The Antikythera mechanism was among the earliest known computers. Discovered at the Greek island of Antikythera, it combined calculation, orientation and cosmology. For our program, “Antikythera” refers to a computational technology that discloses and accelerates the deeper condition of planetary intelligence.

Computation today poses technical challenges and contradictions; it also demands deep political and philosophical reconsideration. Ultimately, it challenges how intelligence comprehends itself. The scientific idea of “climate change,” for example, is a conceptual accomplishment of planetary scale computation. It is the output of sensors, simulations and supercomputers. As such, computation has made the contemporary notion of the planetary and the ‘Anthropocene’ conceivable, accountable, and actionable.

Technologies generate ideas as much as ideas generate technologies, but today technology has outpaced theory. All too often the response is to superimpose inherited ideas about ethics, scale, governance, and meaning onto situations that in fact demand a different framework. Instead, the Antikythera program will generate new ideas from a direct interdisciplinary engagement with the past, present and potential futures of planetary computation.

Antikythera’s Affiliate Researchers and practitioners develop new philosophy, research and speculative design. The program will host a five-month interdisciplinary and international design-research Studio in early 2023, where Studio Researchers will participate in intensive seminars, design workshops, and prototyping platforms. Studio outputs take form as technology and theory, cinema and code, platforms and policy that steer computation towards a more viable future.

Antikythera is directed by philosopher of technology Benjamin Bratton. Antikythera is developed and housed within the Berggruen Institute, and the Studio is supported by One Project.

Read more about Antikythera in an Interview with Benjamin Bratton in Noema, see the program’s

2023 Reading List

, or visit our group on

✶✶ Are.na

.

antikythera | research | contributors | studio | partners

A program reorienting planetary computation as a philosophical, technological, and geopolitical force.

antikythera | research | contributors | studio | partners

A program reorienting planetary computation as a philosophical, technological, and geopolitical force.