Metabolic Rift: Liebig, Guano, and Soil Depletion

Kate Crawford’s Long Now Talk traces an historical arc from Renaissance perspective to AI image models, illustrating how shifts in representational power shape empires, economies—even our shared sense of reality. During the talk, Crawford gives a tour through her detailed artwork Calculating Empires. Through examples ranging from Liebig’s critique of agriculture “robbing” soil nutrients, to Faraday’s latex insulation that devastated rubber forests, Crawford shows how technologies have long created “metabolic rifts”: systems that extract more than they regenerate.  Don't miss the closing Q&A, where host Kevin Kelly asks Crawford what responsible, non-extractive AI might look like.