Planetary scale systems, from the Kyoto Protocol to ISO standards to cloud computing, are growing vastly in size and number. The American conglomerate Alphabet invests in every sector imaginable, acquiring one company every week. As this algorithmic capitalism advances, these megastructures will own and control more layers within infrastructure ‘stacks’, which are largely invisible but link us all in global neural networks.
Often, we only become aware of these oligopolies when something goes wrong. We only debate or discuss what they mean once they have already become monoliths.
Planetary Scale_ was a series of workshops 2015-16, facilitated by Sarah Gold (IF), Ola Möller (MethodKit), Carina Namih and Ben Vickers (Serpentine Galleries). These workshops was hosted around the world to explore, anticipate and debate what planetary scale systems mean for our future.