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.
The Stack
Benjamin H. Bratton
In The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, Benjamin H. Bratton proposes that different genres of computation—smart grids, cloud platforms, mobile apps, smart cities, the Internet of Things, automation— can be seen not as so many species evolving on their own, but as forming a coherent whole: an accidental megastructure called The Stack that is both a computational apparatus and a new governing architecture. We are inside The Stack and it is inside of us. The Stack is an interdisciplinary design brief for a new geopolitics that works with and for planetary-scale computation. Interweaving the continental, urban, and perceptual scales, it shows how we can better build, dwell within, communicate with, and govern our worlds.