Recomputing the Planet: A Cornell/Edinburgh Happening As government, media, and public fail to adequately grapple with the scale of planetary anthropogenic heating, few if any approaches have been proposed except geoengineering. We pin our hopes on technological fixes, repeating the formula that got us into this mess. Our planetary future(s) will undoubtedly be computed, in the sense of analysis but also the computing processes and infrastructures (sourcing and extraction; energy and water; waste and repair) that are increasingly driving and abetting planetary change. Whether AI, Bitcoin, or space-based communications and sensing, computing is still largely about turning carbon into power.This Cornell/Edinburgh Happening presents our playful, quixotic, speculative and counter-normative workshop outcomes that critically consider how we could introduce new ideas and concepts into our thinking around planetary and computational futures, asking how we might compute with the planet, rather than through or against it. Can tired minds and tired bodies on a tired planet find the time, space, and imagination to recompute?Thursday May 29: The Workshop 9:30-16:30This first day of our Happening involves workshops led by academic colleagues from Cornell and Edinburgh, providing grounding prompts allowing for speculative engagement with the breadth of our computational infrastructures and systems. workshop sessions will run throughout the day, asking participants to materialise the four technological systems that support us, the impact they have, and whether we can think about them in alternate ways.Alex Taylor will be asking participants to pay attention to the energy infrastructure in the city, exposing the hidden system of components and subcomponents that make energy consumption possible.Arno Verhoeven will aim to expose the planetary impact of such systems by visually translating carbon and energy data into montaged materialities that can be more meaningful, tangible and insightful.Chris Csikszentmihalyi will ask participants to de-construct relationships and construct new maps of human intention, organization, and activity, both as a cause and as a means of intervention.Steve Jackson will help colleagues to “turn lines into circles,” imagining the points of impact and intervention that could turn computation’s penchant for take-make-waste to benefit those that already have resources, into systems that acknowledge relationality, living systems, and conservation.Friday May 30: The Happening11:00-15:00Our Friday will involve co-constructing materials from the previous day’s workshop. Please do join us to help compile the workshop outcomes as we prepare for the public Happening presentation!17:00-20:00Starting at 17:00, we will reconvene at InSpace (1 Crichton Street) to share our work with the Edinburgh community (including participants in the Open Source Hardware World Summit), featuring a Recomputing the Planet roundtable from Jackson, Csikszentmihalyi, Verhoeven and Taylor, audience participation, sharing of workshop results, and (we hope) wider collective musings and (re)imaginings.To join the evening happening, please sign up to our Friday Eventbrite listing: places are limited! May 29 2025 9:30am - 8:00pm Recomputing the Planet: A Cornell/Edinburgh Happening This Cornell/Edinburgh Happening presents our playful, quixotic, speculative and counter-normative workshop outcomes that critically consider how we could introduce new ideas and concepts into our thinking around planetary and computational futures, asking how we might compute with the planet, rather than through or against it. Can tired minds and tired bodies on a tired planet find the time, space, and imagination to recompute? 1.312 - Old Medical School Teviot This article was published on Friday 30 October 2026
Recomputing the Planet: A Cornell/Edinburgh Happening As government, media, and public fail to adequately grapple with the scale of planetary anthropogenic heating, few if any approaches have been proposed except geoengineering. We pin our hopes on technological fixes, repeating the formula that got us into this mess. Our planetary future(s) will undoubtedly be computed, in the sense of analysis but also the computing processes and infrastructures (sourcing and extraction; energy and water; waste and repair) that are increasingly driving and abetting planetary change. Whether AI, Bitcoin, or space-based communications and sensing, computing is still largely about turning carbon into power.This Cornell/Edinburgh Happening presents our playful, quixotic, speculative and counter-normative workshop outcomes that critically consider how we could introduce new ideas and concepts into our thinking around planetary and computational futures, asking how we might compute with the planet, rather than through or against it. Can tired minds and tired bodies on a tired planet find the time, space, and imagination to recompute?Thursday May 29: The Workshop 9:30-16:30This first day of our Happening involves workshops led by academic colleagues from Cornell and Edinburgh, providing grounding prompts allowing for speculative engagement with the breadth of our computational infrastructures and systems. workshop sessions will run throughout the day, asking participants to materialise the four technological systems that support us, the impact they have, and whether we can think about them in alternate ways.Alex Taylor will be asking participants to pay attention to the energy infrastructure in the city, exposing the hidden system of components and subcomponents that make energy consumption possible.Arno Verhoeven will aim to expose the planetary impact of such systems by visually translating carbon and energy data into montaged materialities that can be more meaningful, tangible and insightful.Chris Csikszentmihalyi will ask participants to de-construct relationships and construct new maps of human intention, organization, and activity, both as a cause and as a means of intervention.Steve Jackson will help colleagues to “turn lines into circles,” imagining the points of impact and intervention that could turn computation’s penchant for take-make-waste to benefit those that already have resources, into systems that acknowledge relationality, living systems, and conservation.Friday May 30: The Happening11:00-15:00Our Friday will involve co-constructing materials from the previous day’s workshop. Please do join us to help compile the workshop outcomes as we prepare for the public Happening presentation!17:00-20:00Starting at 17:00, we will reconvene at InSpace (1 Crichton Street) to share our work with the Edinburgh community (including participants in the Open Source Hardware World Summit), featuring a Recomputing the Planet roundtable from Jackson, Csikszentmihalyi, Verhoeven and Taylor, audience participation, sharing of workshop results, and (we hope) wider collective musings and (re)imaginings.To join the evening happening, please sign up to our Friday Eventbrite listing: places are limited! May 29 2025 9:30am - 8:00pm Recomputing the Planet: A Cornell/Edinburgh Happening This Cornell/Edinburgh Happening presents our playful, quixotic, speculative and counter-normative workshop outcomes that critically consider how we could introduce new ideas and concepts into our thinking around planetary and computational futures, asking how we might compute with the planet, rather than through or against it. Can tired minds and tired bodies on a tired planet find the time, space, and imagination to recompute? 1.312 - Old Medical School Teviot This article was published on Friday 30 October 2026
May 29 2025 9:30am - 8:00pm Recomputing the Planet: A Cornell/Edinburgh Happening This Cornell/Edinburgh Happening presents our playful, quixotic, speculative and counter-normative workshop outcomes that critically consider how we could introduce new ideas and concepts into our thinking around planetary and computational futures, asking how we might compute with the planet, rather than through or against it. Can tired minds and tired bodies on a tired planet find the time, space, and imagination to recompute?
