Thanh Huong Bui (Unsplash)
We live in an age where work, socialization, commerce, and entertainment have migrated almost entirely into digital spaces. With that migration has come a deepening illusion: that human beings are somehow separate from nature. That the glowing rectangle in our hands exists apart from the earth.
It doesn’t.
The 20th-century psychoanalyst Erich Fromm theorized that the alienation of humans from nature could be responsible for the pathological violence that infects human society. If this is true, then the implications for the internet age are severe. Mental illness and antisocial behavior are spreading exponentially. We are more “connected” than ever, while feeling more estranged than ever.
I want to help dismantle the illusion of the separation of humans and our technological creations from nature. Because computers are not man-made. They are fire, wind, water, and earth: nature rearranged. I hope this shift in awareness can help reconnect you to the natural world that runs through everything you touch.
The Motherboard: Heart of the Computer
The motherboard is the heart and brain of the computer. Everything else in a computer either powers or protects it.
A motherboard requires materials with specific conductive properties. Conductivity is how efficiently a material transports electrons, the negatively charged particles that make electricity possible. Electricity is not a human invention. It is a property of matter.
Copper is essential to electronic hardware. Mined from the earth as ore, rock containing valuable minerals like chalcopyrite, it is extracted through mining, then refined through industrial processes until only the pure copper mineral remains. Aluminum and other metals used in motherboards are sourced the same way: pulled from rock, refined from ore, forged by the earth itself over thousands of years through pressure and volcanic activity.
Some metals have a more dramatic origin story. Gold, prized for its conductivity and corrosion resistance, did not form here at all. It arrived via meteor bombardment during the formation of Earth’s crust, forged originally in the titanic energy of colliding stars.
When you hold a gold-plated connector, you are holding a piece of a star.
The board itself is held together by epoxy resin and fiberglass, which insulate and provide structural integrity. Epoxy is made from epichlorohydrin (ECH) and bisphenol A (BPA), which are both petroleum-derived chemicals. When combined with a hardener like polyamide, they react to form a hard plastic. Petroleum is a fossil fuel, formed from ancient decomposed marine life compressed over millions of years beneath the earth’s surface. The epoxy in your motherboard is, in a very literal sense, ancient sea creatures.
Polyamides themselves, the hardeners, can be natural or synthetic. Natural polyamides include silk, wool, collagen, and keratin. Synthetic versions are grown in laboratories through condensation polymerization, built from monomers found in plant and animal material, or extracted from petroleum. In this way, plastics are simply building blocks of plant and animal cells, refined into seeds and grown into new forms through natural processes. Not created, rearranged.
Ceramics also appear throughout computer hardware, primarily for insulation. Computer ceramics are most often made from aluminum oxide (alumina), aluminum nitride, silicon carbide, lead zirconate titanate (PZT), and barium titanate. These materials may sound synthetic, but they trace directly back to bauxite ore, dug from the earth and refined through applications of fire and water. Even in a factory, the refinement of ceramics mimics the natural rock cycle: pressure, heat, transformation.
Finally, there is silicone. Silicone is rooted in silica, which is sand. Sand is pulverized rock and mineral sediment, shaped over millennia by wind and rain. Pure silicon is extracted from sand and quartz, mixed with natural gas derivatives, and polymerized into the silicone used for electronics. The fiberglass reinforcing the board is made by the same process: sand melted into glass, then pulled through tiny holes to form microscopic threads.
The Screen: Liquid Sand Dunes
The display you are reading this on is made of sand. Those fine grains formed over time as wind and rain ground stones into sediment, which rivers then swept to beaches and riverbeds. These tiny fragments are mined directly from dunes and lakebeds and melted down into glass. The phone, tablet, or computer screen is basically a sand dune, transformed.
The Keyboard: Typing on Ancient Life
Most keyboards are made of plastics derived from petroleum. Petroleum is natural gas pulled from the earth through drilling and, in some cases, fracking. Natural gas is the result of decomposed organic matter: ancient animals, plants, and marine life, buried and compressed by geological time until heat and pressure transformed them into fuel. It is called a fossil fuel for a reason. When you press a key, you are pressing down on compressed, ancient life.
The Computer Case: Metal Shell
Computer cases are commonly made of lightweight steel. Steel starts as iron ore mined from the earth, then is melted with carbon derived from coal, and alloyed into a material strong enough to protect computer components. Even the shell of the computer is pulled from rock.
The CPU: Meteors in Modern Electronics
The central processing unit shares its material origins with the motherboard: aluminum, gold, and copper mined from ore, refined through industrial processes, shaped for precision. Plastics derived from petroleum fill the gaps. The CPU is the “brain” of the computer. Just like the rest of the device, it is forged out of ancient ore and fossils, arranged with precision.
The Power Supply: Bottled Lightning
The power supply’s outer casing is plastic forged from refined natural gases. Inside, a circuit board of metals, ceramics, and plastics manages electrical flow, threaded through with copper wire. The transformer contains copper coils mounted with resins and ferrite, which is a magnetic ceramic made from iron oxide minerals.
Capacitors inside the power supply may contain mica, a flaky, metallic mineral that takes millions of years to form and is mined directly from the earth. The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina are rich in mica, though sheet mica is often sourced overseas, raising ongoing concerns about labor and environmental practices in the supply chain.
Semiconductors may be elemental or compound, and commonly include gallium or germanium. Germanium occurs naturally. It flows through some water sources and can be found in plants like aloe and ginseng. It is also synthesized as a byproduct of zinc refining or coal ash processing. It is purified through hydrolysis (a chemical reaction with water) and distillation, leaving behind the pure metal used in electronics.
Carbon film resistors are made by evaporating carbon in a sealed chamber, where it cools into crystalline layers of film. Pure carbon can also be created by heating organic materials like wood until only carbon remains. This is the same process that produces charcoal in a bonfire. The power supply is, among other things, bottled fire.
Everything Man-Made Is Simply Nature, Rearranged
The computer you are reading this on is composed entirely of nature: rocks, metals, oils, sand, plants, and ancient sea life — heated, evaporated, boiled, compressed, refined, and recombined. The building blocks of nature fit together like puzzle pieces to form the intricate devices we use every day.
Not man-made. Man-arranged.
Fiber-optic cables and copper wires stretch under oceans like fungal networks beneath a forest floor, transmitting information at the speed of light. From molten sea creatures to rolling dunes turned glass, the materials of the earth come together in devices that would have been unimaginable a century ago…and yet nothing in them defies nature. They elevate it.
I type on plastic keys made of ancient sea life, gone from this world for millions of years before I was born. My eyes look into a glowing screen made from tumbled stones and sand. From meteors and minerals, from proteins and molecules found in plants and animals, duplicated, distilled, and combined, they form a device through which I can transmit thought across space and time, from my mind to yours.
The illusion of separation was always just that: an illusion.
Everything man-made is simply nature, rearranged.
