Machine and Sovereignty - Yuk Hui
- Victor Hugo Germano
- Jul 25
- 18 min read
Updated: Jul 25
Text originally created in Brazilian Portuguese
Yuri Gagarin, 1961, said: "The earth is blue ," the first opportunity we had to see our planet no longer from the perspective glued to the earth's surface, but from its broader perspective, as an object to be manipulated. It is as if from that moment on, we could interpret our reality as something new, interdependent, and connected. Ecology emerges in this context as an entire science of the relationship between organisms around the external world.
It was widely believed that this would be the moment for a possible planetary reflection, aware of the impact we are causing and that would help us act towards a more harmonious coexistence among all the peoples who live here. For decades, environmentalists have sounded the alarm of a bleak future, with a climate catastrophe underway due to irresponsible accelerationism that has only one outcome: leading us to the collapse of humanity .
It is on these premises that Yuk Hui, a contemporary philosopher, invites us to a new perspective on the world, to help us face a possible future beyond the current model of modernity.
This period in which we find ourselves, called the Anthropocene , marks the beginning of our understanding, not just intellectual, that technology has a decisive role in the destruction of the biosphere and the future of humanity: as it stands, there is not much longer until the planet becomes uninhabitable.
Science fiction has often become the primary reference for our future. And sometimes, our imaginations can't go much further than what we see dictated by Hollywood when we encounter what's currently being developed in entertainment.
For many people, it is difficult to distinguish reality from what they have been presented with in recent decades of cultural production.
When it comes to planetary thinking beyond our reality, perhaps the cultural production that best resembles Yuk Hui's intention is the book series Wondering Earth, by Cixin Liu, also author of the "Three-Body Problem" series. In the story, humanity must find a solution to the aging sun, which will destroy Earth within decades. They resolve to unite in a planetary Unified Government to move Earth to a new solar system using thrusters installed throughout the planet, as if it were a spaceship.
Despite its modern appeal, science fiction is not sufficient as a projection of the future, and most of the time it only delivers exaggerated dystopias, without new alternatives to imagine a promising future:
Humans will either end in an apocalyptic collapse or succumb to a greater power
Total war and Intergalactic Absolutism
Humanities Potpourri, where love is the only salvation and last resort to save yourself
This imaginary also colonizes our imagination, and reinforces the feeling that there is no way out of the catastrophe, and that we are destined for the apocalypse.
When we think about the bulk of our cultural production and what we hear from so-called futurists, perhaps the solution is technology to avoid catastrophe - only AI can solve the world's problems, even if we destroy our planet in the name of that future.
But this is just a distraction. We are trapped within the imaginations of those who monopolize power and resources to benefit the few at the expense of the rest of the world.
While tech lords invest in space travel and the search for super artificial intelligence, building luxury bunkers to survive a possible collapse of society, they are the first to shout from every corner that poverty reduction through affordable healthcare and social justice are impossible to achieve.
This monopoly of imagination, driven by the colonization, globalization, and planetarization of Earth, traps us in a homogenized reality and robs us of the possibilities of other, more imaginative, more transformative futures. We are hostages to a cosmology based on Capital and the industrial complex: the only outcome will be catastrophe.
It may seem conspiratorial, but this entire AGI project has a set of ideologies that direct a vision of a dark future, which aims to build a utopia for the few through technology, whatever the cost.
TESCREAL is the acronym coined by Timnit Gebru for the set of ideologies that shape current thinking in Silicon Valley. These ideologies include Transhumanism, Longothermism, Singularianism, Rationalism, and Effective Altruism. Although not the focus of this presentation, I suggest you learn more about them to understand why, suddenly, Silicon Valley's main goal has become building Artificial General Intelligence, colonizing Mars, and finding ways to overcome death through technological acceleration.
There is a project behind these movements, assuming that a future in which we will be dominated by intelligent machines is inevitable.
A way out through the Philosophy of Technology
It is within this context that Yuk Hui brings his perspective and the possibility of new futures to the world. Despite the hegemonic European ideological thinking, this Chinese philosopher seeks to build bridges with the past to plan and organize a new future.
In my last text, talking about Cosmotechnics , I described how Yuk Hui discusses the possibilities of coexisting with other technological worldviews, and how we can see the world through different lenses.
In his book Machine and Sovereignty, he broadens his vision, discussing a broad thought that can counter the ideological hegemony in which we live.
To think planetary, first of all, means thinking beyond the modern nation-state configuration, which has evolved beyond economic and military competition. Second, it is necessary to formulate a language of coexistence between cultures, enabling coexistence between humans and nonhumans, beyond what is found in science fiction. And third, it means developing a new framework for the territorial question, responding to the global ecological crisis and reversing the entropy process of the Anthropocene.
Yuk Hui is a Chinese computer engineer and active philosopher dedicated to studying the question of technology as an active perspective in the construction of new cosmological realities. His work is extensive, and I don't hope to cover the entirety of his analyses, but I would like to focus this talk on these two books, which describe the author's recent work. As a philosophy professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam , his work is quite influential in today's world.
He has numerous books, but I intend to stay within the context of Machine and Sovereignty , and The Question of Technology in China, an essay in cosmotechnics.
A great reference, which I also used to construct this text, was Sergio Amadeu's introductory content, in Tecnopolítica , which discusses the work of Yuk Hui . I recommend it!
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What will the world be like in 2050?
Tech entrepreneurs have pursued plans that go in opposite directions to solving the problems that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has long been warning us about: we must act now! Instead, we are exploring the possibility of becoming a multiplanetary civilization, even though the challenge is orders of magnitude greater than solving our problems here on Earth. To terraform Mars, we need sufficiently advanced technology that would be capable of terraforming Earth itself and solving climate change problems, but this does not generate the capacity for financial speculation.
The other strategy is even darker—and involves replacing humans with a new species, through AGI—Artificial General Intelligence. For this, the collapse of humanity is not just a detail; it's a step in the right direction. Transhumanists believe that through continued technological advancement, we would reach a point of transformation such that we could merge with machines and cease to exist, part of Harare's theory in Man-God.
We are living in an era of impressive technological advancements. But all this progress can come at an extremely high cost. We face three major threats:
• The impending climate collapse
• Mass unemployment caused by automation
• And, perhaps most alarming: the risk of a third world war.
We need to make a decision as a society, acknowledge the path we're taking our planet, or change the direction of civilization. The Anthropocene cannot be separated from modernity, as both are situated on the same time axis, while also widening the divide between nature and culture as a form of exploitation and evolution.
The division between culture and nature is perhaps one of the main factors that has brought us to the main dilemma of our time: how far will we go with the Anthropocene?
To get out of this dilemma, Yuk Hui suggests two related paths
- Geo-engineering, using modern technologies to repair the earth from climate change
- Cultural Pluralism and Ontological Pluralism
The degrowth movement believes the only way out is to slow the pace of technological progress. According to this view, it is the unbridled advancement of technology that has brought us to this crisis point—and slowing down would be the way to protect our planet and our societies.
But Yuk Hui offers an important critique of this proposal. He argues that degrowth, while well-intentioned, could lead us to an even more dangerous scenario of domination. For degrowth to work, it would require every country in the world to agree to follow this same path. And, let's be honest: that's extremely unlikely.
If only some countries slow down while others continue to accelerate, this would create an imbalance of power, which could result in a new wave of imperialism and technological dominance. In other words, the risk doesn't disappear—it just transforms.
For Yuk Hui, the solution isn't to halt progress, but rather to reformulate our relationship with technology – rethinking the values that guide our development, seeking more diverse, sustainable, and pluralistic paths.
We are being buried by the real dilemmas of this century:
- Acceleration X Deceleration
- Optimism vs. Pessimism
- Regulation X Deregulation
- Machines vs. Humanity
Automation and Alienation
From the automation policy of Chinese factories in the city of Guandong, we already have some idea of how the process of modernization and automation increases the alienation of the people who are replaced in the project.
China's factory automation policy in the Guandong region did not generate mass unemployment, as feared, or an increase in workers' free time, freeing them from the demands of labor. On the contrary: those who became redundant went to work for platforms, with no room for negotiation and increasingly removed from their bargaining power.
With increasingly unrealistic deadlines, workers are crammed onto platforms that reduce their work capacity and take up all the time they need to perform precarious activities.
As AI-driven automation advances, more workers are being drawn into gig economy platforms, further reducing their ability to survive through work, with their survival determined by disconnected, low-skilled tasks. Phil Jones describes this process as the end of work in his book "Work Without the Worker."
Modernity in Crisis
Yuk Hui's main argument in his work lies in his critique of modernity, centered on the universal assumptions of Western rationality, which have dominated the notion of technology, science, politics, and nature since the Enlightenment.
Yuk Hui argues that without a direct confrontation of technological globalization, and its roots in European naturalism, it will be impossible to move beyond criticism of nationalist and extremist movements, and move us beyond the current impasse.
To move beyond the question of overcoming modernity, beyond modern Western ideals, we need a new program that is open to pluralistic cosmologies and diverse rhythms to transform what we already have. It won't be by "returning to nature" that we move forward. We need to embrace multiple techniques and technologies working together for a more promising future.
Modern techné transforms everything into objects of exploration without intrinsic meaning and with a need for exploration. Like the example of the bridge in Heidegger's Gestell . When engineers gather to build a bridge over a river:
The river is just an obstacle, or a resource to be explored and transformed.
Everything is measured based on efficiency calculations, which only have value as long as they meet economic objectives.
The impact of construction does not need to be questioned, since it is possible to justify the possible financial gain that overwhelms any other perspective.
Thus, for this modernity, everything becomes a logistical problem, aimed at serving financial interests . There is no room to think and discuss different possibilities, which are erased under the pretext of impeding "progress."
This modernity in crisis has very clear characteristics:
Technological Universalism : The belief that there is a single, universal trajectory for technical and scientific development, valid for all peoples and cultures.
Separation between nature and culture : European naturalism imposed a rigid division between the natural world, objective and passive, and the human world, cultural and active.
Hegemony of instrumental rationality : Modern technology has become an instrument for the domination and control of nature, feeding both the capitalist and technocratic projects.
This vision is in crisis and has been questioned by various groups around the world, in extremist movements that are often also isolationist or a return to the past, perceived as glorious.
The Conservative Revolution is invariably a reactionary movement against technological modernization.”
The current critique of Modernity is its tendency to destroy and disrespect history and traditional ways of life—and at the root of most philosophies (Chinese, Japanese, Islamic, and African) is a growing fear of accelerated disorientation and the loss of traditions: as when ancient ways of life become mere tourist attractions for those willing to pay for the experience. Every culture needs a "home," and modernization disrupts this, leading to a nihilism fueled by Western cosmology.
Yuk Hui critiques the notion of technological singularity, which is universalist and instrumental. He challenges the perspective of the neutrality of science and technology, demonstrating in many ways how technology is the mechanism by which the dominant worldview prevails and how, along with European naturalist thought, this vision enabled colonialism and Eurocentric globalization.
Overcoming modernity is the challenge of our time, and the first two decades of the 21st century have demonstrated our inability to move beyond the problems of globalization through technology: and using Heidegger's argument—the destruction of tradition and the disappearance of any kind of "home." If we consider the question of technology, many of the back-to-roots movements of recent decades have ended in metaphorical fascisms (e.g., the Kyoto School ).
Technology has become the means of synchronizing both time and space, and it has also permeated our personal lives. Our different histories over the past 100 years are becoming synchronized by technology and moving toward an apocalyptic convergence point.
On the one hand, technological diffusion constructs a global time axis through which European modernity becomes the synchronizing metric of all civilizations; on the other, this same diffusion frees modern science and technology from being an exclusive heritage of European modernity, making the West vulnerable to global competition.
If we limit our imagination solely to the efficiency, speed, and ubiquity of technology, we will only be accelerating toward a stalemate. This is the challenge of our time.
Technological competition imposes uniformity not only on technology itself, but also on our imagination about technology. This uniformity will prevent us from thinking about possible futures.
The technological progress we are experiencing today will inevitably lead to war on a global scale, because the uniformity of mechanization is the reason for war .
For a Planetary Thinking
One of the most important aspects of the book Machine and Sovereignty is its discussion of sovereignty and its revision of the concept of sovereignty for the digital context. Yuk Hui proposes transforming forms of sovereignty for a deeply digitalized world.
Despite historically being linked to a nation-state, Sovereignty is being transferred to autonomous systems capable of conducting actions beyond the regionality of nation-states.
By forcing a homogeneous, universalist model of technology, we are generating a collapse of the ontological diversity of various realities and cultures, causing an erosion of collective and individual autonomy. Modern technology carries an implicit normativity, in digital and industrial standards, that overrides traditional sovereignty, based on a Eurocentric technical sovereignty.
Technologies eliminate questions of regionality and local borders.
Dynamic and relational concept
- Transcends the concept of sovereignty in the Western political tradition centered on the state
- Through technological mediation
- Field of negotiation between human and non-human agents, mediated by different cosmotechniques
- sovereignty emerges as an open process where technical agency challenges hierarchies and demands new post-anthropocentric ethical and political organizations
We are at the limit of modern sovereignty, shaped by Western philosophy, which organizes an exclusive power of humans over any other individual, including animals, plants and ecosystems, with anthropocentrism, generating a relationship of exploitation, objectification and destruction of non-human species.
Yuk Hui's proposal for the world is to open up the question of the future of technologies, to break with homogenization, which is the awareness/conscription of colonization, modernization, and globalization.
He proposes to do this through a matrix composed of Technodiversity, Noodiversity and Biodiversity :
Noodiversity (inspired by Teilhard de Chardin's concept of the noosphere ):
Diversity of thought, as Brazilians think differently from Japanese and Ethiopians.
Reflected in language and ways of being.
Technodiversity :
It considers that technology, from antiquity to modernity, carries ontological, cosmological, and epistemological assumptions. To avoid homogenization, it is necessary to question these assumptions, challenge them, and make room for diversity.
Biodiversity :
We share the planet with human and non-human species.
Harmed by the uniformity of technology and globalization, such as the widespread use of pesticides.
To preserve biodiversity today, it is necessary to consider these three dimensions together, which can only be maintained with the parallel development of noodiversity and technodiversity.
Yuk Hui's planetary reflection emerges as a collective movement that involves multiple cultures and traditions in constant dialogue, presenting the differential of preserving cultural singularities rather than homogenizing them.
It is a technical-philosophical movement that reflects on the global technical condition in philosophical terms and aims to create new possibilities, not just return to the past.
It seeks to avoid computational reduction, which is the tendency of modernity to reduce all thoughts and forms of life to computational models or automation logic, rethinking the links between humanity, technology and the world based on multiple traditions.
Cosmotechnics
Cosmotechnics is one of the main concepts presented by Yuk Hui in recent years, guiding his work and his collaborations with other contemporary thinkers, such as Viveiros de Castro and Amerindian Perspectivism.
Yuk Hui's concept of cosmotechnics emphasizes that technologies are not universal , but are deeply rooted in the cultural, historical, and cosmological contexts of the societies that produce them. Cosmotechnics seeks to unify the cosmic and moral orders through technical activities, in contrast to the Western technological paradigm, which often prioritizes mechanistic efficiency, universalism, and economic progress.
Hui advocates technodiversity , that is, the cultivation of diverse technological practices rooted in local epistemologies, as an alternative to the homogenizing effects of Western technology.
Culturally, our philosophical foundations are associated with the image of Prometheus and the inherent dualism between Olympus/Humans, Nature/Culture, Magic/Scientific. The author argues that this division never existed in Chinese thought, and that our life, determined by European naturalism, occurs in distinct dualisms: life/death, culture/nature, body/mind. In Chinese metaphysics, this representation is not the same: Yin-Yang and Dao-Qi (道器) never had this same dualism; it was, in fact, a Western adaptation to accommodate the process of technological modernization. Chinese thought is concerned with the continuity and correlation between entities, not with their discontinuity, such as life/death.
Yuk Hui argues that Chinese thought does not traditionally have a mechanistic view of the world—"We master nature through our ability to alter it"—but a tendency to direct everything toward infinity and harmony with the cosmos (Dao). This is a fundamentally different view of existing in this world.
And the counterpoints are countless, demonstrating new perspectives for action and different technologies in use.
The epistemology we accept is based on European naturalism —the clear opposition between Culture and Nature, stemming from European modernity that was internalized in us through colonization and globalization. Instead of naturalism, there are different concepts for understanding nature, such as totenism, analogism, animism, and perspectivism, to name a few.
These systems of thought are also capable of constructing and possess their own techniques, which were erased or forgotten in the process of globalization and colonization. This is the perspective of Cosmotechnics, which also invites a philosophy beyond European philosophy, which can only exist through technology.
Modern technology is a way of revealing the world that imposes a logic of domination and control.
An interesting example of Cosmotechnics and how it can change problem-solving can be seen in the Dujiangyan Irrigation System , which has been in operation for over 2,000 years. Following Daoist precepts and influenced by Chinese Confucianism, this ancient structure was created with non-interference in the natural flow of nature and the principles of Daoist harmony in mind, and it can still be seen in operation today.
Real-world adaptations to problems faced by communities that can be applied to our current knowledge. Like the heat challenge, they are related to ancient solutions:
Mousgoum are domed structures that manage temperature in the intensely hot northern regions of Cameroon, offering us valuable lessons about living in a world without air conditioning . Furthermore, their architecture and human-built construction connect with the community life and collective participation that characterize the region's lifestyle.
Thousands of years of learning about forest management and survival farming help us understand how to be productive and effective in food production, but especially in the sustainability of natural spaces.
Terra Preta de Índio (TPI) has only recently come to be understood as a product of human action. A dark-colored soil with a process capable of capturing nutrients in the soil for centuries, in a region with low fertility (such as the acidic soil of the Amazon)—which may be the solution to eliminating chemical fertilizers in crops.
The way different cultures deal with the cosmos, nature, and themselves influences the types of technological solutions they create in their realities. And if we can see these different worldviews as possible today, why do we still follow a colonized playbook when it comes to technology?
A new future
If we are capable of thinking about architecture, agriculture, and ecology from the perspective of locality and the diversity of worldviews, why are we increasingly less capable of thinking about a world without the individualistic premise oriented toward consumption and the exploitation of social media data?
When you open Facebook, and even if we built our own Facebook, there's no point in maintaining our own epistemological premises—what a user is, what a group, a community is. That would just mirror the same worldview.
Both books ( Digital Colonialism and Data Grab ) describe a new form of modern domination, where the control of AI and data has serious implications for autonomy, power, and influence in the world, exacerbating social exploitation today.
This movement takes place under the same European philosophical thought, expansionist and exploratory.
"Artificial intelligence serves as a convenient excuse for people who don't want to challenge inequalities and prefer to give them a "neutral" appearance while relying on marginalized people around the world to actually teach the computer what to do." Andrewism
All platforms are organized around the idea that any interaction with a computer must generate an exploitable resource, which must be exploited by its owner. While the technology market has been saying for two decades that "data is the new oil," its actions are creating a new social order, which now means extracting any and all possible data from our social infrastructure.
In our modern times, the proliferation of digital technology has challenged the 20th century mass media transmission model.
Information is transmitted through the processing of user data, transforming citizens into both users and consumers, having to adapt to new interfaces over which they have no control or possibility of interference – this has been our experience with social networks over the last 20 years.
"We live under the dictatorship of social media; how can we believe that on Facebook or Twitter we will find democracy? That's impossible." Yuk Hui
Our understanding of democracy is limited by the means by which we achieve it, and in doing so, we tend to forget that democracy in the 21st century can only be achieved through the democratization of technology, which has been undermined by industrial capitalism and consumerism.
Yuk Hui doesn't propose how we should discuss democracy amid digital platforms: He wants us to fundamentally think about what kind of democracy we need to rebuild the world through technology. Democracy is fundamentally altered by technology.
It's easy these days to believe that we will eventually be replaced by intelligent, autonomous systems capable of competing in all aspects of humankind.
But the more we learn about artificial intelligence, the more we understand that new centers of power are being created, capable of creating and normalizing how all our data is accessed, expropriating our own capacity for technological self-determination.
In this new digital reality, we are increasingly losing the ability to decide whether to be agents of our own individual organization in the digital world.
Technological centralization in a few organizations and states causes a dissolution of the autonomy of our regions: it is as if the control of digital infrastructure had become the main global power, giving companies a power similar to that of a sovereign state, in a clear reference to the work of Yanis Varoufakis , of technofeudalism .
This corporate centralization makes power invisible, distant from the affected population, hidden in data centers, cabling, and background systems.
The Nomos of the Digital Age
Yuk Hui will discuss the transformations of sovereignty in the context of digitalization and their philosophical implications in the contemporary world.
He revisits Carl Schmitt's concept of the "Nomos of the Earth," which describes the spatial and legal order that shapes international law from a European perspective and has established itself as the global perspective of international relations. This "nomos" goes beyond physical, regional diffusion: it determines the structuring of an order of appropriation in the world.
The digital field is the global space completely transformed by digital infrastructures, organizing a new global order, not only through regional demarcation, but through the collection and capture of data flows and control through communication protocols and standards.
For Yuk Hui, this space is not the electronic version of state space. It is the reconstitution of another model of sovereignty in functional terms. Here, platforms, algorithms, and networks articulate power from their own perspective.
With technological centralization through large corporations, the autonomy of regions is dissolved.
In this context, being Sovereign in this new digital world means having agency over this technological infrastructure that determines the conditions of communication, decision-making, and imagination.
Resisting the colonizing and dominating technological project depends on building our own systems, technical alternatives that enable self-determination. It demands critical thinking about the relationship between cultures and technology, at its epistemological depth.
Yuk Hui demands the understanding that technology is a terrain of political and ontological dispute - Sergio Amadeu da Silveira
Discussing postmodern sovereignty means deciding on one's own technological infrastructure, independent of the universalist impositions of large corporations.
Brazil has a very clear vision of its own sovereignty and locality , and there are countless examples of technodiversity in art and technology:
- Techno brega and Mangue beat
- Gambiarra and the perspective on intellectual property
- The Maker Scene in the gaming world ( Lupi Console )
Technodiversity looks at the episteme: the sensible conditions in which knowledge is produced.
How can we articulate Amazonian technology? How can we understand Amazonian cosmology as well as we understand the Greek pantheon? These are questions already known but little discussed beyond academia.
Art and philosophy can contribute to the development of alternative futures, where ethical and ecological relationships are not dissociated from technology, less instrumental and more harmonious. Yuk Hui offers a genuine critique of the notion of technological singularity, as a Western myth of linear progress, placing much greater emphasis on technical pluralism, as well as biodiversity.
There is a future beyond absolutist accelerationism, but we need to build it together. Yuk Hui, as a philosopher, doesn't provide answers, but he points to a direction that we must choose.
If you've read this far, thank you.
This text is a reflection of the last few months of study and work.
This text is the transcript of my presentation for Hacktown 2025.
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