---
title: "Computation"
description: "The program's master term, stated most explicitly in Bratton's Research description: \"a rules-based, output-generating operation\" that as a principle may be near universal and as a societal medium is…"
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/computation"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/computation"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Computation

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/computation), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

The program's master term, stated most explicitly in Bratton's Research description: "a rules-based, output-generating operation" that as a principle may be near universal and as a societal medium is highly malleable; Calculation as World Ordering and a Medium for the Complexification of Social Intelligence. Antikythera holds that computation was "discovered as much as it was invented," so modern computers approximate natural, genetic and neuronal computation rather than defining it; that it predates its machines (the Antikythera mechanism, Sumerian receipts); that it is substrate agnostic; and that AI may become its primary societal-scale form. That stance underwrites Planetary Computation, Artificialization and Cognitive Infrastructures. Agüera y Arcas's What Is Intelligence? supplies the biological version, in which self-construction requires computation and life is Turing-complete matter; the Substrates program names the tension between that functionalist indifference to substrate and the view that materials shape which functions are possible (Substrate Agency, Technomorphism).

## Appears in

- [Substrates Unbound](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/substrates) (2025-11-21)
- [What Is Intelligence?](https://antikythera.wiki/work/book/what-is-intelligence) (2025-09-23)
- [Accept All Cookies](https://antikythera.wiki/work/book/accept-all-cookies) (2025-05-10)
- [What is Intelligence? (Lecture)](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/wii-film) (2025-05-10)
- [Speculative Philosophy of Planetary Computation](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/spoc) (2025-05-10)
- [Antikythera](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/research) (2025-05-10)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._