Computation as a Planetary Scale Phenomenon
Abstract
The concept of the ‘technosphere’ was advanced in the field of Earth Systems Science to capture technology as a geological phenomenon in the Anthropocene. What precisely, I ask, drives the technosphere to be so novel and unprecedented a planetary force? Part of the answer, I venture, lies in the nature of computation as a generative force that drives the expansion of the technosphere. To build an account of computation as a generative force of a planetary scale, I engage with and parse through various debates regarding its historical and ontological predispositions. To address computation in its full potential, I argue, is to attend to its creative, albeit imperfect, encounters with the physical world in shifting registers of space and time, which ultimately lends to its epistemological capacity to imagine and facilitate infrastructures that constitute the technosphere.