Planetary Computation

Planetary computation is Yuk Hui's term for the third and current phase of monotechnologism—the phase in which digital infrastructure has become the medium through which virtually all human activity is conducted. Unlike the colonial phase (which imposed through military force) or the Cold War phase (which imposed through economic competition), planetary computation imposes through infrastructure itself. The internet, cloud platforms, AI systems—all designed by institutions operating within Western cosmotechnics, encoding assumptions at every layer from data-center architecture to API design to algorithmic optimization. When the student in Lagos opens a laptop, every available tool has been shaped by these assumptions. The student is not choosing Western cosmotechnics—the student is operating within a global infrastructure that has already made the choice. The imposition is not felt as coercion but as inevitability, as reality, as the way things simply are. The lock-in is complete precisely when it stops feeling like lock-in and starts feeling like the natural order of things.