Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet by Jennifer Gabrys (review)

The Earth is instrumented with thousands of sensors that gather environmental data, from oceanic buoys to urban stations and satellites that track almost everything from sea pollution to seismic activity to traffic. Such monitoring is computational, networked, automated, and increasingly ubiquitous. The different forms of social participation that rely on these sensors, with special attention to those involving smartphones or low-cost electronic devices, are the focus of Jennifer Gabrys's book. Using cases monitoring forests, air pollution, marine debris, water consumption, or city infrastructures in need of repair, among others, the author develops a conceptual account of how environment, participation, and politics are related through sensing technologies.

Gabrys's central argument is that "environments are not fixed backdrops for the implementation of sensor devices, but rather are involved in processes of becoming along with these technologies" (p. 9). Rather than gathering data that is "out there," Gabrys introduces sensing practices as processes of "creaturing," in which the environment that emerges is a "creation that materializes through distinct ways of perceiving and participating" (p. 160). This process is illustrated in her description of different ways of measuring climate change in Arctic regions using physical variables (temperature, CO₂) or lived experiences of its inhabitants in capturing light. Resonating with Sörlin and Wormbs's "Environing Technologies" (History and Technology, 2018), among others, she argues that the ways we measure have effects in both establishing particular environments and formulating problems in ways that will continue to provide relevance to those kinds of environments.

The extension of this premise to the notion of citizenship is intriguing. Gabrys argues that citizenship is not a preexisting category, but it takes its meaning with respect to environments and technologies. Actions of citizens, Gabrys claims, "have less to do with individuals exercising rights and responsibilities, and more to do with monitoring and managing one's relations to environments" (p. 195). For instance, when discussing the relationship between video-cameras, the moss they monitor, and the ecosystem, Gabrys argues that what counts as "sensing" is not simply about observing mosses with a camera, but also observing how mosses are themselves a sensor that is detecting environmental changes. What if we consider moss and other "more-than-human" entities (i.e. living beings and artificial devices) that gather environmental data—elephant seals, traffic lights, bus stops, or city sewers—as citizens? This provocation calls for research into what has historically counted as participation, citizenship, expertise, data, and information in relation to sensing technologies.

Also salient is her argument about the "idiot": the citizen (human or "more-than-human") that, in the context of smart cities, does not behave as planned. Gabrys's figure of the idiot expresses a form of Hughes's "reverse salient" from Networks of Power (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), and demands further reconsideration of the diverse forms of engagement enabled by digital sensing projects.

Although Program Earth is about "sensing," little is specified about "sensors" in material, institutional, or budgetary terms. Also, Gabrys offers no analysis of "programming," "computing," or "information," and her expanded vision of "environment" encompasses almost everything in the natural, artificial, and social worlds. Despite the title, she does not address the suggested global reach either. Finally, although the book has plenty of empirical examples, Gabry's use of process philosophy, postmodernism, and postphenomenology leads to abstract theorizations, slightly vague, and not always connected to her concrete observations.

Nevertheless, this sociological treatise is a valuable contribution for historians of technology. Gabrys makes the case that data production is not neutral, but always embedded within political practices, infrastructures, and institutions that inform how data are collected, communicated, and acted upon. This is not a novel finding—although it is important to remember. Perhaps more importantly, Program Earth succeeds in raising multiple epistemological and political issues intertwining sensing technologies, infrastructures, democracy, and power. Who or what is sensing? What for? What commitments are made when some...