WHAT ON EARTH.? Big Tech, AI and the Politics of the Planet's Future

How did technology come to occupy the symbolic space of nature? What happens when data centres, energy grids, mines, cables and algorithms become part of the infrastructure of our planet? And who gets to decide what kind of future these technologies create?

Join us on October 29th for the first iteration of the series What On Earth..? Big Tech, AI and the Politics of the Planet’s Future. A collaboration between Spore Initiative and Tactical Tech bringing together thinkers and practitioners from different fields to examine problems rooted in current technocentric ideologies, particularly around AI, and connect them to climate and environmental issues.

The series opens with "Technology as Nature", a panel discussion on what happens when technology comes to occupy the symbolic space of the natural world, while nature itself is increasingly treated as infrastructure to be measured, modeled and managed.

Before technology reorganises institutions, it reorganises imagination. Tech sells itself through the language of nature (“the cloud,” cybernetic meadows) and of humanity (AI that “reasons,” “learns,” “hallucinates”).

The panel discussion considers this question in relation to the current narrative moment, marked by growing concerns about the concentration of power in the hands of a small technological elite, and the corporate push for AI. At the same time, environmental narratives are shifting away from climate and nature and towards energy security and resource management.

Bringing together thinkers and practitioners from different fields, we trace the roots of these stories and examine what they obscure, as well as their influence on the technologies we build and the environmental futures we imagine.

Speakers: José-Carlos Mariategui, Noortje Marres und Annette Zimmermann.

Hosted by Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski.