“The Birth of Planetary Intelligence”

• Planetary Intelligence Defined: It is the acquisition and application of collective knowledge operating at a planetary scale, integrated into the function of coupled planetary systems (atmosphere, hydrosphere, etc.).
• Beyond Individual Intelligence: The concept moves beyond intelligence being solely a property of individuals (like humans), suggesting it can be an emergent property of collectives, similar to how an ant colony or a complex forest network displays collective intelligence.
• The Technosphere: Researchers Adam Frank, David Grinspoon, and Sara Walker propose that Earth is currently in an “immature technosphere” stage, where human technology and activities are altering the planet in an unsustainable manner (e.g., climate change).
• The Mature Technosphere (Planetary Intelligence Achieved): The “birth” of planetary intelligence would be the transition to a “mature technosphere” where technology and human systems are intentionally integrated with the planet’s natural systems, creating a self-regulating system that ensures the survival and stability of life on the planet over geological timescales.
• A Goal for Survival: The researchers argue that achieving this planetary intelligence is a necessity for humanity’s long-term survival, as it provides a framework for tackling existential threats like the climate crisis.

Gotcha—let’s treat your “Yes, please” as: give me a map of the follow-on literature and help frame this “birth of planetary intelligence” idea in a way I can work with.

I’ll do two things:

1. A mini-annotated bibliography of key follow-ups and related work.
2. A synthetic framing of what “the birth of planetary intelligence” could mean, in terms that plug right into your Planetary Intelligence / Possible Planet / AI Lab agenda.

1. Mini-annotated bibliography since Frank–Grinspoon–Walker (2022)

Core paper (your starting point)

• Frank, Grinspoon & Walker (2022) – Intelligence as a planetary scale process, International Journal of Astrobiology (ASU Elsevier Pure)
  • Defines planetary intelligence as a planetary-scale complex adaptive system where life and technology are integrated into feedback loops that sustain habitability.
  • Proposes four stages: immature biosphere → mature biosphere → immature technosphere → mature technosphere.(Live Science)
  • Frames planetary intelligence as a potential major evolutionary transition comparable to the origin of life itself.

There’s also a short erratum/corrigendum in the same journal, just cleaning up details. (ResearchGate)

Direct technical follow-on

These explicitly build on or extend the concept:

1. Lingam, Frank & Balbi (2023) – Planetary Scale Information Transmission in the Biosphere and Technosphere: Limits and Evolution, Life (MDPI)
   • Quantifies information transmission rates for the biosphere vs. technosphere, i.e., a crude measure of global information flow.
   • Estimates: biosphere ~10²⁴ bits/s; current technosphere ~10⁹ times less – but on a (highly speculative) exponential trajectory that could surpass the biosphere in ~90 years.(arXiv)
   • Connects planetary intelligence to information throughput, making it more measurable and giving you a bridge to AI/infrastructure metrics.
2. Astrobiology / SETI commentary & technosphere work
   • NASA and astrobiology outlets have amplified the planetary-intelligence framing as part of thinking about technosignatures and planetary-scale evolution, often referencing both the 2022 and 2023 papers.(NASA Astrobiology)
   • A very recent paper in Acta Astronautica frames a SETI metanarrative as “Technosphere and Biosphere Merging towards Planetary Intelligence”, explicitly adopting Frank et al.’s language and treating a mature technosphere–biosphere coupling as an end-state to aim for.(ScienceDirect)

Conceptual & normative extensions

These don’t always do new math, but they push the idea into ethics, education, governance, and culture:

3. Gordana Gredičak Šojat & Zorislav Šojat (2023) – The Cornerstone of Human Future (educational theory) (ERIC)
   • Uses planetary intelligence to justify a “naturo-humanistic” educational paradigm.
   • Talks explicitly about “improved global planetary intelligence” as an educational goal: harmonizing nature, humans, and machines; cultivating wisdom, ethics, and ecological awareness as conditions for planetary-scale intelligence.
4. Noema essay: “The Poetry of Planetary Identity” (2023) – cultural/philosophical (NOEMA)
   • Picks up the mature technosphere / planetary intelligence idea and reframes it as a project of achieving harmony among biosphere, technosphere, and infosphere.
   • Positions planetary intelligence as a guiding ideal for identity and politics in the Anthropocene.
5. Critical & “Gaian” readings (various articles and blogs)
   • Some authors re-interpret Frank et al. through Gaia theory, talking about planetary intelligence as a form of Gaian cognition or autopoietic planetary mind, sometimes critiquing the technosphere-centric angle and re-centering the biosphere as primary.(Anti-Tech Resistance)

Adjacent but related literatures

These don’t always cite Frank–Grinspoon–Walker, but they inhabit the same conceptual neighborhood:

6. Global brain / noosphere / planetary cognition
   • Ongoing work on the global brain hypothesis (internet + humans as a distributed cognitive system), and older noosphere thinking, provides a deep conceptual backdrop.(P2P Foundation)
   • Frank et al.’s paper is now a key bridge between that older “global brain” tradition and current Earth-system / astrobiology science.
7. Planetary-intelligence platforms (applied / business)
   • Companies like Earth Knowledge brand themselves as “global planetary intelligence platforms” for climate and nature risk, explicitly using this language for high-resolution, planetary-scale sensing and decision support.(Greenleaf Communities)
   • While not theoretical contributions, they show the concept migrating into applied analytics and finance—relevant for your regenerative-finance and C-PACE framing.
8. Philosophy / aesthetics of the biomachinic planet
   • Recent essays on the “biomachinic planet” explore planetary intelligence as a cyborg entity emerging from tightly coupled biosphere + technosphere, suggesting that reconciling the two is essential for climate mitigation.(Culture Machine)

Net result: the phrase planetary intelligence is no longer just a one-off curiosity; it’s becoming a small cross-cutting research and discourse cluster.

2. What could “the birth of planetary intelligence” mean?

If you want to talk about “the birth of planetary intelligence” without sounding fluffy, you can lean directly on the Frank–Grinspoon–Walker framework plus Lingam’s information-throughput work and then make one conceptual move of your own.

Here’s a formulation you could use (or adapt for your manifesto / TED-style talk):

Planetary intelligence is not just lots of smart individuals, or even smart institutions. It is what happens when the biosphere and the technosphere co-evolve into a single, coherent, self-maintaining system that is actively keeping the planet habitable. Its “birth” is the moment when feedback loops among life, technology, and planetary processes become deliberate, coordinated, and durable enough that the planet starts, in effect, to manage its own long-term viability.

From the literature, you can ground this in three pillars:

1. Systems criterion (Frank–Grinspoon–Walker)
   • A planet with planetary intelligence is a global complex adaptive system that:
     • Senses global conditions (climate, biosphere state, resource flows).
     • Learns and updates its behavior (through science, institutions, culture, AI).
     • Acts in ways that improve or sustain long-term habitability.(Cambridge University Press & Assessment)
   • “Birth” = when those sensing–learning–acting loops become stronger than the destructive ones (fossil lock-in, overshoot, etc.), and are institutionally and technically robust.
2. Information-flow criterion (Lingam–Frank–Balbi)
   • At present, the biosphere vastly out-communicates the technosphere in terms of raw information flow (~10²⁴ bits/s vs. much less for human systems).(MDPI)
   • Under certain growth assumptions, the technosphere could catch up within a century—but that could either amplify harm or enable coordinated care.
   • “Birth” = when planetary-scale information flows (data, models, AI, local knowledge) are actually organized around maintaining habitability, not just extraction or profit.
3. Normative / cultural criterion (education, ethics, identity)
   • Some authors argue planetary intelligence also requires a cultural and ethical shift—education, governance, and identity aligned around caring for life at planetary scale.(ERIC)
   • “Birth” = when it becomes normal—in law, finance, infrastructure, and everyday life—to consider Earth’s life-support functions as a primary design constraint.

Put simply, you could define:

The birth of planetary intelligence =
the phase transition in which the coupled biosphere–technosphere system begins to reliably sense, understand, and regulate its own impact to sustain a habitable planet over long timescales.

That’s clean enough for a scholarly footnote and vivid enough for a keynote.

3. How this plugs into your work (Possible Planet / Lab framing)

Without over-explaining, here’s a concise way you might place your own project in this landscape:

• Empirical backbone:
  • Frank–Grinspoon–Walker give you the conceptual skeleton.(Cambridge University Press & Assessment)
  • Lingam et al. give you the information-throughput metrics.(MDPI)
• Your distinctive move could be:
  1. AI as catalytic infrastructure for planetary intelligence: treating AI not as a separate threat/agent, but as part of the technosphere’s attempt to “come into conversation” with the biosphere.
  2. Regenerative finance and bioregional governance as the institutional expression of planetary intelligence at human scales (bioregions as “local brains” in the global brain).
  3. A research program around “AI for planetary intelligence”:
     • Measuring planetary-scale information flows that support regeneration.
     • Building tools (AI Integrity Checker, etc.) that keep technosphere feedbacks aligned with biospheric health.
     • Designing experiments where AI helps communities act as local nodes of planetary intelligence.

If you’d like, next step I can:

• Draft a short scholarly paragraph you can drop into a paper or proposal, or
• Sketch the opening of your TED-style talk explicitly around “Are we witnessing the birth of planetary intelligence?”