The Planetary Skin Institute ’ s tagline, “ You can ’ t monitor what you can ’ t measure, ” is a good motto for the big data society, should it ever be clarified at some point in the process who is and isn ’ t “ you. ” As Planetary Skin describes its plans, “ you ” are likely drawn from among the usual stakeholders of technocrats, academics, nongovernmental organizations, consultants, and so on. <sup>45</sup> The likely effect of this initiative, however, were it or something like it ever fully realized, would not merely extend or consolidate the arrangement of zero-sum governance as we currently know it, but would inevitably introduce other compound subjects and objects, some human and some not, and elevate them from object to subject in uncertain ways. A benefit of these initiatives would not only be the quantification of a status quo, but ultimately to break ground for alternative norms and constitute (or at least support) another medium of governance over the biosystems that it ( “ we ” ) can measure and monitor. “ Planetary Skin, ” or some similar descendant platform might connect with existing governmental and nongovernmental biopolitical authorities, supporting, augmenting, superseding them and, through ecumenical platform interoperability, would ultimately become itself a governing authority. Through neutral simulation-visualization of ground-level patterns on which any large-scale carbon trading markets would depend, a platform like this could quantify the carbon stocks that might be traded or sequestered, as well as validate treaty verifications or violations. This would help turn matter into money by providing a kind of financial transparency — in this case, of financialized molecules. Like many other platform projects emblematic of the Stack ’ s incorporation of the Earth as a layer, it would convene political authority not by starting from scratch, but by remeasuring, reframing, and reinstrumentalizing some already existing geographic whole. They generate comprehensive quantifications of processes and patterns that, to the extent that they operate as intended, also take on the effective force of law within an expanded ecopolitical jurisdiction even if their claims are not ratified by states (Westphalian or post-Westphalian) to do so. Furthermore, as these metatechnologies of ecological observation have become necessary to even perceive the contours of ecological risk, they also enter directly into the programmatic center of planetary governance as such. This is not Internationalism, however. The force of platforms is different, for example, from the “ ecoglobalism ” feared by conspiratorial isolationists, all spittle-lipped over “ Agenda 21 ” (the conspiracy theory that has the United Nations introducing Green totalitarianism through the Trojan horse of bicycle lanes) in that there is, according to design at least, no central commanding body outside the architecture of the platform itself. <sup>46</sup> Such platforms, in principle, may even work, for better or worse, to undermine forms of political centralization, even those that they themselves do not or cannot calculate or articulate. That said, nothing is certain. A transference of sovereignty from the declared self-interest of whoever counts as a citizen into the calculation of carbon and energy also links one inhale and another exhale, even across continents, and in doing so guarantees at the very least indecipherable accounting paradoxes.
Earth Layer
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