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The Planetary Test-bed: Notes to a Theory of Technospheric Governance
Prof Orit Halpern will present her upcoming article that develops the concept of “technospheric governance” to analyze how contemporary AI platforms for climate modeling, military operations, urban planning, and logistics constitute an emerging episteme with significant implications for democratic politics. Drawing on case studies of digital twinning initiatives—including the European Union’s Destination Earth, NVIDIA’s Earth-2, and Palantir’s enterprise platforms—the article traces four interrelated transformations.
- An epistemic shift from causal, explanatory models to non-causal “generative” inference reorganizes what counts as knowledge and who qualifies as expert.
- A temporal displacement inverts the traditional sequence of deliberation and deployment, with technologies assessed through continuous “learning” rather than prior democratic debate.
- The infrastructuralization of experiment inaugurates new economies of hyperproduction that are transforming platform economies.
- The planetary-scale experimentation produces not unified global governance but fragmented data spaces serving competing political-economic blocs.
By situating these developments within a genealogy extending from Cold War systems modeling to contemporary AI infrastructures, the article argues that experimentation itself has become infrastructuralized, demanding urgent attention to the politics of technological testing.
DATE | Monday, 02 March 2026
TIME | 13H00 – 14H00
VENUE | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, UCT Upper Campus.
Please RSVP to africancentreforcities@uct.ac.za