Planetary Intelligence

Space Industries, Renewable Energy, and the Technosphere

Bibliographic Data

ID20158844
AuthorsAdam Fish (0000-0001-5724-635X, UNSW Sydney, corresponding author)
Year2026
Publication date2026-06-29
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheory Culture & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-2764 • E-ISSN: 1460-3616
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/02632764261449790
OpenAlexW7166531650
LanguageEN
References cited52

Responding to anthropogenic climate change requires information from and about the Earth. Astrobiologists who study the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe claim that such planetary intelligence can lead to a ‘mature technosphere’, a planet capable of regulating its energy inputs and outputs. From this perspective, Earth-observing satellites and solar microgrids are small examples of a self-aware and self-regulating technosphere. However, the industrial development of space and renewable energy infrastructures perpetuate local dispossession and extractivism. Also, ideas like a mature technosphere are normative, totalizing, teleological, and reductive in their focus on a collective planet evolving towards maturity. The local and the planetary, in this critique, are in opposition. Building from a case study of the Centre for Appropriate Technology (CfAT) – a First Nation organization with space and renewable energy assets in Australia – this article offers a different account. Here the local and the planetary are not opposed but complementary. This is argued with Yuk Hui’s concept of cosmotechnics, a theory of how technologies mediate the relationship between the local and the planetary

Focus (optics) · Planet · Renewable energy · Solar energy · Solar System · Space (punctuation) · Spacecraft · Climate Change and Geoengineering · Space exploration and regulation · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access