Syntropic Information Networks for a Thriving Planetary Ecology

The Earth is currently undergoing a process by which a qualitatively new layer of reflexivity and responsiveness is emerging, driven by the development of synthetic computational networks. While the planet is already self-reflexive and self-regulating, synthetic computation confers upon it a capacity to model, anticipate, and intervene in its own conditions at scales, speeds, and resolutions never before possible.

At the same time, we are reckoning with unprecedented social and ecological breakdown driven by the logics of late-stage Capitalism. These logics are expressed through the dominant cultures’ systems and relationships to land, human and non-human beings, energy, as well as our digital territories.

The latter results in polluted information ecologies and, consequently, a failure to coordinate at both local and planetary scales. In response to this, the overarching goal of this project is to create enabling infrastructure—social, cultural, and technical—for a thriving epistemic commons.

‍We are at a crossroads, however. As synthetic computational networks expand and as AI becomes increasingly capable and integrated into planetary life, we are compelled to ask: will these synthetic intelligences take the form of a small number of monolithic AGIs that further concentrate corporate and/or state power, or will this latent expression of the planetary be distributed, relational and multi-perspectival?

As proponents of the latter, our investigations are aimed at realising patterns and protocols for weaving human and non-human agents into cooperative networks capable of solving both local and trans-local challenges. This is in part informed by our understanding of intelligence as a relational phenomenon—emerging out of dynamic interactions between agents and technologies (e.g. DNA, language, transistors)—rather than an isolated attribute exhibited by singular agents (e.g humans). In the words of Bayo Akomolafe, “AI and us are all part of the frothing foliage of emergence that does not allocate intelligence in a fixed manner.”

As a first experiment toward this goal, In Vivo attempts to realise a relational epistemics by enabling organisations & communities to share knowledge repositories across trusted, sovereign networks, and allowing intelligent agents to traverse them to reveal emergent insights that contribute to greater network integration and syntropy.