Benjamin H. Bratton
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029575
- eISBN:
- 9780262330183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029575.003.0011
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
The concluding chapter, The Black Stack, draws out the tangled implications of The Stack as a challenge to design and to geopolitical thought, one to be achieved and/or resisted. The figure of “The ...
More
The concluding chapter, The Black Stack, draws out the tangled implications of The Stack as a challenge to design and to geopolitical thought, one to be achieved and/or resisted. The figure of “The Black Stack” stands for the Stack-to-come that we know will arrive but which we cannot possibly recognize in advance. As a global platform, The Stack may represent an epochal closure of the planet under an absolutist regime of algorithmic capital, and/or the fragility of its totality may also bring radical breaks, as its universalism produces unexpected new cosmopolitan positions. What may at first appear as the apotheosis of The Stack’s worst tendencies may, in the long run, prove to be the basis of a far-better geopolitics. Design must be attentive to the role that these reversals play in how new technologies produce new accidents, and how accidents in turn produce new technologies.Less
The concluding chapter, The Black Stack, draws out the tangled implications of The Stack as a challenge to design and to geopolitical thought, one to be achieved and/or resisted. The figure of “The Black Stack” stands for the Stack-to-come that we know will arrive but which we cannot possibly recognize in advance. As a global platform, The Stack may represent an epochal closure of the planet under an absolutist regime of algorithmic capital, and/or the fragility of its totality may also bring radical breaks, as its universalism produces unexpected new cosmopolitan positions. What may at first appear as the apotheosis of The Stack’s worst tendencies may, in the long run, prove to be the basis of a far-better geopolitics. Design must be attentive to the role that these reversals play in how new technologies produce new accidents, and how accidents in turn produce new technologies.
Benjamin H. Bratton
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029575
- eISBN:
- 9780262330183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029575.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This introductory chapter discusses a new model of geopolitics that is better suited to understanding, designing and governing planetary-scale computation, here understood as both as a calculative ...
More
This introductory chapter discusses a new model of geopolitics that is better suited to understanding, designing and governing planetary-scale computation, here understood as both as a calculative process and as global infrastructure. It argues that contemporary computing technologies can be understood not as separate and autonomous but rather as forming into a coherent whole, an accidental megastructure called “The Stack.” Modelling these technologies as a whole allows for both a more comprehensive perspective and the ability to re-design them as an integrated platform. To formulate the “design brief” for that project, as this book does, requires a perspective that blends philosophical, geopolitical and technological understandings and methods.Less
This introductory chapter discusses a new model of geopolitics that is better suited to understanding, designing and governing planetary-scale computation, here understood as both as a calculative process and as global infrastructure. It argues that contemporary computing technologies can be understood not as separate and autonomous but rather as forming into a coherent whole, an accidental megastructure called “The Stack.” Modelling these technologies as a whole allows for both a more comprehensive perspective and the ability to re-design them as an integrated platform. To formulate the “design brief” for that project, as this book does, requires a perspective that blends philosophical, geopolitical and technological understandings and methods.
