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The Stack, 10th anniversary edition with new preface by the author

On Software and Sovereignty

Part of Software Studies

Author Benjamin H. Bratton

Paperback

$35.00 US

| $48.00 CAN

The MIT Press

On sale Feb 03, 2026 | 532 Pages | 9780262553919

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Why The Stack—an accidental megastructure—is both a technological apparatus and the geopolitical model of our times.

A tenth anniversary edition of the comprehensive political philosophy of planetary-scale computation, with a new preface from the author.

What has planetary-scale computation done to our geopolitical realities? It takes different forms at different scales—from energy and mineral sourcing and subterranean cloud infrastructure to urban software and massive universal addressing systems; from interfaces drawn by the augmentation of the hand and eye to users identified by self-quantification and the arrival of legions of sensors, algorithms, and robots. Together, how do these distort and deform modern political geographies and produce new territories in their own image? In an account that is both theoretical and technical, drawing on political philosophy, design theory, and computer science, Bratton explores six layers of The Stack: Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, User.

ENDORSEMENTS

“In The Stack, Benjamin Bratton shows, with brilliant insight and imagination, what the world is coming to look like in an era of planetary-scale computing. He cuts through many received ideas about technology, globalization, and so forth and presents a fresh vision of the architecture of the world.”
—McKenzie Wark, author of Molecular Red

“Endlessly thought-provoking, this amazing book is both cognitive mapping and a projective geometry of the new dimensions of technological reality we live in.”
—Kim Stanley Robinson, author of 2312

“The Stack is a major achievement. It is more than just philosophy of technology, software studies, or design criticism; it analyzes and guides our thinking in a baffling Anthropocenic era when computation works at the planetary scale and constitutes governance.”
—Natalie Jeremijenko, Associate Professor of Art, Computer Science, and Environmental Studies, New York University

“The Stack imagines a design brief for the whole world while floating or falling through all the ever-efflorescent plasmas and atmospheres of digital information.”
—Keller Easterling, Professor, Yale School of Architecture; author of Extrastatecraft

Benjamin H. Bratton is Professor of Philosophy of Technology and Speculative Design at University of California, San Diego. He is also Director of Antikythera, a think-tank, journal, and book series exploring the future of planetary computation.

Benjamin H. Bratton View titles by Benjamin H. Bratton

Series Foreword
Acknowledgments
Credits
The Stack Decade: Preface to the Tenth Anniversary Edition
Preface for the First Edition
I The Models
Introduction
The Nomos of the Cloud
Platform and Stack, Model and Machine

II The Layers
Earth Layer
Cloud Layer
City Layer
Address Layer
Interface Layer
User Layer

III The Projects
The Stack to Come
The Black Stack

Glossary
Notes
Index