When a concept that organizes our reality is replaced by an entirely different and incommensurate worldview, it is called a “paradigm shift. ”The theme of this edition of Noema was conceived in early 2024. At that time, we had in mind the epochal shift from the paradigm of globalization, in which markets, trade and technology cross borders, to “the Planetary,” where we recognize that the whole Earth system embeds and entangles human civilization in its habitat.
At that time, we had in mind the epochal shift from the paradigm of globalization, in which markets, trade and technology cross borders, to “the Planetary,” where we recognize that the whole Earth system embeds and entangles human civilization in its habitat. This deeper awareness has been enabled by the emergence of a technological exoskeleton of satellites, sensors and cloud computation that expands the heretofore limited scope of human understanding of the world, repositioning our place in the natural order.