Futures of Multipolar Computation

Futures of Multipolar Computation is the theme for a series of interrelated global events on the topic of Hemispherical Stacks in 2024 led by Antikythera, a philosophy of technology think tank reorienting planetary computation. On March 20, 2024, Antikythera Director Benjamin Bratton will give a public lecture at the Design Innovation Institute Shanghai. 

Applications are now open for a virtual working group that will convene advanced researchers and writers working across technology, philosophy, political science, international relations, geopolitics, science fiction, and other fields. The working group will meet monthly to explore near-future scenarios that engage a number of geopolitical issues related to planetary computation.

Hemispherical Stacks
The emergence of planetary scale computation—and the accidental megastructure of The Stack—is a foundational infrastructure of global society. In recent years, the Stack has fragmented into increasingly enclosed domains. Ultimately, the multipolarization of geopolitics and the multipolarization of planetary computation are the same thing. 

Geopolitical dynamics today revolve around computation. Data, and more importantly the right to model it, is now a sovereign substance, something over which and from which sovereignty is claimed. Cloud platforms take on roles traditionally performed by modern states, crossing national borders and oceans, conversely states are evolving into cloud platforms. The geopolitical tensions that arise in the frictions emerging from these shifts frame the prospects of planetary governance.

From chip design to data regulations, this marks a shift toward a more multipolar architecture, generating hemispheres of influence for planetary scale computation. These segment and divide the planet into sovereign computational systems—Hemispherical Stacks extending from energy, mineral sourcing, and intercontinental transmission to cloud platforms, from addressing systems and interface cultures to different politics of the “user.”

Antikythera focuses on several emerging areas of Hemispherical Stacks research to model these futures pre-emptively, drawing maps of otherwise uncharted waters.

Sovereign Data: Production of Data as Sovereign Claim / Chip Race: Adversarial Computational Supply-Chains / Astropolitics: Extraplanetary Sending and Computation / Foundational Models: AI as National Security Resource / Cloud States: Delinking Territory and Governance / Stories And Scenarios: Near-Term Futures Mapping

Shanghai lecture
Futures of Multipolar Computation is a public lecture on March 20, 2024 by Antikythera Director Benjamin Bratton jointly hosted by Berggruen Institute China and NYU Shanghai’s Center for AI and Culture at the Design Innovation Institute in Shanghai. The lecture will combine philosophical speculation, original research, and digital media including generative AI to explore critical issues in planetary computation, artificial intelligence, hardware and software, and geopolitics. Register now to attend.

Virtual working group
Applications are now open for a virtual working group on the Futures of Multipolar Computation that will convene experts from diverse professional backgrounds–including international relations researchers, speculative designers, political theorists, science-fiction writers, computation and society scholars, and others. 

Rather than science fictions focused on individuals or human-driven experiences, scenarios developed in the working group will explore how science fictions will embed in geopolitical technologies that inform and are informed by infrastructure, environment, politics, and material substrates at a social, planetary, technological, and philosophical level. Some of the outcomes may evolve into interactive, rich media essays for Antikythera’s online journal and/or scenario-driven essays to be included in a book on Hemispherical Stacks for MIT Press co-edited by Antikythera director, Benjamin Bratton, and science-fiction author, Chen Qiufan. 

Those interested in participating should submit a 1–2 page description sharing their research interest(s), along with a 1–2 page CV, and 2 recent work samples. Apply by April 12 2024.

Antikythera is a philosophy of technology think tank based at the Berggruen Institute. 

Contact: contact [​at​] antikythera.org, @antikythera_xyz