Planetary mobilities: movement, memory and emergence in the body of the Earth

Abstract

In this paper, I present a unified framework for understanding abiotic, biotic and technological mobilities as achievements of a far-from-equilibrium planet self-organising over geological time, and generating informationally rich forms of matter and motion. I discuss how flows of energy through the Earth support the emergence of different kinds of movement in spatially distinct ‘mobility regions’ and scale-related ‘mobility situations’. I also discuss how technological mobilities exhibit forms of ‘gratuity’, a relative uncoupling of different aspects of motion, which have arisen repeatedly in the Earth’s past, and may presage the emergence of radically new forms of planetary mobility.