We are not just spectators of the world. We are participants in its unfolding. Consciousness matters because it changes how possibility becomes reality, even if we don’t fully understand how.
Digital consent might make sense if data can be used in currency, benefiting the owner and creator. But that isn't how the internet actually operates. Perhaps a new, alternative metaphor might make more sense: "impressions."
An interview with Benjamin Bratton, philosopher of technology, Professor of Philosophy of Technology and Speculative Design at UC San Diego, and Director of Antikythera.
An interview with Benjamin Bratton, philosopher of technology, Professor of Philosophy of Technology and Speculative Design at UC San Diego, and Director of Antikythera.
In this wide-ranging conversation, we explore the implications of planetary-scale computation with Benjamin Bratton, Director of the Antikythera program at the Berggruen Institute and Professor at UC San Diego. Benjamin describes his interdisciplinary work as appearing like a "platypus" to others—an odd creature combining seemingly incompatible parts that somehow works as a coherent whole.
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At the heart of our discussion is Benjamin's framework for understanding how computational technology literally evolves, not metaphorically but through the same mechanisms that drive biological evolution: scaffolding, symbiogenesis, niche construction, and what he calls "allopoiesis"—the process by which organisms transform their external environment to capture more energy and information.
Key themes we explore:
Benjamin challenges us to think beyond conventional categories of life, intelligence, and technology, arguing that these distinctions are converging into something more fundamental. As he puts it: "Agency precedes subjectivity"—we've been transforming our world at terraforming scales long before we were conscious of doing so.
The conversation culminates in what Benjamin calls "the paradox of intelligence": What are the preconditions necessary to ensure that complex intelligence remains evolutionarily adaptive rather than self-destructive? As he notes, we became aware of our terraforming-scale agency precisely at the moment we discovered it might be destroying the substrate we depend on. It's a question that becomes increasingly urgent as we stand at the threshold of what could be either a viable planetary civilization or civilizational collapse—what Benjamin sees as requiring us to fundamentally rethink "what planetary scale computation is for."
About Benjamin Bratton: Benjamin Bratton is a philosopher of technology, Professor of Philosophy of Technology and Speculative Design at UC San Diego, and Director of Antikythera, a think tank researching planetary computation at the Berggruen Institute. Beginning in 2024, he also serves as Visiting Faculty Researcher at Google's Paradigms of Intelligence group, conducting fundamental research on the artificialization of intelligence.
His influential book The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (MIT Press, 2015) develops a comprehensive framework for understanding planetary computation through six modular layers: Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, and User. Other recent works include Accept All Cookies (Berggruen Press), written in conjunction with his co-curation of "The Next Earth: Computation, Crisis, Cosmology" at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, and The Terraforming (Strelka), a manifesto arguing for embracing anthropogenic artificiality to compose a planet sustaining diverse life.
Antikythera, founded in 2022, takes its name from the ancient Greek astronomical computer which served as an instrument for planetary orientation and navigation. The think tank researches planetary computation through five areas: Planetary Computation, Synthetic Intelligence, Recursive Simulations, Hemispherical Stacks, and Planetary Sapience, using interdisciplinary design research to develop scenarios and thought experiments that advance the philosophy of technology.
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