Computing the Planet: Images and Imaginaries

Presented by Associate Professor Michael Richardson, University of New South Wales, Sydney.

All are welcome.

Earth is now treated as a computable object in a host of domains. In industry, this manifests in initiatives like Microsoft’s Planetary Computer or Nvidia’s Earth-2. In the military and government, there are digital twins of natural environments such as the European Commission’s Destination Earth and Digital Twin of the Ocean, as well as missile detection systems, and battlespace simulations. In earth systems and climate sciences, there are General Circulation and Coupled Models, among other well-established frameworks. This talk examines images and imaginaries in efforts to compute Earth. What does it mean to say that the planet is computable? What sort of object is a computable planet? And what is at stake in the competing paradigms playing in the contemporary moment?

Speaker Bio: Michael Richardson is a writer, researcher, and teacher living and working on Gadigal and Bidjigal country in Sydney, Australia. He is an Associate Professor in Media and Culure at UNSW, where he co-directs the Media Futures Hub, an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence on Automated Decision-Making + Society, and a Visiting Fellow with3es York University’s Institute for Technoscience + Society. His research examines technology, power, witnessing, trauma, and affect in contexts of war, security, and surveillance. His latest book is Nonhuman Witnessing: War, Data, and Ecology after the End of the World (Duke University Press, 2024).

Socials: @richardsonma.bsky.social

This event is hosted by the Starling Centre for Just Technologies and Just Societies.