Benjamin H Bratton - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Videos by Benjamin H Bratton

Over the past twenty years, we have witnessed the Internet's impressive, and sometimes scary, com... more Over the past twenty years, we have witnessed the Internet's impressive, and sometimes scary, coming of age. What began as an open platform for connectivity, instant communication, and unrestricted access to information has mutated into a space filled with false information, data miners, targeted advertising, and open surveillance. While we cannot imagine our lives without the Internet, it is hard to think of it with the same optimism it was looked at in the late 1990s. In this panel, a group of artists and thinkers whose work revolves around notions of surveillance and technology will discuss the state of the Internet, and what its future could be.

57 views

Books by Benjamin H Bratton

The Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-Pandemic World (Verso Press), 2021

COVID-19 exposed the pre-existing conditions of the current global crisis. Many Western states fa... more COVID-19 exposed the pre-existing conditions of the current global crisis. Many Western states failed to protect their populations, while others were able to suppress the virus only with sweeping social restrictions. In contrast, many Asian countries were able to make much more precise interventions. Everywhere, lockdown transformed everyday life, introducing an epidemiological view of society based on sensing, modeling, and filtering. What lessons are to be learned?

The Revenge of the Real envisions a new positive biopolitics that recognizes that governance is literally a matter of life and death. We are grappling with multiple interconnected dilemmas—climate change, pandemics, the tensions between the individual and society—all of which have to be addressed on a planetary scale. Even when separated, we are still enmeshed. Can the world govern itself differently? What models and philosophies are needed? Bratton argues that instead of thinking of biotechnologies as something imposed on society, we must see them as essential to a politics of infrastructure, knowledge, and direct intervention. In this way, we can build a society based on a new rationality of inclusion, care, and prevention.

The future of politics after the pandemic "Bratton is one of our best global systems thinkers, adding to theory and philosophy a sophisticated understanding of infrastructures, design, AI, and governance. In the wake of the pandemic, he has given us a swi and propulsive reorientation to the situation we find ourselves in." Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future

The Terraforming (Strelka Press), 2019

The Terraforming is the comprehensive project to fundamentally transform Earth's cities, technolo... more 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.

Strelka Press. 2019

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (MIT Press), 2015

A comprehensive political and design theory of planetary-scale computation proposing that The Sta... more A comprehensive political and design theory of planetary-scale computation proposing that The Stack—an accidental megastructure—is both a technological apparatus and a model for a new geopolitical architecture.
What has planetary-scale computation done to our geopolitical realities? It takes different forms at different scales—from energy and mineral sourcing and subterranean cloud infrastructure to urban software and massive universal addressing systems; from interfaces drawn by the augmentation of the hand and eye to users identified by self—quantification and the arrival of legions of sensors, algorithms, and robots. Together, how do these distort and deform modern political geographies and produce new territories in their own image?

In The Stack, Benjamin Bratton proposes that these 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.

In an account that is both theoretical and technical, drawing on political philosophy, architectural theory, and software studies, Bratton explores six layers of The Stack: Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, User. Each is mapped on its own terms and understood as a component within the larger whole built from hard and soft systems intermingling—not only computational forms but also social, human, and physical forces. This model, informed by the logic of the multilayered structure of protocol “stacks,” in which network technologies operate within a modular and vertical order, offers a comprehensive image of our emerging infrastructure and a platform for its ongoing reinvention.

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.

Dispute Plan to Prevent Future Luxury Constitution published by e-flux and Sternberg Press, 2015

Equal parts Borges, Burroughs, Baudrillard, and Black Ops, Dispute Plan to Prevent Future Luxury ... more Equal parts Borges, Burroughs, Baudrillard, and Black Ops, Dispute Plan to Prevent Future Luxury Constitution charts a treacherous landscape filled with paranoid master plans, failed schemes, and dubious histories.
Benjamin H. Bratton's kaleidoscopic theory-fiction links the utopian fantasies of political violence with the equally utopian programs of security and control. Both rely on all manner of doubles, models, gimmicks, ruses, prototypes, and shock-and-awe campaigns to realize their propagandas of the deed, threat, and image. Blurring reality and delusion, they collaborate on a literally psychotic politics of architecture.

The cast of characters in this ensemble drama of righteous desperation and tactical trickery shuttle between fact and speculation, action and script, flesh and symbol, death and philosophy: insect urbanists, seditious masquerades, epistolary ideologues, distant dissimulations, carnivorous installations, forgotten footage, branded revolts, imploding skyscrapers, sentimental memorials, ad-hoc bunkers, sacred hijackings, vampire safe-houses, suburban enclaves, big-time proposals, ambient security protocols, disputed borders-of-convenience, empty research campuses, and robotic surgery.

In this mosaic we glimpse a future city built with designed violence and the violence of design. As one ratifies the other, the exception becomes the ruler.

e-flux journal Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle

The New Normal (Strelka Press), 2017

What is the new normal? Something has shifted, it seems. We are making new worlds faster than we ... more What is the new normal? Something has shifted, it seems. We are making new worlds faster than we can keep track of them, and the pace is unlikely to slow. If our technologies have advanced beyond our ability to conceptualize their implications, such gaps can be perilous. In response, one impulse is to pull the emergency brake and to try put all the genies back in all the bottles. This is ill-advised (and hopeless). Better instead to invest in emergence, in contingency: to map the new normal for what it is, and to shape it toward what it should be.
Part manifesto and part syllabus, this essay by design theorist, Benjamin H. Bratton describes his vision for how design should approach and intervene in the new normal and what kinds of cities we should be planning for now.
Bratton is Programme Director of The Strelka Institute of Architecture, Media and Design in Moscow, a resilient beacon of generous futurism in a time and place at the centre of contemporary twists and turns. The essay outlines The New Normal post-graduate think-tank at Strelka, which brings together architects, programmers, interaction designers, game designers, artists, philosophers, filmmakers, novelists, economists, and 'free-range’ computer scientists. They study with Keller Easterling, Lev Manovich, Metahaven (Vinca Kruk and Daniel Van Der Velden), Casey Reas, Liam Young, and many others.

Papers by Benjamin H Bratton

The Terraforming

RIBA Publishing eBooks, May 30, 2022

Accounting for Pervasive Computing

Afterimage

Dans la même collection (publiée sous le nom ELLUG jusqu'en 2016) Écologie de l'attention et arch... more Dans la même collection (publiée sous le nom ELLUG jusqu'en 2016) Écologie de l'attention et archéologie des media Sous la direction de Yves Citton et Estelle Doudet, 2019. Qu'est-ce que l'archéologie des média ? Jussi Parrika, traduction de Christophe Degoutin, 2018. Nanomonde et Nouveau Monde Quelques métaphores clés sur les nanotechnologies aux États-Unis Marie-Hélène Fries, 2016. Lire et penser en milieux numériques. Attention, récits, technogenèse N. Katherine Hayles, traduction de Christophe Degoutin, 2016. Technologies de l'enchantement. Pour une histoire multidisciplinaire de l'illusion Sous la direction d'Angela Braito et Yves Citton, 2014. Des « passeurs » entre science, histoire et littérature Contribution à l'étude de la construction des savoirs (1750-1840) Sous la direction de Gilles Bertrand et Alain Guyot, 2011. Machines à écrire. Littérature et technologies du xix e au xxi e siècle Isabelle Krzywkowski, 2010.

On Anthropolysis

Superhumanity

Praktyka Teoretyczna, 2021

Kiedy Hegel usiłował powiązać historię świata z historią europejskich tożsamości narodowych, jego... more Kiedy Hegel usiłował powiązać historię świata z historią europejskich tożsamości narodowych, jego słuchacze zakładali, że miarą wieku ziemi są tysiąclecia (103 lub 104 lat), a nie eony (109 lat). Fabrykacja pamięci narodowej miała dotyczyć podobnego horyzontu czasowego co dzieje planety, a obydwa procesy postrzegano jako wzajemnie zbieżne naturalne cykle. I choć paleogenetyka i geologia wyraźnie temu przeczą, iluzja współmierności chronologii gatunkowej i planetarnej przyniosła opłakane skutki, które, jak na ironię, doprowadziły do jej urzeczywistnienia. Ową metakonsekwencją jest antropocen, epoka w której lokalna historia gospodarcza faktycznie zaważyła na obliczu planety, kształtując je na swój obraz i podobieństwo. Chronologiczne zestrojenie człowieka i planety okazało się zatem samospełniającym się przesądem. Czym wobec tego różnią się, a w czym są sobie podobni ánthrōpos antropogenezy i ánthrōpos antropocenu? Czy odpowiadają sobie nawzajem? Czy pojawienie się człowieka musi bez...

Le nomos du Cloud

Le Stack, 2019

Mais les forces et les puissances qui font l’histoire n’attendent pas la science. Christophe Colo... more Mais les forces et les puissances qui font l’histoire n’attendent pas la science. Christophe Colomb a-t-il attendu Copernic ? Chaque fois qu’une nouvelle poussée de forces historiques, qu’une explosion d’énergies nouvelles fait entrer de nouveaux pays et de nouvelles mers dans le champ de la conscience collective, les espaces de l’existence historique se transforment également. De nouveaux critères apparaissent alors, de nouvelles dimensions de l’activité politique historiquement constructive..

The Matter of/with Skin

Volume!, 2015

To reside in one’s own skin may be a condition to which one is condemned, even as one aspires to ... more To reside in one’s own skin may be a condition to which one is condemned, even as one aspires to be at home there. When your skin is crawling (also called formication - with an ‘m’), it may be trying to tell you something (its tone shifting pitch just so). If so, then is the wish to jump out of your own skin a desire that is fulfilled by being flayed (skinned alive)?1 No, not if we are attentive to all of our other organic and inorganic skins. Skin is obviously primordial shelter, forming in the womb (itself even more initial skin) that keeps the world outside and the body-with-organs inside of itself. I don’t mean to naturalize skin as somber and mystical dwelling (allegorized in concentric and atmospheric spheres, for example). I do, however, mean to link animal skin to architectural skin, but by drawing them as actually comparable and communicative materials. What we know about how they work and what we know about how they can be designed can be, within limits, also applied from to the other. I discuss two implications (of many) of drawing both ‘natural’ and ‘synthetic’ kinds of skins/shelters into a common genre of matter: (1.) that for design, animal skin is less a natural reference that a reconfigurable sensate textile, and (2.) that the care and empathy we feel with/for the touch of flesh should be extended not matter more generally. The former means to see one’s own skin as matter, and so included in the culinary project of programmability, and the latter means to see the surfaces of things as a dermal membrane of an entity with which we share responsibilities.

A conversation with: Benjamin H. Bratton

There is a difference between spaces that are intangible or virtual, and the inhabitation and the... more There is a difference between spaces that are intangible or virtual, and the inhabitation and the remoteness that you are talking about. There are remote controls - you've got a device in your hand that affects some kind of change on something in the environment. There's a way in which we see these things as somehow less physical or material than other kinds of mechanical processes because we can't see the electromagnetic spectrum. We can't see the wavelengths, we can't hold them, we can't taste them. There's a builtin limitation to human senses. The human anatomy as a sensory apparatus - taste and touch and scent and sight - is incomplete. It's just not capable of sensing all of these kinds of physical realities. Yet we've learned how to design with the electromagnetic spectrum, just as carefully as we may have designed with glass, steel or wood. We have invented other tools and technologies that can sense those things for us. They, in a way, kin...

The New Normative interview

Volume!, 2017

Parametricist architecture would be a good idea

AI urbanism: a design framework for governance, program, and platform cognition

AI & SOCIETY, 2021

Historically, the dynamic between philosophy of artificial intelligence and its practical applica... more Historically, the dynamic between philosophy of artificial intelligence and its practical application has been essential for the development of both, and thus the encounter between theory of AI and architectural/urban theory should be a site of considerable productivity. However, in many ways, it is not. This is due to two primary factors, one arising from each side of this encounter. First, legacies of overly-anthropomorphic models of AI permeate design discourses, where issues of how well AI can be constrained to social issues of philosophy of mind exclude more foundational and cross-cultural questions about artificial intelligence as material process in the physical world that could inform new philosophical insights. Concurrently, the mobilization of investment in “Smart Cities” discourses dominates the space of application of AI at urban scale in ways that prematurely fixes solutions in the skeuomorphic image of architectural and urban conventions. To break this impasse, we held a series of think-tanks, workshops, and design charettes that brought together leading figures in philosophy of artificial intelligence, urban design, and commercial AI platforms. The goal was to re-think from first principles how alternative philosophical models of AI as a distributed, discontinuous, landscape-scale technology in a direct encounter with the applications in contexts of ecological sensing, automation’s impact on urban form, and issues of algorithmic governance. The design brief for this research establishes a generative framework for conceiving how embedded machine sensing and intelligence is already changing urban form (but unrecognized) and could change it in the future (based on more appropriate design projections). The framework focuses on issues of urban zoning and architectural programming, data modeling and governance, platform cognition and design, and how these inform shifts in dynamics of public and private institutions.

Le Stack, 2019

Currently, there is little understanding about how different types of software ecosystems must be... more Currently, there is little understanding about how different types of software ecosystems must be governed for the preservation and improvement of ecosystem health. This paper explores the definition of software ecosystems and provides a classification model for software ecosystems. The classification model is applied to 19 cases previously explored in software ecosystem literature, and governance tools are observed for the different types of ecosystems. The governance tools are summarized in a governance model that, when used correctly, serves ecosystem coordinators in determining strategies to maintain and ultimately improve software ecosystem health.

Earth Layer

The Stack, 2016