Lukáš Likavčan

In the Year of the Fire Horse Introducing ⠿ Substrate

In honor of ⠿ Substrate’s launch, we’re releasing our first Substack post.

Subscribe and read at:
substrateservices.substack.com/p/in-the-yea...

⠿ Substrate Rethinking ecology on both sides of the Kármán Line.

Let me introduce you ⠿ Substrate - a company I've been building with Nick Houde over the past months.

We are a boutique intelligence studio for extraterrestrial cultural infrastructures, rethinking cultures on both sides of the Kármán line.

substrate.services

Bewusstseinskultur Thomas Metzinger's practical philosophy of mind

As a longstanding admirer of Thomas Metzinger’s work, I finally found some time to write about my favourite concept introduced by him: Bewusstseinskultur (consciousness-culture).

open.substack.com/pub/likavcan...

For a General Theory of Agency Early notes on D. M. Walsh’s Organisms, Agency, and Evolution

A reading-in-progress report on my Substack about fantastic "Organisms, Agency, and Evolution" by D. M. Walsh. One day, planetary habitability may cease to be a question of hosting forms of life, and become a question of cultivating forms of agency.

open.substack.com/pub/likavcan...

Becoming Substrate Agnostic In 2025, there was one quote I couldn’t get out of my head.

From now on, I’ll be dropshipping some raw thoughts via Substack. Instead of relying on serendipities of orbital dynamics, it feels like a good time to exert one’s own force of gravity and see what happens

open.substack.com/pub/likavcan...

Atlas We find an urgency to re-examine the way people understand and picture the environment, from the level of the planet as a conceptual whole.

// More-than-Planet Atlas

// How to think about the planet as a cultural object?

// Published by @waag.bsky.social, edited by Miha Turšič, Zoénie Deng, Bonnie van Vugt, w/ contributors Solveig Suess, @chrisjulien.bsky.social, Adonis Leboho, Klára Peloušková & me.

www.more-than-planet.eu/atlas

Is the Solar System a Wilderness or a Construction Site? Conservationist and Constructivist Paradigms in Planetary Protection Outer space exploration is one of the most prominent domains of earth-space governance. In this context, multiple policy documents by the UN, NASA, or Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) pledge to pr...

NEW PREPRINT

My first dive into outer space ethics:

(1) Comparing conservationist & constructivist paradigms in planetary protection (e.g.
@cospar-ppp.bsky.social policy papers)

(2) Grounding earth-space governance in recent findings about evolution of planets & life

arxiv.org/abs/2508.20145

We had a wonderful week at the Biennale with Antikythera (the Berggruen Institute), presenting our work at the Next Earth exhibition and celebrating the launch of the journal: journal.antikythera.org
Stay tuned for our piece on Latent Spaces in issue #2! @metahaven.bsky.social @begus.bsky.social

An unforgettable week in Venice: Opening Antikythera x MIT Architecture The Next Earth show at Palazzo Diedo @berggruen.org, together with dozens of artists, designers and writers in our global network. Very proud to be part of this team and to contribute to the new @mitpress.bsky.social journal.

Heading to Venice to launch our new Antikythera x @mitpress.bsky.social journal, incl. an exhibition The Next Earth at Palazzo Diedo + a day of debates on May 10th w/ Ben Bratton, @ninabegus.bsky.social, @begus.bsky.social, Tom Moynihan, Winnie Street, Stanley Chan, @metahaven.bsky.social et al.

New paper with @likavcan.bsky.social

"The Planetary and Its Uses. Grounding Political Economy in an Astrobiological Perspective"

The project combined 2 very different disciplines to find 1 path through the anthropocene towards a mature technosphere.

osf.io/preprints/so...

After Silicon, Part 2: Speculations is alive! It features four speculations about the future of biocomputing, DNA storage, organoid intelligence and hybrid organic systems produced in collaboration with Chris Burman from Heat Island/UCL Bartlett. Visit:
aftersilicon.com

After Silicon A new project by Christopher Burman and Lukas Likavcan about the future of computation after silicon.

Are you ready for the future in which you may spill your computer on the floor?

After Silicon is a freely available online report by researcher Christopher Burman and philosopher Lukáš Likavčan, exploring the new era of biocomputing, DNA storage & hybrid organic systems.

www.aftersilicon.com

It’s been good to have you in Europe 🪐

It was so amazing to represent the Antikythera think-tank on stage at #PlanetarySummit in Venice, and to speak w/ Tom Moynihan & Ben Bratton about technosphere-biosphere convergence, Fermi paradox, and the cosmic perspective. Many thanks to Berggruen Institute for curating this landmark event🪐

Berggruen Institute

I look forward to speaking at the Planetary Summit Nov 23-24 in Venice, Italy. Join the conversation or follow along to learn about new pathways to address Planetary-scale challenges via Berggruen Institute and #PlanetarySummit.

Learn More: berggruen.org/projects/pla...

The Grass of the Universe: Rethinking Technosphere, Planetary History, and Sustainability with Fermi Paradox SETI is not a usual point of departure for environmental humanities. However, this paper argues that theories originating in this field have direct implications for how we think about viable inhabitat...

>> New preprint out <<

The Grass of the Universe

The paper introduces Fermi paradox as speculative tool, advocating that technosphere is transitory layer that shall fold back into biosphere, and that habitability+genesity are vectors of viable human inhabitation of Earth.

arxiv.org/abs/2411.08057

Sure, here you go: www.likavcan.com/images/Likav...

ANOTHER EARTH

This paper was long time in the making. It articulates philosophical implications of astronomical concept of the planet: emphasis on cosmic ecology, plus understanding of planet as structure of phase gradients / historical natural kind.

DM for pdf

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Excited to present my new research on elemental media at Duke Kunshan University in June

sites.duke.edu/dkuhumanitie...

Hubble finds water vapour in small exoplanet's atmosphere Astronomers are intrigued when finding evidence of water vapour on exoplanets. Based on observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, a recent example is the planet GJ 9827d, which may have a water-ri...

For the first time, astronomers have found a water-rich atmosphere on an exoplanet that is only about twice the size of Earth. Is it a hot world dominated by water, or a mini-Neptune with traces of water in an atmosphere rich in hydrogen? 🔭
www.mpia.de/news/science...