Antikythera

Antikythera

Antikythera

Antikythera

Antikythera

Antikythera is a philosophy of technology think tank reorienting planetary computation as a philosophical, technological, and geopolitical force. The core premise of the program is that technology today has outpaced theory, and we need a philosophy that catches up to the present.

Directed by philosopher of technology, Benjamin Bratton, and incubated by the Berggruen Institute, Antikythera produces new concepts and propositional thought-experiments through design studios, salons, productions and publications. The program’s research pivots around five core research themes – Planetary Computation, Synthetic Intelligence, Recursive Simulation, Hemispherical Stacks, and Planetary Sapience.

Antikythera takes its name from the Antikythera mechanism, among the earliest known computers, dated to about 200 BC. Discovered at the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901, the mechanism combined calculation, orientation, and cosmology, demonstrating computation’s applications for navigation, regulation, and re-organization. Antikythera builds on this legacy of a computer as a compass, investigating how computational technologies disclose and accelerate conditions of planetary intelligence.

All too often the response to complex challenges is to superimpose inherited ideas about ethics, scale, governance, and meaning onto technologies that generate a different framework altogether. A proper response to the condition of planetary computation means repositioning artificiality in the first instance, taking seriously the biogeochemical compositions of the materiality of the cloud and evolution of technologies as strategies for actualization.

Antikythera mobilizes an extensive network of researchers to think through these implications through design studios, salons, and long-term research initiatives that investigate new paradigms and concepts through provocations and propositional thought-experiments. These projects advance approaches for re-routing the megastructures inaugurated by anthropogenic human accidents into the intentional infrastructures required for a viable planetarity. In 2025, Antikythera will launch a new book series and multimedia journal with MIT Press (coming spring 2025).

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