A Speculative Philosophy of Planetary Computation

As computation becomes planetary infrastructure, ​​how does its acceleration of hybrid intelligences pose new challenges to fundamental philosophical questions? As machine sensing, machine cognition, machine embodiment co-evolve, how does computation become more than a mere technology, but the medium through which we ask existential questions about who, what, and how we are? The Antikythera mechanism, sometimes called the “first computer,” was more than a calculator; it was also an astronomical device. The birth of computation is in the orientation of intelligence in relation to its planetary condition. As computation evolves into planetary infrastructure–scientific, cultural, geopolitical–perhaps its most decisive impact will be not in what it does as a tool, but as an epistemological technology: what it discloses to sapient intelligence about how the world works. This in turn alters how intelligence remakes its worlds, including the ongoing artificialization of intelligence, life, sensation, and ecosystems. What is the philosophical school of thought most appropriate to this reality? Perhaps instead of only projecting timeless wisdom, the work of speculative philosophy is to compose new interpretations of new realities, and to do so through direct exploratory encounters with the technologies that disclose those realities to us. Ultimately, we may ask, what is planetary computation for, and toward what futures might it be oriented and in turn orient the future of complex life and intelligence?