The Terraforming

by Benjamin H. Bratton

The Terraforming is the comprehensive project to fundamentally transform Earth's cities, technologies, and ecosystems to ensure that the planet will be capable of supporting Earth-like life. Artificiality, astronomy, and automation form the basis of that alternative planetarity.

This short book was written in July 2019. It is is an opening brief and manifesto for The Terraforming urban design research programme at the Strelka Institute in Moscow. It is a narrowly targeted polemic against dominant modes of planetarity and a rejoinder to inadequacies seen in how critical philosophy and design seeks to confront them.

The title refers both to the terraforming that has taken place in recent centuries in the form of urbanisation, and to the terraforming that must now be planned and conducted as the planetary design initiative of the next centuries if true catastrophes are to be prevented. The term 'terraforming' usually refers to transforming the ecosystems of other planets or moons to make them capable of supporting Earth-like life, but the looming ecological consequences of what is called the Anthropocene suggest that in the decades to come, we will need to terraform Earth if it is to remain a viable host for Earth-like life.

Planetarity itself comes into focus through orbiting imagining and terrestrial modeling technologies (satellites, sensors, servers in sync) that have made it possible to measure climate change with any confidence. We will explore a renewed Copernican turn, and how the technologically mediated shift away from anthropocentric perspectives is crucially necessary in both theory and practice. The Copernican turn is also a trauma, as Freud once suggested, but this is one that demands more agency, not less.

The implications of the shift are perhaps counterintuitive. Instead of reviving ideas of 'nature,' we will reclaim 'the artificial'—not as in 'fake,' but rather 'designed'—as a foundation which links the mitigation of anthropogenic climate change to the geopolitics of automation. For this, urban-scale automation is seen as part of an expanded landscape of information, agency, labor, and energy that is part of a living ecology, not a substitute for one. As such, the focus of urban design research shifts toward the governance of infrastructures that operate on much longer timescales than our cultural narratives.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Climate Change, Theory, Design, Science, Technology

110 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2019

About the author

Benjamin H. Bratton is a theorist whose work spans philosophy, computer science, and design. He is Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Director of the Center for Design and Geopolitics at the University of California, San Diego. He is also Visiting Professor of Critical Studies at SCI-Arc (the Southern California Institute of Architecture) and Professor of Digital Design at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Reviews

[Hait · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me lobhe releido pa un trabajo, wena fumada.

[Nils · Rating 5 out of 5]

Post-anthropocentric: A final “copernican turn” of decentering the human in both theory and practice. The role for homo sapiens is “as a kind of auto-generated smart bacteria swarming around the surface” of the earth-amoeba, “a privileged mediating residue that sets in motion further generalized cognition.” (19) What’s needed is “co-planetarity of organisms and machines and ecologies” (46). Indeed the very awareness of the fact of anthropogenic climate change is in fact an epistemological accomplishment made possible because of “infrastructural-scale cognition” (29), that is, the combination of planetary-scale sensory networks (surveillance) and planetary scale computation (modeling).

Anti-Heideggerian: When Heidegger observes that “we only have purely technological conditions left,” Bratton adds: and that’s a fine thing, too! We need to embrace the artificial, not in the sense of fake vs. authentic, but in terms of understanding artificiality as a product of artifice, that is “the trace of intention and design within patterns of emergence” (25) — “the pressing serious assignment of designing a viable artificial planetarity.” (27)

Pro-geoengineering: The terraforming of earth has reached a point where the only choice is more terraforming, and specifically calls for the development of “Negative Emissions Technologies” (74). We need “a radical redeployment of geotechnical means towards the ends of ameliorating global geochemistry now in meltdown” (23). “Geoengineering needs to be framed not as an omniscient, reductive control of ecological mechanisms, but as a sober, practical , geotechnically-minded and geopolitical sensitive coming-to-grips with anthropogenic ecological effects.” (77) We’ve always already been terraforming! Also vociferously pro-nuclear, dismissing anti-nuclear greens as engaging in culture war of the worst sort.

“Anti-anti-leviathan”: argues that we need MORE surveillance, specifically of carbon emissions; revises Bucky Fuller’s argument in Spaceship Earth that we need a planetary planning regime. “The operant mythologies of a cephalon emergence... need to give way to more deliberately composed planetarity.” (30) “For the planetarity needed, it would be extremely unlikely that the best alternatives would be predicated on the inviolability of individual voice, property, settlement, language, identity, and consumptive desire.” (31) “The pressing assignments of geopolitics and geotechnology are now to directly transform planetary biochemistry, including but not limited to greenhouse gases.” (53) And he issues a warning of what will happen if we don’t make this move: “The more persistent the delay in strong governing action regarding the geoeconomics of climate and the geoecologies of automation, then more likely that ‘governance’ will amount to nothing but a mess of cruel, stupid, defensive, and inequitable reactionary measures.” (56) Focused above all on the governance of infrastructures (“the Stack” his first book discussed)

Urbanist: Cities as a planetary network through which humans occupy the earth’s surface are “theaters of mutualizing automation” (40) where automation is understood “not just as the synthetic transference of natural human agency into external technical systems, but as the condition by which action and abstraction are codified into complex adaptive relays through living bodies and non-living media.” (45)

[Pablo Mallorquí · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un pequeño ensayo ameno sobre la necesidad de terraformar la Tierra (volver a hacerla habitable tras la crisis climática y el antropoceno) y el uso de la tecnología, a distintos niveles, para detectar dichas necesidades de coexistencia con la naturaleza. Tiene ideas interesantes y plantea cuestiones de actualidad desde un ámbito poco tratado pero al final he tenido la sensación de que es la introducción a un libro más elaborado que abusa demasiado de la verborrea académica.

[eve massacre · Rating 4 out of 5]

I now have read it for the second time for a discussion series on radical utopias and I still find it a wonderfully challenging read, that proves to be a great discussion starter for the future we want and how to get there. No easy read, but still very recommended.

[gamergamergamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow manages to reference Heath Ledger's Joker and Thanos without being a book for people who collect Funko Pops.

[Rick Harrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't find this book by searching Goodreads. I couldn't read this book either. I think I'm on my third try. At the end of my first try, my Kindle app helpfully popped up its usual ratings page, which I dismissed because I wasn't ready. Now that I am ready, I still had to go back to artificially force the popup. So here's the book on Goodreads!

I have no idea what I'm doing writing reviews up here. I don't expect or even want anyone to read them. I *do* want to understand how the world operates, and Bratton has really helped me to do that. His massive tome - we call it the BIG WHITE BOOK among friends - it's actually called The Stack - is quite readable, and extremely eye-opening for its descriptions of aspects human life on the planet that I could never have represented to myself as well as Bratton has. I think everyone should read it, if only as journalism, for what it reveals about our now digitally overlaid planet.

This book opens with the bang of the crises we face; specifically the twin crises of climate change and artificially intelligent automation. Bratton (or is it the automatic computers he pulls from?) gives us ten years. His solutions are design-based and dependent on human agency.

As it happens (well, not exactly, I was fairly deliberate about this), I'm reading Bratton along with the highly readable Michael Pollan. I've learned amazing things about the human brain and how agency works in his How to Change Your Mind and now I'm learning amazing things about how contemporary humans on the planet have been engineered by corn (as in corn is genetically triumphant because of us humans in the Omnivores Dilemma. That is one of those books I've had on my literal shelves (now in storage) for a long time. I borrowed it digitally for the read.

I wear cotton to keep from needing too many chemicals to prevent my stinking, even while I know how dirty the cotton industry is. I feel repelled by Patagonia, and have all those nasty prejudices when a Tesla goes by. I repress them, because there's nothing wrong with Teslas drivers - they're almost all likeable people to me. I think I resent that they think they might be mitigating some harm (if not doing any particular good) by driving a Tesla. It's still a car, and they're not. And I don't have enough money for either Patagonia or Tesla, which is really what bugs me about the whole deal.

I think that Bratton agrees with me that driving a Tesla resolves nothing. Not sure. But I have no idea yet why he thinks we can plan our way out of this mess in ten years. We can't even get rid of Trump.

As a lapsed wooden boat sailor, I'm mindful that with much more primitive man and horse driven technologies, the wooden boat building industry wiped out our old growth forests even before we did the Bison in, and, mostly by means of disease germs, the native Americans. I'm mindful of the catastrophe of agriculture itself, perhaps grace Harari Sapiens or his other book(s) (they seem to proliferate).

What is it about this current asymptotic limit now at close of a shockingly transformative industrial communications computational revolution starting no longer ago than Darwin - what is it that makes things feel so terminal? Well, duh, right? It would seem that we have to plan our way out of it. There's no god I know of about to swoop in to rescue us. We just don't seem all that relevant.

Except that I've always felt that our consciousness is the trouble. Bratton takes great pains to explain how much more carbon intensive what he calls "culture" is than most everything else about how we organize ourselves. In just the way that Michael Pollan traces everything back to oil and corn (I've only started), Bratton traces what happens when we "push" (as in electrostatically interact with by touch) a button on our iPhones.

I *think,* but can't know, that what's really happening *is* a change to consciousness; a change in what it means to be human. Sure, the computer has taken over our brains in some sense, but it's really money, isn't it? That's the technology for communication that harnesses my survival impulses on a moment by moment basis, as though I were hunting on some savannah. I love the trace through Amazon's website to find cheap gizmos for solving my very local issues of survival in my tiny house on wheels with solar panels. I love getting pinged about the recycled from China maybe cardboard box's progress to my (borrowed) door. I love solving those little problems, even while I *hate* Amazon with a passion normally reserved for Walmart; for its destruction of local business. (I used to love conducting the hunt by car, right?)

I think, but am still not sure, that Bratton wants me to embrace these things as inevitable and harness their titanic energy to save the earth instead of destroy it. I embrace his deconstructions of romantic distinctions between "natural" and "artificial" and his call for a further Copernican turn away from our continued anthropocentrism. We still act, as he writes, as though nature were the misty backdrop for our finest performance.

What I have trouble with is that, sure humans have been terraforming ever since the advent of writing and now it's coming to a head. But we've also been engineered by the planet. I don't know which has the upper hand, I honestly don't. Have we become disposable? Are we needed now as landfill? Who's the joke on, oh captain Irony my captain? (no really, Irony is my captain, no matter what Foster Wallace said.)

If by means of agency we might re-join rather than exit cosmic-grade evolution, I'm all for it. I just don't have a clue how Bratton proposes that we do that. At the moment I'm finding more hope in the magic mushrooms documented by Michael Pollan. I'm not about to - but maybe Bratton should - try a guided trip. I don't know, but his brain seems a lot like a really powerful computer to me, and I still do believe, in a not religious way, that there is more to cosmos than what materialistic science can describe.

I'm going to keep trying to read him because it feels hopeful. Once he understands that love is a cosmic motive power that's stronger than our pitifully local agency, I might get really excited (apparently mushrooms can accomplish that - who knew???). Anyhow, job one is to get Trump out of office and restore some sanity to our basic operations. We can't begin to save the earth if we live in LaLa Land, the movie.

Roger that, Benjamin! Just remember that neurologically speaking agency starts with emotive impulse. I *care,* I really do. I just don't understand what to do.

[Felipe Romero]

La idea fuerza de fondo de este libro quizás es lo más valioso que aporta, ya que no puede evitar meterse en un par de pantanos. La idea de que hay que recuperar el concepto de planificación, de que no hay nada per se virtuoso en la cultura que la ponga por encima de la técnica, de que en verdad requerimos más planificación y más tecnología puesta en función de los desafíos que tiene que atravesar la humanidad. La crítica al “pensamiento del 68”, con excesivo énfasis en la desterritorialización y la horizontalidad, la crítica al ecologismo ingenuo y al ecofascismo encubierto que busca la desindustrialización, que hace eje solo en el decrecionismo o en los juegos del lenguaje y omite la cuestión de la planetariedad, del soporte terrestre-técnico que hace posible la vida en la tierra, que agudiza la falsa antinomia entre cultura y naturaleza. Hay ideas muy interesantes, poderosas, para movilizar a los movimientos populares a abandonar la posición de retiro o el catastrofismo (esto ya es interpretación mía). La defensa de la energía nuclear y de las tecnologías de descarbonización, el llamado a buscar en una geotecnología la superación de los desafíos climáticos y geográficos que afrontamos, por sobre la geopolítica, a la que considera muy restringida para actuar. Incluso la crítica a la democracia de medios en pos de una democracia de fines, que nos permita apropiarnos de los procesos recursivos y de automatización inherentes a las cosas, por sobre el asamblearismo o la idea de que hay que politizar ciertos procesos como la provisión de servicios públicos (lo ridículo de tener una asamblea popular para el suministro de agua).
La cuestión del giro copernicano y cómo estos procesos desatados por los humanos ponen en cuestión la posición misma de los humanos en el mundo, a la larga rehabilitan la posibilidad de recuperar la capacidad de proyectar e intervenir en el mundo, y dejar de verlo como algo dado.

[Vuk Trifkovic · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit too long for a manifesto. Too many clever puns in chapter sub-headings. Somewhat forced nods to Russia due to Strelka context. At its best when it cuts to the point.

Yet, very insightful and highly relevant. Pairs well with "After Geoengineering". Looking forward to what comes out of the program.

[Ezequiel]

Si el antropocentrismo es un problema, ¿por qué el proceso diseñado y planificado de terraformación necesario para revertir el cambio climático y sus terribles consecuencias debería ser de hechura humana? Se podría contestar que, como el calentamiento global es antropogenético, también debe serlo el actuar necesario para combatirlo. ¿Pero puede el ser humano controlar semejante infinidad de procesos? Por supuesto que no, por eso Bratton propone la automatización de los mismos, es decir, que las computadoras y máquinas, con capacidades de procesamiento de datos muy superiores a las de nosotros, sus creadores, se hagan cargo. Aún si fuera cierto, todo esto continúa siendo tremendamente antropocéntrico (antropocentrismo que el autor dice estar combatiendo). Como, por ejemplo, cuando toma la figura de la fotografía del agujero negro. El planeta entero sería el autor de esa imagen, teniendo en cuenta que fue posible sólo por una conjunción de diversos telescopios colocados en red. ¿Pero es precisa semejante sinécdoque? ¿Puede reducirse el planeta a la acción de algunos de sus elementos? ¿Y, puede dar la casualidad, que esos elementos sean siempre de hechura humana? Hay una diferencia sustancial, quizás, entre sostener que la cultura y la naturaleza son dos polos impensables el uno sin el otro, es decir, en mutua relación hípercompleja; y disolver, como hace Bratton, ambos términos hasta pretender su irrealidad.

[Ben Albertyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

“while the necessary geotechnology and geopolitics may look like one another, the necessary transformations in our artificial planetarity may be less the outcome of some big cultural shift than its cause.” ‼️

In other words,

“The precedence of the symbolic before the technical is [...] not the only way that geopolitics and geoeconomics have worked and is certainly not the only way it can or should work. The recursive intensification of the political defined as perforative symbolization can also delink ideation from effect, and public forum from actual progress.”

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente. El nuevo giro ontológico que propone Bratton, los diálogos con aceleracionistas y decrecionistas, el rol de la planificación, el derrotero de la filosofía desde el 68: todo en un libro bastante más sencillo que The Stack.

[Ismail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Typical Bratton, some brilliant insights wrapped in a dense, pedantic and too cryptic prose

[Juan Serenellini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesante, si supiera de qué estaba hablando.

[Francisco Martínez Hidalgo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un ensayo filosófico sobre la viabilidad planetaria y la crisis climática, sobre los problemas de perspectiva que nos encontramos para alcanzar esa respuesta 'viable' desde distintas ópticas (tanto de izquierda como de derecha), y sobre la necesidad de ser tanto audaces como realistas desde una perspectiva esencialmente pragmática. Su axioma principal: la geotecnología, la geoeconomía y la geopolítica son tres aspectos íntimamente vinculados y sin la primera (una nueva tecnología) no podemos aspirar/alcanzar/obtener ni una nueva economía ni una nueva política a partir de la cual alcanzar los retadores objetivos de viabilidad planetaria.

La escritura es fragmentaria, y a veces peca de romper los pensamientos en aras de una claridad discusiva primaria, lastrando la coherencia argumentativa. De forma que da la sensación de que apunta muchas ideas, pero no ahonda realmente en ninguna. Algo normal, dado que este libro nació como un manual académico de presentación del proyecto The Terraforming dirigido por Bratton en el instituto Strelka hasta 2020 y que la Guerra de Ucrania truncó. Una pena.

[juliana · Rating 3 out of 5]

the ideas he discusses are really interesting (obviously), if somewhat dense to read. some parts are really straightforward and engaging, others drag on and just spit out big words. overall it was good and very thought provoking. id like to see more about the project itself and what conclusions/new ideas were developed

[Mariano Pucci · Rating 3 out of 5]

Le doy tres estrellas porque a veces me costó seguirle el hilo de lo que plantea, cuando lea lo suficiente como para entenderlo bien le doy la cuarta (?

[notttttttth · Rating 3 out of 5]

muy denso pero varias ideas q me hacen sentido la vd super interesante
un weon ridículamente cuentiado

[Jorge Obed Guevara Tirado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ensayo fresco y muy lucido para entender los cambios en la política y tecnología de los siguientes años hasta el 2030.