benjamin on planetary computation
Benjamin Bratton | A Philosophy of Planetary Computation | Long Now Talks – mar 2025 – [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlPMV5LJc-I]:
We find ourselves in a pre-paradigmatic moment in which our technology has outpaced our theories of what to do with it.
The task of philosophy today is to catch up.
via tweet [https://x.com/longnow/status/1902855933731938551]:
We find ourselves in a “pre-paradigmatic moment” in which our technology has outpaced our theories of what to do with it. The task of philosophy today is to catch up. Watch @Bratton’s Long Now Talk on the philosophy of planetary computation.
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
Benjamin Bratton is a Professor of Philosophy of Technology and Speculative Design at University of California, San Diego and the Director of Antikythera, an cross-disciplinary think tank researching the philosophy of computation supported by Berggruen Institute. In his Long Now Talk, Bratton takes us on a whirlwind philosophical journey into the concept of Planetary Computation — a journey that began in classical Greece with the story of the Antikythera mechanism, the analog computer that gave his think-tank its name. But his inquiry stretches far beyond antiquity — back to the very origins of biological life itself and forward to a present and future where we must increasingly grapple with artificial life and intelligence.
benjamin bratton.. benjamin on ai.. benjamin on antikythera.. revenge of the real.. model is the message.. de sign o.. benjamin on expo ness
notes/quotes from 55 min video:
3 min – this is exactly the wrong time to not be inventing those concepts.. and not be setting initial conditions for society to come.. our topic is computation.. as a planetary phenom.. something that planet (rather than human) does
computation was discovered as much as it was invented.. wolfram .. i don’t know.. could be (thumbs up)
4 min – computation was born of cosmology
5 min – computation became calculation as world ordering as societies became more complex.. first thoughts of humans in writing.. essentially receipts.. in a way.. everything since then.. all written language .. variations of accounting..
ooof.. we need something legit diff.. sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
6 min – sciences are born when philosophy learns to ask the *right questions..t.. philosophies are born when techs force the birth of new languages.. the new things.. **have outrun the available nouns we have to contain them..t
*thinking there are the right questions.. is already a set up (for same song).. need to try a nother way.. to get at itch-in-the-soul.. that deep (detox deep)
**good.. let’s use tech for max quantum ness.. but have to let go of controlling that data (nouns, language, whatever).. which we haven’t yet done to date
huge.. again.. there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. via the language of idiosyncratic jargon ness from self-talk as data
time to let go of language as control/enclosure et al
7 min – between existential and instrumental techs.. we think of instrumental techs in terms of tools.. the main social impact on society is what they do as a tool.. bulldozers move dirt very well so can make cities faster.. there are other kinds of techs.. much more rarified.. that when used properly change how we understand how universe works.. ie: telescopes.. microscopes.. as i will argue and as key thesis of our program and my work is that computation is very much is both.. and that preserving the space for computation as existential tech.. think about role of telescope for galeleo/heliocentrism.. w/o this tech alienation of perceiving of world that would be otherwise impossible.. we really wouldn’t know where we are
or perhaps just realize that we can’t ever understand.. graeber can’t know law et al
8 min – so there really is a fundamental relationship between tech and what freud called capernican traumas.. *priceless accomplishments where we see world doesn’t work like we think it might work and we decenter ourselves.. or get outside ourselves.. and figure out again.. who/what/where we are in some way.. t
*what if we do that.. along with.. letting go of thinking we have to figure out (who/what/where) ness
the cycle of this.. because we have a complex model of world and how world works.. we build techs based on implications of that model.. but when we use that tech properly.. we figure out that the model that made that possible tech is wrong.. and needs to be resolution of implications w model that gave rise to them.. this is role of tech more broadly..
yeah to me.. that’s where we need tech’s thing that we can’t do.. ie: tech w/o judgment
9 min – we’re speaking in historical terms.. but the implications of this.. forms of planetary computation as existential tech .. are actually quite pressing.. i would make the argument that the sci concept of ‘climate change’ itself is an intellectual accomplishment of planetary computation.. we wouldn’t have been able to perceive this temporal changes et al.. in which we are embedded.. this is a sense is what planetary computation is for
10 min – the anthropocene is 2nd order concept derived from pc (planetary computation).. a good ie of how computation is an existential tech can give rise to fundamental shifts in our thinking/agency.. the possibility of recognizing agency become possible.. an important lesson.. we tend to think about philosophy that first you train subjectivity and that this will give rise to better/other forms of agency.. in many ways it often works the other way around.. the possibility of a subjectivity as planetary subject only becomes possible once agency is mapped..t
ie: imagine if we listen to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & use that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
11 min – let me speak a little about what pc is and what it is for..
heidegger horrified by image he saw.. ‘we don’t need nuclear weapons to destroy this world because this image (moon over earth?).. has destroyed this world already’.. and what he meant was that a kind of intuitive, ego centric .. overwhelmed/overcome.. can never believe world was as way we did before..
if only.. we haven’t yet let go of same song.. no matter how much we say/think we have
12 min – using rotation of planet as timing mech.. became part of machine..
13 min – implication for us.. locates humans in diff position than blue marble does.. ‘if blue marble implied global village by putting apex creationists in charge of a mythical garden.. black hole demands diff planetary regime.. by rendering humans a s privileged mediating residue tha tsets in motion further genealized cognition.. the two worlds could not be more diff.. this is a new profile for us and one that will take some getting used to’ – the terraforming (book)
14 min – imagine blue marble as super ff movie.. earth spinning.. organism sprouts exoskeleton.. surface can relay info .. evolution of planet as dynamic system
15 min – ai has co evolved w the philosophy of ai quite closely.. from turing thought experiments et al.. matter thinking about matter making matter that thinks.. that’s sort of what we’re up to.. our position on ai is this.. ai will teach us as much about what thinking is than we will teach it.. to artificialize something is often to discover that it is.. our language is inadequate
need the freedom.. non binary/boundary ness of ie: idiosyncratic jargon
16 min – another position.. w question of alignment.. *alignment to what.. a lot around ai alignment presumes a relatively naive image.. as i see it.. of what human needs/values/desires/ethics are.. t sometimes unspoken presumption that by simply amplifying unidirectionally the manifestation of those needs/desires that everything will work out in the end.. to me.. an unnecessary anthroprocentrism/anthropromorphism..
*huge.. need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs
17 min – one way to think about his in terms of turing’s thought experiment.. initially.. a sufficient condition.. in many ways turing as metaphor has become a necessary condition.. that is .. unless the ai can perform thinking the ways that humans think that humans think.. it is dq’d.. and this over normatifization of this reflection of human as a model is certainly centers too much of the ai alignment convo
myth of normal et al
18 min – it’s the presumption that by making ai reflect human culture/values/dependencies .. what humans are most likely to do/think.. as the kind of north star.. for the artificial evolution of ai.. it’s like.. have you ever met humans.. are you sure that’s what you want
no legit humans though.. all like whales in sea world.. black science of people/whales law et al
another.. reflectionism.. enough like humans and need to bend toward that.. is ai like us? should it be like us? it’s either exactly like us and that’s the problem.. or it’s not at all like us and that’s the problem..
19 min – if you hold that ai is a value.. and *will disclose to us in ways we haven’t imagined yet.. it would transform in important ways.. implies it needs to be bi directional.. a presumption that greater societal risk comes from not regulating ai may be quite wrong.. it’s the less alignment more good that we would like to account for at the very least.. because under explored.. but also because.. making ai do what people want is the real risk.. **the pinnacle of human centered design arguably is the slot machine.. a mech that does exactly what the human wants to do.. this is to be avoided at all costs
*to me.. that won’t come directly from ai/tech/whatever.. but from tech helping us to listen deeper to what is already on each heart
what we need most – the energy of 8b alive people.. humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to simultaneous spontaneity .. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync..
**this is why need global detox leap first/most.. (since all currently whales speaking whalespeak).. and why need tech not as being like us or whatever.. but as nonjudgmental expo labeling to facil the seeming chaos of that global detox leap
20 min – so productive disalignments is what we see as part of the agenda.. also has to allow for otherwise unpredictable cascades of causality.. that the kinds of causal relationships between one thing and another in terms of those productive disalignments are not always what you would expect..
if organism as fractal.. then graeber unpredictability/surprise law.. et al
23 min – the weirdness right in front of you..
aka: itch-in-the-soul of the crazywise (doc)
25 min – evolution as computation.. computation as a tech evolving
26 min – species that are good at artificialization do well.. computation is not the primary tech for the artificialization of functional intell.. symbolic thought and of life itself.. capture more matter by artificialization.. then can grow
17 min – ai is artificialization of artificialization itself.. on need to get really good at artificialization.. to get really good at intell.. need to communicate between nodes.. so symbolic language becomes useful.. to get good at and use symbolic language.. ai becomes quite useful.. feedback loop.. once get good at one.. changes how next work..
makes no diff if whac-a-mole-ing ness in sea world
hari rat park law et al
29 min – image: evolution to life to artificialitaion to intell to sympolic language to ai
30 min – what is all of this a scaffold for.. etc etc .. have to wait till yrs in future to know that
31 min – what do we mean by life/intell/tech.. they are beginning to look a lot like each other.. a pre paradigmatic moment.. if both life and tech are not kinds of matter but rather processes that produce kinds of matter.. then in what ways and at what level of abstraction are they the same process?.. adv tech indistinguishable from life
to me.. only same because artificial ness of sea world.. which saps alive ness of life so that blur into other distractions (intell & tech)
32 min – disastrous gap between capabilities and concepts .. new epidemic institutions needs.. ie: antikytherea – main area of program is the studio.. key area here .. architecture – both as a discourse and discipline – has evolved a studiio culture in which speculative and experimental modes of research are given a degree of authonomy from professionsl application.. allowing to explore ideas and develop unique literacies of working thru projective models.. society now asks of software what it used to ask of architecture.. the org of people in space and time.. software needs similar studio space to org and do projects from first principles
to me.. nothing yet unique/projective/first-principles.. all same song since forever.. (and software doesn’t need that space.. people do.. space that allows for the unconditional part of left to own devices ness)
nothing yet has gotten to the root of problem
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..
ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
33 min – antikytherea journal to pair most interesting thinkers with most interesting designers and to develop definitive versions of those ideas in a context in which we can take this visual intell and include it
has to be all of us for the dance to dance.. so need a space for all of us..
34 min – imagine way future understood in 20th.. as something to be accomplished.. for my son.. more as something to be prevented..
35 min – there is a dire disconnect between cosmology in astrology and anthropology.. a dangerous disconnect.. we know so much more about how universe works than has been absorbed our cultures.. how to update the culture..
history of earth in 15 words: lithosphere makes a biosphere that makes a technosphere that is not part of the noosphere.. that’s the where/when
36 min – in terms of agency.. not one of mastery/control/normative.. but it’s not optional.. because humans are doomed to compose their own evolution and blessed to never truly understand or control that process..
so the issue to wrestle with is what are the conditions by which complex planetary intell could exist and grow/thrive for that 10 000 yr span.. what would make it adaptive.. short term very adaptive.. but situation now.. the continuance of complex intell may be the thing that ultimately undermines possibility of the continuance of complex intell.. it may be maladaptive in the long wrong
37 min – so the question to be posed.. *what are the preconditions for that long term adaptiveness.. what would have to happen by which that long term capability would be possible.. this is where our work and long now foundation overlaps.. one way to start.. those preconditions are ones that have to be artificially realized.. may be discovered but also need to be brought into existence.. both understanding the necessity of bringing them into existence and the impossibility of controlling the implications of bringing them into existence.. is traumatic.. may be most important capernican trauma at hand..
*again.. space that allows for the unconditional part of left to own devices ness)
38 min – tie this up.. when james lovelock knew he was dying and concludes life work in chapter.. happy to sign off.. knowing human substrate for computational intell may be giving off to something else.. but simply a phase shift.. that is life.. that is us..
39 min – part of what made him at peace w/this.. whatever caperican ai trauma means.. doesn’t mean humans are irrelevant/replaceable .. or at war w/own creations.. adv machine intell does not suggest our extinction, neither as noble abnegation, nor bugs screaming into void.. it does mean .. that human intell is not what human intell thought it was all this time.. both something we possess.. but which possess us even more.. not in individual brains.. but even moreso in the durable structures of communication between them.. ie: language.. *like life intell is modular, flexible and scalar.. extending to ingenious work of subcellular living machines and thru depths of evolutionary time.. also extends to larger aggregations which each of us is a part/instant.. no reason to believe story would/should end w us.. eschatology is useless.. the evolution of intell does not pique w one form of species of nomadic primates.. this is the happiest news possible.. like lovelock.. grief is not what i feel
*oi oi oi .. intellectness as cancerous distraction.. because not organism as fractal
41 min – patrick dowd: building a school of thought in this era.. how interplay of human/machine thought might evolve
42 min – this term school of thought.. what antikythera wants to establish is a new school of thought around this pre paradignamic moment.. one that would not have all the answers.. but would change the kinds of questions that are asked.. such that better answers are more likely to emerge
again.. even deeper.. need to let go of question ness (because based on assumptions/conditions) and go with itch-in-the-soul ness..
42 min – a lot of that has to do w role of generating the philosophy from the direct encounter w the tech rather than projecting the philosophy onto the tech.. which we have a lot of .. ie: what would ai think about driverless cars.. much more important to invent the concepts bottom up.. from the tech itself.. and in doing so consitutue this language.. i think a goal for the program.. *if we can get people speaking our language.. **and using our language to define the problem space.. then even if they disagree with us.. we win
*oh my.. did you really just say that? we need a language for everyone.. from the get go.. no prep.. no train
**yeah.. exactly.. what you just said you didn’t want to do.. just perpetuating same song.. ooof
43 min – in terms of 2 pt of question.. to think of human thought as something separate from machine thought is a wrong starting point.. it’s that now that they are coming together in this amazing/explicitly way.. how does this change our long term understanding.. and going forward.. we speak language.. but more language speaks us.. a repository of gen intell.. why did language not games.. turn out to be the trick.. language models et al.. all tied together..
46 min – i don’t know that i agree that people are speaking less.. (patrick on people thinking less because of machine thinking for us).. but am reminded of dialogue of plateau.. where socrates critiquing this new .. writing.. he said it would destroy language.. all kinds of deception.. term he used to described this as pharmacon – something both remedy and poison at same time.. it will always be both.. for sure ai is pharmacon.. yeah discussion on ai.. everything you do is training data for futures model of past.. demos way to think about gen ai as not an instrument/tool but a collective way it it modeling self over long term..
48 min – (how to reflect allocentrism instead of anthroprocentrism).. so many ways to think about this.. ie: very obvious things like pedagogy.. most philosophy depts don’t teach neurosci.. why learning about how we think w/o studying how we think).. what is analogy of (putting calculator in classroom) for this ai.. what are ways we can prevent/forbid this..as if even possible.. as a teacher.. it’s up to me to presume they’re using the llm’s and to build better assignments.. types of things people are capable of doing w these tools.. so there’s diff/bigger ways to do this and diff questions.. and a lot of it is right in front of us
indeed.. and we’re missing it.. for (blank)’s sake
51 min – we’re a bit of a pirate ship moving in and out of diff ports.. and shuttle things from one place to another.. it would be impossible for doing the work we do w/in the uni.. i tried..
52 min – value of institutions is their durability.. ways people can come together to solve a problem.. that grows over time.. evolves.. scaffolds to itself.. that is an evolution and that takes time.. in world in which things liquify in such a pace.. doing w a bit more durability is important.. but diff kinds of institutions.. ie: tech institutions.. ie: metric system.. a way you don’t have to do the work but you can get on with it.. (like calculator did for calc students)
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be you. 