ABSTRACT
Far from the world having de-globalized at some point in the past twenty years, as diverse skeptics continue to insist, it is now more interconnected than ever, and more conscious of the promise and threat in that condition. If the spread of the coronavirus tells us nothing else, it tells us that and, prospectively, a whole lot more. The career of the virus blurs the distinction between human and non-human agency, between subject and object, in the making of what are called “indifferent globalities.” We also know a lot about the world-making power of digital networks and platforms, including that they predicate quite different kinds of organization and thus of globality. What concerns me here is our entanglement with smart machines and their capacity to at least augment, if not supersede, human agency by creating “sociotechnical architectures” and perhaps algorithmic globalizations. These are huge categories. The chapter explores the extent to which we are attuned to the gamut of globalizing processes and the myriad possibilities for global constitution.
