menu
BY JUAN CORTÉS
ABSTRACT
Carl Linnaeus's work in the 1740s, including his development of the horologium florae, highlights a fundamental dichotomy between the poetic observation of the natural rhythms of plants and the practical application of his classification techniques for economic and colonial purposes. His taxonomic methods not only optimized scientific research and resource exploitation but also laid the groundwork for racial and social hierarchies in the colonies. This essay posits a direct connection between Linnaean innovations in biological data organization and modern information management principles, underscoring how these precedents influence current computational systems. Through a contextual analysis of the problems and evolution of Linnaean systems, parallels are identified in issues of bias and techno-colonialism in contemporary technologies, particularly in mechanized agriculture. This technological moment echoes historical colonial processes in the imposition of agricultural technologies and practices that marginalize local knowledge and promote technological homogenization based on asymmetry and centralization of information.
CHAPTER ONE
During the 1740s, Carl Linnaeus undertook extensive journeys to understand the biological rhythms of plants. Observing gardens in Sweden, he noted that certain species of flowers opened and closed at specific times of the day, and that these times varied between species. Fascinated by these patterns, he proposed that one could estimate the time of day by observing which species opened their flowers at each moment. By organising these observations sequentially, Linnaeus formulated what he called the Horologium Florae or Floral Clock. Both in his botanical garden in Uppsala and during his travels throughout Sweden, he collected data on how plants changed over time. In Philosophia Botanica (1751), he listed forty-six examples of plants that opened their flowers at certain times of the day, using forty-three of them to produce his Horologium Florae (Koerner, p. 101).
However, the project never came to fruition during Linnaeus’s lifetime. The failure of the Horologium Florae reflects the dichotomy between an Enlightenment era fascinated by plant life and the utilitarian aims that would drive the standardisation and use of Linnaean methodologies. While the Horologium Florae sought to understand plants in terms of their natural biological rhythms and times, Linnaeus’s classification and standardisation techniques focused on optimising and utilising plants for economic benefits.
As Lisbeth Koerner has documented in detail, Linnaeus was a devoted follower of a peculiar form of cameralism that was popular among his country’s elites. He advocated for a centralised and bureaucratic management of the country's natural resources to boost the national economy and benefit the state. The idea was, as Koerner summarises this economic doctrine, 'that science would create a miniature mercantile empire within the borders of the European state' (Koerner, p. 188), whether by importing and acclimatising foreign plants to Swedish soil and climate or identifying domestic substitutes for costly imports. In both cases, this meant that knowledge about the uses of certain plants and animals had to be assigned and generalised across taxonomic units (Koerner, p. 188).
According to Koerner, Linnaeus viewed science as a key tool for achieving an economic ideal of national self-sufficiency through import substitution, basing his ambitious research projects on the possibility of cultivating exotic plants in Sweden or substituting them with local plants of analogous virtues (Koerner, p. 188). This perspective sought not only to order and classify nature but also to utilise this knowledge for the economic benefit of the Swedish state, as evidenced by his insistence that oeconomia be included as a mandatory part of university education.
Besides economic justifications, classification systems also became powerful tools to justify and facilitate colonial projects. In the colonies, native plants and animals were catalogued and classified not only for scientific knowledge but also to assess their economic potential and utility for colonial powers. This approach allowed European states to maximise the natural resources of their colonies, implementing agricultural and economic systems that profoundly transformed local ecosystems and traditional practices (Müller-Wille, p. 162).
Rebecca Earle, in her article The Pleasures of Taxonomy: Casta Paintings, Classification, and Colonialism, provides a clear example of how Linnaean logics of classification were used for specific purposes during the colonial era. The Casta paintings of 18th-century New Spain applied Linnaeus’s taxonomic principles to categorise people according to their race and mestizaje. These paintings not only represented racial diversity but also helped to impose a colonial social order. The Linnaean classifications of people into varieties based on physical and geographical characteristics reflected and reinforced racial hierarchies while attempting to impose order on the racial diversity perceived as chaotic by colonisers (Earle, p. 23).
Casta paintings catalogued mixed families, using complex terms to identify and label individuals according to their racial origins. This system reflected and reinforced racial and social hierarchies, legitimising colonial domination and structuring colonial society hierarchically. Casta painting, like Linnaean taxonomic systems, sought to organise knowledge and experience into manageable and comprehensible categories, although these classifications were often arbitrary and reflected social prejudices more than biological realities.
Moreover, Casta paintings included flowers and plants brought from Europe, still lifes, and elements of cuisine and food, reflecting a colonial Linnaean classification that connected racial hierarchies with plant hierarchies. This approach established a parallel between the organisation of plants and social organisation, reinforcing colonial hierarchies. In the Americas, many endemic plants, fundamental to agro-industrial matrices, became weeds due to the introduction of European species.
This phenomenon, known as colonial biology, shows how the introduction and displacement of plants during colonisation transformed local ecosystems, turning useful plants into invaders and profoundly altering traditional agricultural practices. Neither the natural history nor the power dynamics that shaped colonialism in the New World operated in a vacuum. The classifications that underpinned early modern knowledge systems in the Atlantic world encompassed both plants and people, reflecting a longing for order that transcended any division between science and state administration. Casta paintings embody these intertwined epistemologies, integrating plants and symbolism brought from Europe with the fetishisation of certain South American plants, superimposed in various ways.
For these reasons, Spanish scientists doubted the possibility of forming a general taxonomy that could accommodate the great variety of flora and fauna in the world. Carl Linnaeus insisted that each natural body could be assigned 'its own peculiar name... so that in the midst of the greatest apparent confusion, the greatest order may be visible,' but not everyone shared his confidence. Joseph Quer was certain that such a system could not exist, asserting that it was impossible 'to form a general system and a perfect method, not only for Natural History as a whole but even for a part of it.' Nature was too complex to be captured in a taxonomy.
CHAPTER TWO
The vast amount of material that Carl Linnaeus handled throughout his life becomes evident when exploring his collections, which include thousands of plant, fish, shell, and insect specimens, in addition to his extensive library and correspondence. At the height of his career, he was at the centre of a correspondence network that spanned all of Europe. Friends and other naturalists informed him about new species and corrected errors in his publications, while his students, sent to various parts of the world, maintained constant communication with him, sending books, letters, and specimens (Koerner, p. 102). The management of this constant flow of data was facilitated by Linnaeus's innovations in paper-based information processing technologies, which allowed him not only to collect but also to structure and use knowledge about species effectively (Koerner, p. 103).
Linnaeus developed a binomial nomenclature system that revolutionised the way scientists named and classified organisms, using two names (genus and species) to identify each organism. This system provided a standardised and universal way to refer to organisms, facilitating communication and information exchange among scientists from different countries and languages. The standardisation and precision of this system were essential for managing the enormous amount of information that naturalists collected and shared (Koerner, p. 110f). Although there have been several modern modifications to Linnaeus's original system, the foundation of Linnaean taxonomy has allowed biologists to group related species into genealogical trees, representing the evolutionary lineage of modern organisms from common ancestors
(Paterlini, 2021).
In the early 1730s, Linnaeus began collecting material for a series of manuscripts titled Fundamenta Botanica. These manuscripts served as the basis for many subsequent publications during his stay in Holland, such as Genera Plantarum and Hortus Cliffortianus. Volumes VII and VIII dealt with 'specific differences' and were the beginning of what twenty years later would become Species Plantarum: a universal catalogue of plant species (Koerner, p. 106). Linnaeus used a page layout divided by horizontal lines into spaces dedicated to each genus, filling these spaces with short definitions of species and bibliographic references (Müller-Wille, p. 103). This method of segmenting and clearly defining each entity facilitated the continuous updating and maintenance of information.
These spaces on paper formed two-dimensional 'boxes' where Linnaeus could add relevant information to a specific genus. This method allowed for the continuous addition of data, something that would not have been possible with the dichotomous or tabular arrangements used previously. However, the amount of space allocated could be problematic: sometimes too large or too small. If the space was insufficient, he continued writing on the other side of the page, allowing the text to flow continuously (Koerner, p. 108).
This conceptual foundation of classification is important because it gives us the basis to understand the origins of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) from our contemporary perspective. In modern computer science, OOP is a dominant paradigm for software development. Its principles of abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism enable the efficient handling of complex data and relationships. This is essential in creating artificial intelligence (AI) models, such as "transformers" in generative AI, which use these techniques to organise data, improve flexibility, and facilitate the development of robust and adaptable systems. Abstraction in programmatic systems allows the simplification of complex systems, as done in AI models by creating representations of real-world problems. Encapsulation facilitates software modularity and maintenance, allowing the development of reusable components crucial for AI applications. Inheritance helps reuse and extend functionalities, vital for complex systems. Polymorphism enables different data types to be treated uniformly, simplifying implementation and adaptability. In AI, for example, these classification methods are fundamental for organising software components into manageable structures, such as in natural language processing, where words, phrases, and grammars are hierarchically represented.
OOP is based on four fundamental principles: abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. Abstraction in OOP involves creating a simplified representation of a complex system, similar to how Linnaeus simplified biological classification through his binomial system. Encapsulation, which hides the internal details of an object and only exposes what is necessary, can be seen similarly to how Linnaeus organised his botanical descriptions, focusing on the essential characteristics for identification and classification (Koerner, p. 108). Inheritance in OOP allows new classes to be based on existing classes, inheriting their attributes and methods. This principle parallels Linnaeus's hierarchical classification, where species are organised into genera, and these into orders and families, reflecting a structure of biological inheritance. Polymorphism, which allows objects of different classes to be treated as instances of the same class through a common interface, finds its echo in the flexibility of Linnaeus's system to adapt to new species and discoveries without needing to reformulate the existing structure (Müller-Wille, p. 103).
CHAPTER THREE
The classification systems developed during the colonial era were not mere scientific tools but potent instruments of domination that imposed a Eurocentric and hierarchical worldview upon the cultures and ecosystems of the Americas. These systems, exemplified but not limited to the work of Carl Linnaeus, not only categorised nature but legitimised the exploitation of resources and the subordination of entire peoples. It is crucial to understand that beyond the individual contributions of scientists like Linnaeus, it was the colonial contexts—and from our current perspective, techno-colonial contexts—that truly became the driving force behind the imposition and perpetuation of hegemonic knowledge systems.
Yuk Hui, in his work The Question Concerning Technology in China, introduces the concept of cosmotécnica, arguing that each culture develops its own technology based on its cosmologies and moral values. This perspective urges us to reconsider technology not merely as a tool to transform the environment but as an alliance with it. Under this light, the creation of languages, which emerged alongside agriculture, can be understood as forging alliances and common languages with plants, integrating cosmic and moral order through specific technical activities.
The work A Tale of Two Seeds: Sound and Silence in Latin America's Andean Plains (Atractor Estudio + Semantica 2022) starkly exposes the continuity of these colonial power structures in the current context of technified agro-industry. The tension between amaranth, a sacred grain for many indigenous cultures, and genetically modified soybean monocultures is not merely an agricultural conflict but a manifestation of the ongoing struggle against the imposition of colonial value systems on local ecosystems and cultures. The categorisation of amaranth as a "weed" by agribusiness corporations reveals the brutality of modern colonial logic. This reclassification is not a neutral scientific act but a violent rewriting of reality that seeks to erase millennia of indigenous knowledge and culture.
The Linnaean classification system, with its apparent simplicity and capacity for standardisation, has found a perverse echo in contemporary programming, where data is structured into classes and objects with clear hierarchies. However, this structuring introduces inherent limitations and biases in AI and Big Data systems. Myaeng's research (2017) reveals how these hierarchical structures can lead to an over-simplification of reality, ignoring the inherent diversity and complexity of data. This excessive simplification not only leads to erroneous decisions but perpetuates and amplifies existing biases, creating a feedback loop of algorithmic injustice.
The transgenic war against amaranth is, in essence, a form of biocultural genocide. Multinational corporations, acting as the new colonial powers, use biotechnology as a weapon to eradicate not only a plant but an entire knowledge system and way of life. This war is not merely against a plant species but a direct attack on the food sovereignty and self-determination of Latin American peoples.
Big data and artificial intelligence systems, far from being neutral, have become the new "digital conquistadors." Their hierarchical data structures and biased algorithms reproduce and amplify the same logics of domination and exclusion that characterised colonial classification systems. In this context, the resistance of amaranth to pesticides becomes a powerful symbol of the resilience of indigenous peoples and knowledge against techno-colonial attempts at eradication.
The technification of agriculture, driven by multinational corporations and global policies, is leading to a pernicious homogenisation of agricultural practices and the erosion of local knowledge. The result is an alarming loss of biodiversity and an increasing dependency on external technologies. This phenomenon is particularly evident in large-scale land acquisitions in Africa and South America, where local agricultural practices are brutally replaced by industrial methods that ignore the ecological and cultural particularities of each region.
The work Transgenic Botany, part of A Tale of Two Seeds, exposes how modern intellectual property systems are a direct continuation of colonial plunder. Just as colonisers appropriated lands and resources, modern corporations seek to patent and privatise life itself. This act of legalised biopiracy is a form of genetic extractivism that threatens not only biodiversity but the very foundation of food sovereignty and cultural identity of LatinAmerican peoples.
The extensive use of data by agro-industrial giants like Bayer/Monsanto has created an overwhelming power asymmetry between farmers and these corporations. The implementation of wireless sensors in tractors that monitor or dictate every farmer's decision is nothing but a modern form of colonialism. This massive data collection has become a "dragnet" that seeks to predict and control agricultural events, further consolidating corporate control over food production.
In this context of agrarian techno-colonialism, digital museums, inheritors of colonial cultural institutions, find themselves at a critical crossroads. On one hand, they have the potential to democratise access to knowledge and cultural expressions; on the other, they risk perpetuating and amplifying the same power structures that have historically marginalised non-Western cultures. Integrating works like "A Tale of Two Seeds" into these digital spaces presents profound challenges that go beyond mere inclusion. These challenges demand a radical reconsideration of cataloguing, preservation, and presentation practices, as well as an active questioning of who holds the power to classify, interpret, and contextualise knowledge.
Standard formats of digital storage and presentation, much like the old colonial cabinets of curiosities, often fail to capture the complexity and context of works that challenge Western categorizations. Digital artworks that incorporate living elements, biological processes, or active critiques of classification systems, such as "Transgenic Botany," challenge traditional paradigms of conservation and exhibition. True decoloniality in the context of the digital museum requires more than non-linear interfaces or participatory approaches; it demands dismantling established knowledge hierarchies and creating spaces where indigenous and non-Western epistemologies can not only coexist but lead the narrative. In this sense, the decolonial digital museum must become a space of confrontation and transformation, where artworks are not only exhibited but actively challenge and reconstitute our ways of seeing, knowing, and relating to the world.
To counter these issues, it is imperative to consider alternative approaches that integrate diverse perspectives and knowledge. Pre-Hispanic cultures developed classification systems that considered the medicinal, agricultural, and spiritual utility of plants, offering holistic models deeply integrated into their cultural and ecological contexts. Hylomorphism, with its emphasis on the inseparability of matter and form, can provide a conceptual framework for recontextualising knowledge and technological practices both in the agricultural and digital museistic fields.
Ultimately, the challenge we face is not merely technical but profoundly ethical and political. We must actively dismantle the power structures that these techno-colonial systems uphold, whether in the fields or in our museums. Only then can we create spaces where alternative ways of knowing and being in the world can flourish, where the wisdom of amaranth can coexist and perhaps even eclipse the imposed order of transgenic soy, and where indigenous and local narratives and knowledge can reclaim their central place in the construction of our digital and cultural future.
ABSTRACT
Carl Linnaeus's work in the 1740s, including his development of the horologium florae, highlights a fundamental dichotomy between the poetic observation of the natural rhythms of plants and the practical application of his classification techniques for economic and colonial purposes. His taxonomic methods not only optimized scientific research and resource exploitation but also laid the groundwork for racial and social hierarchies in the colonies. This essay posits a direct connection between Linnaean innovations in biological data organization and modern information management principles, underscoring how these precedents influence current computational systems. Through a contextual analysis of the problems and evolution of Linnaean systems, parallels are identified in issues of bias and techno-colonialism in contemporary technologies, particularly in mechanized agriculture. This technological moment echoes historical colonial processes in the imposition of agricultural technologies and practices that marginalize local knowledge and promote technological homogenization based on asymmetry and centralization of information.
CHAPTER ONE
During the 1740s, Carl Linnaeus undertook extensive journeys to understand the biological rhythms of plants. Observing gardens in Sweden, he noted that certain species of flowers opened and closed at specific times of the day, and that these times varied between species. Fascinated by these patterns, he proposed that one could estimate the time of day by observing which species opened their flowers at each moment. By organising these observations sequentially, Linnaeus formulated what he called the Horologium Florae or Floral Clock. Both in his botanical garden in Uppsala and during his travels throughout Sweden, he collected data on how plants changed over time. In Philosophia Botanica (1751), he listed forty-six examples of plants that opened their flowers at certain times of the day, using forty-three of them to produce his Horologium Florae (Koerner, p. 101).
However, the project never came to fruition during Linnaeus’s lifetime. The failure of the Horologium Florae reflects the dichotomy between an Enlightenment era fascinated by plant life and the utilitarian aims that would drive the standardisation and use of Linnaean methodologies. While the Horologium Florae sought to understand plants in terms of their natural biological rhythms and times, Linnaeus’s classification and standardisation techniques focused on optimising and utilising plants for economic benefits.
As Lisbeth Koerner has documented in detail, Linnaeus was a devoted follower of a peculiar form of cameralism that was popular among his country’s elites. He advocated for a centralised and bureaucratic management of the country's natural resources to boost the national economy and benefit the state. The idea was, as Koerner summarises this economic doctrine, 'that science would create a miniature mercantile empire within the borders of the European state' (Koerner, p. 188), whether by importing and acclimatising foreign plants to Swedish soil and climate or identifying domestic substitutes for costly imports. In both cases, this meant that knowledge about the uses of certain plants and animals had to be assigned and generalised across taxonomic units (Koerner, p. 188).
According to Koerner, Linnaeus viewed science as a key tool for achieving an economic ideal of national self-sufficiency through import substitution, basing his ambitious research projects on the possibility of cultivating exotic plants in Sweden or substituting them with local plants of analogous virtues (Koerner, p. 188). This perspective sought not only to order and classify nature but also to utilise this knowledge for the economic benefit of the Swedish state, as evidenced by his insistence that oeconomia be included as a mandatory part of university education.
Besides economic justifications, classification systems also became powerful tools to justify and facilitate colonial projects. In the colonies, native plants and animals were catalogued and classified not only for scientific knowledge but also to assess their economic potential and utility for colonial powers. This approach allowed European states to maximise the natural resources of their colonies, implementing agricultural and economic systems that profoundly transformed local ecosystems and traditional practices (Müller-Wille, p. 162).
Rebecca Earle, in her article The Pleasures of Taxonomy: Casta Paintings, Classification, and Colonialism, provides a clear example of how Linnaean logics of classification were used for specific purposes during the colonial era. The Casta paintings of 18th-century New Spain applied Linnaeus’s taxonomic principles to categorise people according to their race and mestizaje. These paintings not only represented racial diversity but also helped to impose a colonial social order. The Linnaean classifications of people into varieties based on physical and geographical characteristics reflected and reinforced racial hierarchies while attempting to impose order on the racial diversity perceived as chaotic by colonisers (Earle, p. 23).
Casta paintings catalogued mixed families, using complex terms to identify and label individuals according to their racial origins. This system reflected and reinforced racial and social hierarchies, legitimising colonial domination and structuring colonial society hierarchically. Casta painting, like Linnaean taxonomic systems, sought to organise knowledge and experience into manageable and comprehensible categories, although these classifications were often arbitrary and reflected social prejudices more than biological realities.
Moreover, Casta paintings included flowers and plants brought from Europe, still lifes, and elements of cuisine and food, reflecting a colonial Linnaean classification that connected racial hierarchies with plant hierarchies. This approach established a parallel between the organisation of plants and social organisation, reinforcing colonial hierarchies. In the Americas, many endemic plants, fundamental to agro-industrial matrices, became weeds due to the introduction of European species.
This phenomenon, known as colonial biology, shows how the introduction and displacement of plants during colonisation transformed local ecosystems, turning useful plants into invaders and profoundly altering traditional agricultural practices. Neither the natural history nor the power dynamics that shaped colonialism in the New World operated in a vacuum. The classifications that underpinned early modern knowledge systems in the Atlantic world encompassed both plants and people, reflecting a longing for order that transcended any division between science and state administration. Casta paintings embody these intertwined epistemologies, integrating plants and symbolism brought from Europe with the fetishisation of certain South American plants, superimposed in various ways.
For these reasons, Spanish scientists doubted the possibility of forming a general taxonomy that could accommodate the great variety of flora and fauna in the world. Carl Linnaeus insisted that each natural body could be assigned 'its own peculiar name... so that in the midst of the greatest apparent confusion, the greatest order may be visible,' but not everyone shared his confidence. Joseph Quer was certain that such a system could not exist, asserting that it was impossible 'to form a general system and a perfect method, not only for Natural History as a whole but even for a part of it.' Nature was too complex to be captured in a taxonomy.
CHAPTER TWO
The vast amount of material that Carl Linnaeus handled throughout his life becomes evident when exploring his collections, which include thousands of plant, fish, shell, and insect specimens, in addition to his extensive library and correspondence. At the height of his career, he was at the centre of a correspondence network that spanned all of Europe. Friends and other naturalists informed him about new species and corrected errors in his publications, while his students, sent to various parts of the world, maintained constant communication with him, sending books, letters, and specimens (Koerner, p. 102). The management of this constant flow of data was facilitated by Linnaeus's innovations in paper-based information processing technologies, which allowed him not only to collect but also to structure and use knowledge about species effectively (Koerner, p. 103).
Linnaeus developed a binomial nomenclature system that revolutionised the way scientists named and classified organisms, using two names (genus and species) to identify each organism. This system provided a standardised and universal way to refer to organisms, facilitating communication and information exchange among scientists from different countries and languages. The standardisation and precision of this system were essential for managing the enormous amount of information that naturalists collected and shared (Koerner, p. 110f). Although there have been several modern modifications to Linnaeus's original system, the foundation of Linnaean taxonomy has allowed biologists to group related species into genealogical trees, representing the evolutionary lineage of modern organisms from common ancestors
(Paterlini, 2021).
In the early 1730s, Linnaeus began collecting material for a series of manuscripts titled Fundamenta Botanica. These manuscripts served as the basis for many subsequent publications during his stay in Holland, such as Genera Plantarum and Hortus Cliffortianus. Volumes VII and VIII dealt with 'specific differences' and were the beginning of what twenty years later would become Species Plantarum: a universal catalogue of plant species (Koerner, p. 106). Linnaeus used a page layout divided by horizontal lines into spaces dedicated to each genus, filling these spaces with short definitions of species and bibliographic references (Müller-Wille, p. 103). This method of segmenting and clearly defining each entity facilitated the continuous updating and maintenance of information.
These spaces on paper formed two-dimensional 'boxes' where Linnaeus could add relevant information to a specific genus. This method allowed for the continuous addition of data, something that would not have been possible with the dichotomous or tabular arrangements used previously. However, the amount of space allocated could be problematic: sometimes too large or too small. If the space was insufficient, he continued writing on the other side of the page, allowing the text to flow continuously (Koerner, p. 108).
This conceptual foundation of classification is important because it gives us the basis to understand the origins of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) from our contemporary perspective. In modern computer science, OOP is a dominant paradigm for software development. Its principles of abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism enable the efficient handling of complex data and relationships. This is essential in creating artificial intelligence (AI) models, such as "transformers" in generative AI, which use these techniques to organise data, improve flexibility, and facilitate the development of robust and adaptable systems. Abstraction in programmatic systems allows the simplification of complex systems, as done in AI models by creating representations of real-world problems. Encapsulation facilitates software modularity and maintenance, allowing the development of reusable components crucial for AI applications. Inheritance helps reuse and extend functionalities, vital for complex systems. Polymorphism enables different data types to be treated uniformly, simplifying implementation and adaptability. In AI, for example, these classification methods are fundamental for organising software components into manageable structures, such as in natural language processing, where words, phrases, and grammars are hierarchically represented.
OOP is based on four fundamental principles: abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. Abstraction in OOP involves creating a simplified representation of a complex system, similar to how Linnaeus simplified biological classification through his binomial system. Encapsulation, which hides the internal details of an object and only exposes what is necessary, can be seen similarly to how Linnaeus organised his botanical descriptions, focusing on the essential characteristics for identification and classification (Koerner, p. 108). Inheritance in OOP allows new classes to be based on existing classes, inheriting their attributes and methods. This principle parallels Linnaeus's hierarchical classification, where species are organised into genera, and these into orders and families, reflecting a structure of biological inheritance. Polymorphism, which allows objects of different classes to be treated as instances of the same class through a common interface, finds its echo in the flexibility of Linnaeus's system to adapt to new species and discoveries without needing to reformulate the existing structure (Müller-Wille, p. 103).
CHAPTER THREE
The classification systems developed during the colonial era were not mere scientific tools but potent instruments of domination that imposed a Eurocentric and hierarchical worldview upon the cultures and ecosystems of the Americas. These systems, exemplified but not limited to the work of Carl Linnaeus, not only categorised nature but legitimised the exploitation of resources and the subordination of entire peoples. It is crucial to understand that beyond the individual contributions of scientists like Linnaeus, it was the colonial contexts—and from our current perspective, techno-colonial contexts—that truly became the driving force behind the imposition and perpetuation of hegemonic knowledge systems.
Yuk Hui, in his work The Question Concerning Technology in China, introduces the concept of cosmotécnica, arguing that each culture develops its own technology based on its cosmologies and moral values. This perspective urges us to reconsider technology not merely as a tool to transform the environment but as an alliance with it. Under this light, the creation of languages, which emerged alongside agriculture, can be understood as forging alliances and common languages with plants, integrating cosmic and moral order through specific technical activities.
The work A Tale of Two Seeds: Sound and Silence in Latin America's Andean Plains (Atractor Estudio + Semantica 2022) starkly exposes the continuity of these colonial power structures in the current context of technified agro-industry. The tension between amaranth, a sacred grain for many indigenous cultures, and genetically modified soybean monocultures is not merely an agricultural conflict but a manifestation of the ongoing struggle against the imposition of colonial value systems on local ecosystems and cultures. The categorisation of amaranth as a "weed" by agribusiness corporations reveals the brutality of modern colonial logic. This reclassification is not a neutral scientific act but a violent rewriting of reality that seeks to erase millennia of indigenous knowledge and culture.
The Linnaean classification system, with its apparent simplicity and capacity for standardisation, has found a perverse echo in contemporary programming, where data is structured into classes and objects with clear hierarchies. However, this structuring introduces inherent limitations and biases in AI and Big Data systems. Myaeng's research (2017) reveals how these hierarchical structures can lead to an over-simplification of reality, ignoring the inherent diversity and complexity of data. This excessive simplification not only leads to erroneous decisions but perpetuates and amplifies existing biases, creating a feedback loop of algorithmic injustice.
The transgenic war against amaranth is, in essence, a form of biocultural genocide. Multinational corporations, acting as the new colonial powers, use biotechnology as a weapon to eradicate not only a plant but an entire knowledge system and way of life. This war is not merely against a plant species but a direct attack on the food sovereignty and self-determination of Latin American peoples.
Big data and artificial intelligence systems, far from being neutral, have become the new "digital conquistadors." Their hierarchical data structures and biased algorithms reproduce and amplify the same logics of domination and exclusion that characterised colonial classification systems. In this context, the resistance of amaranth to pesticides becomes a powerful symbol of the resilience of indigenous peoples and knowledge against techno-colonial attempts at eradication.
The technification of agriculture, driven by multinational corporations and global policies, is leading to a pernicious homogenisation of agricultural practices and the erosion of local knowledge. The result is an alarming loss of biodiversity and an increasing dependency on external technologies. This phenomenon is particularly evident in large-scale land acquisitions in Africa and South America, where local agricultural practices are brutally replaced by industrial methods that ignore the ecological and cultural particularities of each region.
The work Transgenic Botany, part of A Tale of Two Seeds, exposes how modern intellectual property systems are a direct continuation of colonial plunder. Just as colonisers appropriated lands and resources, modern corporations seek to patent and privatise life itself. This act of legalised biopiracy is a form of genetic extractivism that threatens not only biodiversity but the very foundation of food sovereignty and cultural identity of LatinAmerican peoples.
The extensive use of data by agro-industrial giants like Bayer/Monsanto has created an overwhelming power asymmetry between farmers and these corporations. The implementation of wireless sensors in tractors that monitor or dictate every farmer's decision is nothing but a modern form of colonialism. This massive data collection has become a "dragnet" that seeks to predict and control agricultural events, further consolidating corporate control over food production.
In this context of agrarian techno-colonialism, digital museums, inheritors of colonial cultural institutions, find themselves at a critical crossroads. On one hand, they have the potential to democratise access to knowledge and cultural expressions; on the other, they risk perpetuating and amplifying the same power structures that have historically marginalised non-Western cultures. Integrating works like "A Tale of Two Seeds" into these digital spaces presents profound challenges that go beyond mere inclusion. These challenges demand a radical reconsideration of cataloguing, preservation, and presentation practices, as well as an active questioning of who holds the power to classify, interpret, and contextualise knowledge.
Standard formats of digital storage and presentation, much like the old colonial cabinets of curiosities, often fail to capture the complexity and context of works that challenge Western categorizations. Digital artworks that incorporate living elements, biological processes, or active critiques of classification systems, such as "Transgenic Botany," challenge traditional paradigms of conservation and exhibition. True decoloniality in the context of the digital museum requires more than non-linear interfaces or participatory approaches; it demands dismantling established knowledge hierarchies and creating spaces where indigenous and non-Western epistemologies can not only coexist but lead the narrative. In this sense, the decolonial digital museum must become a space of confrontation and transformation, where artworks are not only exhibited but actively challenge and reconstitute our ways of seeing, knowing, and relating to the world.
To counter these issues, it is imperative to consider alternative approaches that integrate diverse perspectives and knowledge. Pre-Hispanic cultures developed classification systems that considered the medicinal, agricultural, and spiritual utility of plants, offering holistic models deeply integrated into their cultural and ecological contexts. Hylomorphism, with its emphasis on the inseparability of matter and form, can provide a conceptual framework for recontextualising knowledge and technological practices both in the agricultural and digital museistic fields.
Ultimately, the challenge we face is not merely technical but profoundly ethical and political. We must actively dismantle the power structures that these techno-colonial systems uphold, whether in the fields or in our museums. Only then can we create spaces where alternative ways of knowing and being in the world can flourish, where the wisdom of amaranth can coexist and perhaps even eclipse the imposed order of transgenic soy, and where indigenous and local narratives and knowledge can reclaim their central place in the construction of our digital and cultural future.
Juan Cortés an electronic artist from Colombia. His work focuses on the intersection of art, science and nature. Juan's limited edition Casta paintings are available here.
BY JUAN CORTÉS
ABSTRACT
Carl Linnaeus's work in the 1740s, including his development of the horologium florae, highlights a fundamental dichotomy between the poetic observation of the natural rhythms of plants and the practical application of his classification techniques for economic and colonial purposes. His taxonomic methods not only optimized scientific research and resource exploitation but also laid the groundwork for racial and social hierarchies in the colonies. This essay posits a direct connection between Linnaean innovations in biological data organization and modern information management principles, underscoring how these precedents influence current computational systems. Through a contextual analysis of the problems and evolution of Linnaean systems, parallels are identified in issues of bias and techno-colonialism in contemporary technologies, particularly in mechanized agriculture. This technological moment echoes historical colonial processes in the imposition of agricultural technologies and practices that marginalize local knowledge and promote technological homogenization based on asymmetry and centralization of information.
CHAPTER ONE
During the 1740s, Carl Linnaeus undertook extensive journeys to understand the biological rhythms of plants. Observing gardens in Sweden, he noted that certain species of flowers opened and closed at specific times of the day, and that these times varied between species. Fascinated by these patterns, he proposed that one could estimate the time of day by observing which species opened their flowers at each moment. By organising these observations sequentially, Linnaeus formulated what he called the Horologium Florae or Floral Clock. Both in his botanical garden in Uppsala and during his travels throughout Sweden, he collected data on how plants changed over time. In Philosophia Botanica (1751), he listed forty-six examples of plants that opened their flowers at certain times of the day, using forty-three of them to produce his Horologium Florae (Koerner, p. 101).
However, the project never came to fruition during Linnaeus’s lifetime. The failure of the Horologium Florae reflects the dichotomy between an Enlightenment era fascinated by plant life and the utilitarian aims that would drive the standardisation and use of Linnaean methodologies. While the Horologium Florae sought to understand plants in terms of their natural biological rhythms and times, Linnaeus’s classification and standardisation techniques focused on optimising and utilising plants for economic benefits.
As Lisbeth Koerner has documented in detail, Linnaeus was a devoted follower of a peculiar form of cameralism that was popular among his country’s elites. He advocated for a centralised and bureaucratic management of the country's natural resources to boost the national economy and benefit the state. The idea was, as Koerner summarises this economic doctrine, 'that science would create a miniature mercantile empire within the borders of the European state' (Koerner, p. 188), whether by importing and acclimatising foreign plants to Swedish soil and climate or identifying domestic substitutes for costly imports. In both cases, this meant that knowledge about the uses of certain plants and animals had to be assigned and generalised across taxonomic units (Koerner, p. 188).
According to Koerner, Linnaeus viewed science as a key tool for achieving an economic ideal of national self-sufficiency through import substitution, basing his ambitious research projects on the possibility of cultivating exotic plants in Sweden or substituting them with local plants of analogous virtues (Koerner, p. 188). This perspective sought not only to order and classify nature but also to utilise this knowledge for the economic benefit of the Swedish state, as evidenced by his insistence that oeconomia be included as a mandatory part of university education.
Besides economic justifications, classification systems also became powerful tools to justify and facilitate colonial projects. In the colonies, native plants and animals were catalogued and classified not only for scientific knowledge but also to assess their economic potential and utility for colonial powers. This approach allowed European states to maximise the natural resources of their colonies, implementing agricultural and economic systems that profoundly transformed local ecosystems and traditional practices (Müller-Wille, p. 162).
Rebecca Earle, in her article The Pleasures of Taxonomy: Casta Paintings, Classification, and Colonialism, provides a clear example of how Linnaean logics of classification were used for specific purposes during the colonial era. The Casta paintings of 18th-century New Spain applied Linnaeus’s taxonomic principles to categorise people according to their race and mestizaje. These paintings not only represented racial diversity but also helped to impose a colonial social order. The Linnaean classifications of people into varieties based on physical and geographical characteristics reflected and reinforced racial hierarchies while attempting to impose order on the racial diversity perceived as chaotic by colonisers (Earle, p. 23).
Casta paintings catalogued mixed families, using complex terms to identify and label individuals according to their racial origins. This system reflected and reinforced racial and social hierarchies, legitimising colonial domination and structuring colonial society hierarchically. Casta painting, like Linnaean taxonomic systems, sought to organise knowledge and experience into manageable and comprehensible categories, although these classifications were often arbitrary and reflected social prejudices more than biological realities.
Moreover, Casta paintings included flowers and plants brought from Europe, still lifes, and elements of cuisine and food, reflecting a colonial Linnaean classification that connected racial hierarchies with plant hierarchies. This approach established a parallel between the organisation of plants and social organisation, reinforcing colonial hierarchies. In the Americas, many endemic plants, fundamental to agro-industrial matrices, became weeds due to the introduction of European species.
This phenomenon, known as colonial biology, shows how the introduction and displacement of plants during colonisation transformed local ecosystems, turning useful plants into invaders and profoundly altering traditional agricultural practices. Neither the natural history nor the power dynamics that shaped colonialism in the New World operated in a vacuum. The classifications that underpinned early modern knowledge systems in the Atlantic world encompassed both plants and people, reflecting a longing for order that transcended any division between science and state administration. Casta paintings embody these intertwined epistemologies, integrating plants and symbolism brought from Europe with the fetishisation of certain South American plants, superimposed in various ways.
For these reasons, Spanish scientists doubted the possibility of forming a general taxonomy that could accommodate the great variety of flora and fauna in the world. Carl Linnaeus insisted that each natural body could be assigned 'its own peculiar name... so that in the midst of the greatest apparent confusion, the greatest order may be visible,' but not everyone shared his confidence. Joseph Quer was certain that such a system could not exist, asserting that it was impossible 'to form a general system and a perfect method, not only for Natural History as a whole but even for a part of it.' Nature was too complex to be captured in a taxonomy.
CHAPTER TWO
The vast amount of material that Carl Linnaeus handled throughout his life becomes evident when exploring his collections, which include thousands of plant, fish, shell, and insect specimens, in addition to his extensive library and correspondence. At the height of his career, he was at the centre of a correspondence network that spanned all of Europe. Friends and other naturalists informed him about new species and corrected errors in his publications, while his students, sent to various parts of the world, maintained constant communication with him, sending books, letters, and specimens (Koerner, p. 102). The management of this constant flow of data was facilitated by Linnaeus's innovations in paper-based information processing technologies, which allowed him not only to collect but also to structure and use knowledge about species effectively (Koerner, p. 103).
Linnaeus developed a binomial nomenclature system that revolutionised the way scientists named and classified organisms, using two names (genus and species) to identify each organism. This system provided a standardised and universal way to refer to organisms, facilitating communication and information exchange among scientists from different countries and languages. The standardisation and precision of this system were essential for managing the enormous amount of information that naturalists collected and shared (Koerner, p. 110f). Although there have been several modern modifications to Linnaeus's original system, the foundation of Linnaean taxonomy has allowed biologists to group related species into genealogical trees, representing the evolutionary lineage of modern organisms from common ancestors
(Paterlini, 2021).
In the early 1730s, Linnaeus began collecting material for a series of manuscripts titled Fundamenta Botanica. These manuscripts served as the basis for many subsequent publications during his stay in Holland, such as Genera Plantarum and Hortus Cliffortianus. Volumes VII and VIII dealt with 'specific differences' and were the beginning of what twenty years later would become Species Plantarum: a universal catalogue of plant species (Koerner, p. 106). Linnaeus used a page layout divided by horizontal lines into spaces dedicated to each genus, filling these spaces with short definitions of species and bibliographic references (Müller-Wille, p. 103). This method of segmenting and clearly defining each entity facilitated the continuous updating and maintenance of information.
These spaces on paper formed two-dimensional 'boxes' where Linnaeus could add relevant information to a specific genus. This method allowed for the continuous addition of data, something that would not have been possible with the dichotomous or tabular arrangements used previously. However, the amount of space allocated could be problematic: sometimes too large or too small. If the space was insufficient, he continued writing on the other side of the page, allowing the text to flow continuously (Koerner, p. 108).
This conceptual foundation of classification is important because it gives us the basis to understand the origins of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) from our contemporary perspective. In modern computer science, OOP is a dominant paradigm for software development. Its principles of abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism enable the efficient handling of complex data and relationships. This is essential in creating artificial intelligence (AI) models, such as "transformers" in generative AI, which use these techniques to organise data, improve flexibility, and facilitate the development of robust and adaptable systems. Abstraction in programmatic systems allows the simplification of complex systems, as done in AI models by creating representations of real-world problems. Encapsulation facilitates software modularity and maintenance, allowing the development of reusable components crucial for AI applications. Inheritance helps reuse and extend functionalities, vital for complex systems. Polymorphism enables different data types to be treated uniformly, simplifying implementation and adaptability. In AI, for example, these classification methods are fundamental for organising software components into manageable structures, such as in natural language processing, where words, phrases, and grammars are hierarchically represented.
OOP is based on four fundamental principles: abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. Abstraction in OOP involves creating a simplified representation of a complex system, similar to how Linnaeus simplified biological classification through his binomial system. Encapsulation, which hides the internal details of an object and only exposes what is necessary, can be seen similarly to how Linnaeus organised his botanical descriptions, focusing on the essential characteristics for identification and classification (Koerner, p. 108). Inheritance in OOP allows new classes to be based on existing classes, inheriting their attributes and methods. This principle parallels Linnaeus's hierarchical classification, where species are organised into genera, and these into orders and families, reflecting a structure of biological inheritance. Polymorphism, which allows objects of different classes to be treated as instances of the same class through a common interface, finds its echo in the flexibility of Linnaeus's system to adapt to new species and discoveries without needing to reformulate the existing structure (Müller-Wille, p. 103).
CHAPTER THREE
The classification systems developed during the colonial era were not mere scientific tools but potent instruments of domination that imposed a Eurocentric and hierarchical worldview upon the cultures and ecosystems of the Americas. These systems, exemplified but not limited to the work of Carl Linnaeus, not only categorised nature but legitimised the exploitation of resources and the subordination of entire peoples. It is crucial to understand that beyond the individual contributions of scientists like Linnaeus, it was the colonial contexts—and from our current perspective, techno-colonial contexts—that truly became the driving force behind the imposition and perpetuation of hegemonic knowledge systems.
Yuk Hui, in his work The Question Concerning Technology in China, introduces the concept of cosmotécnica, arguing that each culture develops its own technology based on its cosmologies and moral values. This perspective urges us to reconsider technology not merely as a tool to transform the environment but as an alliance with it. Under this light, the creation of languages, which emerged alongside agriculture, can be understood as forging alliances and common languages with plants, integrating cosmic and moral order through specific technical activities.
The work A Tale of Two Seeds: Sound and Silence in Latin America's Andean Plains (Atractor Estudio + Semantica 2022) starkly exposes the continuity of these colonial power structures in the current context of technified agro-industry. The tension between amaranth, a sacred grain for many indigenous cultures, and genetically modified soybean monocultures is not merely an agricultural conflict but a manifestation of the ongoing struggle against the imposition of colonial value systems on local ecosystems and cultures. The categorisation of amaranth as a "weed" by agribusiness corporations reveals the brutality of modern colonial logic. This reclassification is not a neutral scientific act but a violent rewriting of reality that seeks to erase millennia of indigenous knowledge and culture.
The Linnaean classification system, with its apparent simplicity and capacity for standardisation, has found a perverse echo in contemporary programming, where data is structured into classes and objects with clear hierarchies. However, this structuring introduces inherent limitations and biases in AI and Big Data systems. Myaeng's research (2017) reveals how these hierarchical structures can lead to an over-simplification of reality, ignoring the inherent diversity and complexity of data. This excessive simplification not only leads to erroneous decisions but perpetuates and amplifies existing biases, creating a feedback loop of algorithmic injustice.
The transgenic war against amaranth is, in essence, a form of biocultural genocide. Multinational corporations, acting as the new colonial powers, use biotechnology as a weapon to eradicate not only a plant but an entire knowledge system and way of life. This war is not merely against a plant species but a direct attack on the food sovereignty and self-determination of Latin American peoples.
Big data and artificial intelligence systems, far from being neutral, have become the new "digital conquistadors." Their hierarchical data structures and biased algorithms reproduce and amplify the same logics of domination and exclusion that characterised colonial classification systems. In this context, the resistance of amaranth to pesticides becomes a powerful symbol of the resilience of indigenous peoples and knowledge against techno-colonial attempts at eradication.
The technification of agriculture, driven by multinational corporations and global policies, is leading to a pernicious homogenisation of agricultural practices and the erosion of local knowledge. The result is an alarming loss of biodiversity and an increasing dependency on external technologies. This phenomenon is particularly evident in large-scale land acquisitions in Africa and South America, where local agricultural practices are brutally replaced by industrial methods that ignore the ecological and cultural particularities of each region.
The work Transgenic Botany, part of A Tale of Two Seeds, exposes how modern intellectual property systems are a direct continuation of colonial plunder. Just as colonisers appropriated lands and resources, modern corporations seek to patent and privatise life itself. This act of legalised biopiracy is a form of genetic extractivism that threatens not only biodiversity but the very foundation of food sovereignty and cultural identity of LatinAmerican peoples.
The extensive use of data by agro-industrial giants like Bayer/Monsanto has created an overwhelming power asymmetry between farmers and these corporations. The implementation of wireless sensors in tractors that monitor or dictate every farmer's decision is nothing but a modern form of colonialism. This massive data collection has become a "dragnet" that seeks to predict and control agricultural events, further consolidating corporate control over food production.
In this context of agrarian techno-colonialism, digital museums, inheritors of colonial cultural institutions, find themselves at a critical crossroads. On one hand, they have the potential to democratise access to knowledge and cultural expressions; on the other, they risk perpetuating and amplifying the same power structures that have historically marginalised non-Western cultures. Integrating works like "A Tale of Two Seeds" into these digital spaces presents profound challenges that go beyond mere inclusion. These challenges demand a radical reconsideration of cataloguing, preservation, and presentation practices, as well as an active questioning of who holds the power to classify, interpret, and contextualise knowledge.
Standard formats of digital storage and presentation, much like the old colonial cabinets of curiosities, often fail to capture the complexity and context of works that challenge Western categorizations. Digital artworks that incorporate living elements, biological processes, or active critiques of classification systems, such as "Transgenic Botany," challenge traditional paradigms of conservation and exhibition. True decoloniality in the context of the digital museum requires more than non-linear interfaces or participatory approaches; it demands dismantling established knowledge hierarchies and creating spaces where indigenous and non-Western epistemologies can not only coexist but lead the narrative. In this sense, the decolonial digital museum must become a space of confrontation and transformation, where artworks are not only exhibited but actively challenge and reconstitute our ways of seeing, knowing, and relating to the world.
To counter these issues, it is imperative to consider alternative approaches that integrate diverse perspectives and knowledge. Pre-Hispanic cultures developed classification systems that considered the medicinal, agricultural, and spiritual utility of plants, offering holistic models deeply integrated into their cultural and ecological contexts. Hylomorphism, with its emphasis on the inseparability of matter and form, can provide a conceptual framework for recontextualising knowledge and technological practices both in the agricultural and digital museistic fields.
Ultimately, the challenge we face is not merely technical but profoundly ethical and political. We must actively dismantle the power structures that these techno-colonial systems uphold, whether in the fields or in our museums. Only then can we create spaces where alternative ways of knowing and being in the world can flourish, where the wisdom of amaranth can coexist and perhaps even eclipse the imposed order of transgenic soy, and where indigenous and local narratives and knowledge can reclaim their central place in the construction of our digital and cultural future.
ABSTRACT
Carl Linnaeus's work in the 1740s, including his development of the horologium florae, highlights a fundamental dichotomy between the poetic observation of the natural rhythms of plants and the practical application of his classification techniques for economic and colonial purposes. His taxonomic methods not only optimized scientific research and resource exploitation but also laid the groundwork for racial and social hierarchies in the colonies. This essay posits a direct connection between Linnaean innovations in biological data organization and modern information management principles, underscoring how these precedents influence current computational systems. Through a contextual analysis of the problems and evolution of Linnaean systems, parallels are identified in issues of bias and techno-colonialism in contemporary technologies, particularly in mechanized agriculture. This technological moment echoes historical colonial processes in the imposition of agricultural technologies and practices that marginalize local knowledge and promote technological homogenization based on asymmetry and centralization of information.
CHAPTER ONE
During the 1740s, Carl Linnaeus undertook extensive journeys to understand the biological rhythms of plants. Observing gardens in Sweden, he noted that certain species of flowers opened and closed at specific times of the day, and that these times varied between species. Fascinated by these patterns, he proposed that one could estimate the time of day by observing which species opened their flowers at each moment. By organising these observations sequentially, Linnaeus formulated what he called the Horologium Florae or Floral Clock. Both in his botanical garden in Uppsala and during his travels throughout Sweden, he collected data on how plants changed over time. In Philosophia Botanica (1751), he listed forty-six examples of plants that opened their flowers at certain times of the day, using forty-three of them to produce his Horologium Florae (Koerner, p. 101).
However, the project never came to fruition during Linnaeus’s lifetime. The failure of the Horologium Florae reflects the dichotomy between an Enlightenment era fascinated by plant life and the utilitarian aims that would drive the standardisation and use of Linnaean methodologies. While the Horologium Florae sought to understand plants in terms of their natural biological rhythms and times, Linnaeus’s classification and standardisation techniques focused on optimising and utilising plants for economic benefits.
As Lisbeth Koerner has documented in detail, Linnaeus was a devoted follower of a peculiar form of cameralism that was popular among his country’s elites. He advocated for a centralised and bureaucratic management of the country's natural resources to boost the national economy and benefit the state. The idea was, as Koerner summarises this economic doctrine, 'that science would create a miniature mercantile empire within the borders of the European state' (Koerner, p. 188), whether by importing and acclimatising foreign plants to Swedish soil and climate or identifying domestic substitutes for costly imports. In both cases, this meant that knowledge about the uses of certain plants and animals had to be assigned and generalised across taxonomic units (Koerner, p. 188).
According to Koerner, Linnaeus viewed science as a key tool for achieving an economic ideal of national self-sufficiency through import substitution, basing his ambitious research projects on the possibility of cultivating exotic plants in Sweden or substituting them with local plants of analogous virtues (Koerner, p. 188). This perspective sought not only to order and classify nature but also to utilise this knowledge for the economic benefit of the Swedish state, as evidenced by his insistence that oeconomia be included as a mandatory part of university education.
Besides economic justifications, classification systems also became powerful tools to justify and facilitate colonial projects. In the colonies, native plants and animals were catalogued and classified not only for scientific knowledge but also to assess their economic potential and utility for colonial powers. This approach allowed European states to maximise the natural resources of their colonies, implementing agricultural and economic systems that profoundly transformed local ecosystems and traditional practices (Müller-Wille, p. 162).
Rebecca Earle, in her article The Pleasures of Taxonomy: Casta Paintings, Classification, and Colonialism, provides a clear example of how Linnaean logics of classification were used for specific purposes during the colonial era. The Casta paintings of 18th-century New Spain applied Linnaeus’s taxonomic principles to categorise people according to their race and mestizaje. These paintings not only represented racial diversity but also helped to impose a colonial social order. The Linnaean classifications of people into varieties based on physical and geographical characteristics reflected and reinforced racial hierarchies while attempting to impose order on the racial diversity perceived as chaotic by colonisers (Earle, p. 23).
Casta paintings catalogued mixed families, using complex terms to identify and label individuals according to their racial origins. This system reflected and reinforced racial and social hierarchies, legitimising colonial domination and structuring colonial society hierarchically. Casta painting, like Linnaean taxonomic systems, sought to organise knowledge and experience into manageable and comprehensible categories, although these classifications were often arbitrary and reflected social prejudices more than biological realities.
Moreover, Casta paintings included flowers and plants brought from Europe, still lifes, and elements of cuisine and food, reflecting a colonial Linnaean classification that connected racial hierarchies with plant hierarchies. This approach established a parallel between the organisation of plants and social organisation, reinforcing colonial hierarchies. In the Americas, many endemic plants, fundamental to agro-industrial matrices, became weeds due to the introduction of European species.
This phenomenon, known as colonial biology, shows how the introduction and displacement of plants during colonisation transformed local ecosystems, turning useful plants into invaders and profoundly altering traditional agricultural practices. Neither the natural history nor the power dynamics that shaped colonialism in the New World operated in a vacuum. The classifications that underpinned early modern knowledge systems in the Atlantic world encompassed both plants and people, reflecting a longing for order that transcended any division between science and state administration. Casta paintings embody these intertwined epistemologies, integrating plants and symbolism brought from Europe with the fetishisation of certain South American plants, superimposed in various ways.
For these reasons, Spanish scientists doubted the possibility of forming a general taxonomy that could accommodate the great variety of flora and fauna in the world. Carl Linnaeus insisted that each natural body could be assigned 'its own peculiar name... so that in the midst of the greatest apparent confusion, the greatest order may be visible,' but not everyone shared his confidence. Joseph Quer was certain that such a system could not exist, asserting that it was impossible 'to form a general system and a perfect method, not only for Natural History as a whole but even for a part of it.' Nature was too complex to be captured in a taxonomy.
CHAPTER TWO
The vast amount of material that Carl Linnaeus handled throughout his life becomes evident when exploring his collections, which include thousands of plant, fish, shell, and insect specimens, in addition to his extensive library and correspondence. At the height of his career, he was at the centre of a correspondence network that spanned all of Europe. Friends and other naturalists informed him about new species and corrected errors in his publications, while his students, sent to various parts of the world, maintained constant communication with him, sending books, letters, and specimens (Koerner, p. 102). The management of this constant flow of data was facilitated by Linnaeus's innovations in paper-based information processing technologies, which allowed him not only to collect but also to structure and use knowledge about species effectively (Koerner, p. 103).
Linnaeus developed a binomial nomenclature system that revolutionised the way scientists named and classified organisms, using two names (genus and species) to identify each organism. This system provided a standardised and universal way to refer to organisms, facilitating communication and information exchange among scientists from different countries and languages. The standardisation and precision of this system were essential for managing the enormous amount of information that naturalists collected and shared (Koerner, p. 110f). Although there have been several modern modifications to Linnaeus's original system, the foundation of Linnaean taxonomy has allowed biologists to group related species into genealogical trees, representing the evolutionary lineage of modern organisms from common ancestors
(Paterlini, 2021).
In the early 1730s, Linnaeus began collecting material for a series of manuscripts titled Fundamenta Botanica. These manuscripts served as the basis for many subsequent publications during his stay in Holland, such as Genera Plantarum and Hortus Cliffortianus. Volumes VII and VIII dealt with 'specific differences' and were the beginning of what twenty years later would become Species Plantarum: a universal catalogue of plant species (Koerner, p. 106). Linnaeus used a page layout divided by horizontal lines into spaces dedicated to each genus, filling these spaces with short definitions of species and bibliographic references (Müller-Wille, p. 103). This method of segmenting and clearly defining each entity facilitated the continuous updating and maintenance of information.
These spaces on paper formed two-dimensional 'boxes' where Linnaeus could add relevant information to a specific genus. This method allowed for the continuous addition of data, something that would not have been possible with the dichotomous or tabular arrangements used previously. However, the amount of space allocated could be problematic: sometimes too large or too small. If the space was insufficient, he continued writing on the other side of the page, allowing the text to flow continuously (Koerner, p. 108).
This conceptual foundation of classification is important because it gives us the basis to understand the origins of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) from our contemporary perspective. In modern computer science, OOP is a dominant paradigm for software development. Its principles of abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism enable the efficient handling of complex data and relationships. This is essential in creating artificial intelligence (AI) models, such as "transformers" in generative AI, which use these techniques to organise data, improve flexibility, and facilitate the development of robust and adaptable systems. Abstraction in programmatic systems allows the simplification of complex systems, as done in AI models by creating representations of real-world problems. Encapsulation facilitates software modularity and maintenance, allowing the development of reusable components crucial for AI applications. Inheritance helps reuse and extend functionalities, vital for complex systems. Polymorphism enables different data types to be treated uniformly, simplifying implementation and adaptability. In AI, for example, these classification methods are fundamental for organising software components into manageable structures, such as in natural language processing, where words, phrases, and grammars are hierarchically represented.
OOP is based on four fundamental principles: abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. Abstraction in OOP involves creating a simplified representation of a complex system, similar to how Linnaeus simplified biological classification through his binomial system. Encapsulation, which hides the internal details of an object and only exposes what is necessary, can be seen similarly to how Linnaeus organised his botanical descriptions, focusing on the essential characteristics for identification and classification (Koerner, p. 108). Inheritance in OOP allows new classes to be based on existing classes, inheriting their attributes and methods. This principle parallels Linnaeus's hierarchical classification, where species are organised into genera, and these into orders and families, reflecting a structure of biological inheritance. Polymorphism, which allows objects of different classes to be treated as instances of the same class through a common interface, finds its echo in the flexibility of Linnaeus's system to adapt to new species and discoveries without needing to reformulate the existing structure (Müller-Wille, p. 103).
CHAPTER THREE
The classification systems developed during the colonial era were not mere scientific tools but potent instruments of domination that imposed a Eurocentric and hierarchical worldview upon the cultures and ecosystems of the Americas. These systems, exemplified but not limited to the work of Carl Linnaeus, not only categorised nature but legitimised the exploitation of resources and the subordination of entire peoples. It is crucial to understand that beyond the individual contributions of scientists like Linnaeus, it was the colonial contexts—and from our current perspective, techno-colonial contexts—that truly became the driving force behind the imposition and perpetuation of hegemonic knowledge systems.
Yuk Hui, in his work The Question Concerning Technology in China, introduces the concept of cosmotécnica, arguing that each culture develops its own technology based on its cosmologies and moral values. This perspective urges us to reconsider technology not merely as a tool to transform the environment but as an alliance with it. Under this light, the creation of languages, which emerged alongside agriculture, can be understood as forging alliances and common languages with plants, integrating cosmic and moral order through specific technical activities.
The work A Tale of Two Seeds: Sound and Silence in Latin America's Andean Plains (Atractor Estudio + Semantica 2022) starkly exposes the continuity of these colonial power structures in the current context of technified agro-industry. The tension between amaranth, a sacred grain for many indigenous cultures, and genetically modified soybean monocultures is not merely an agricultural conflict but a manifestation of the ongoing struggle against the imposition of colonial value systems on local ecosystems and cultures. The categorisation of amaranth as a "weed" by agribusiness corporations reveals the brutality of modern colonial logic. This reclassification is not a neutral scientific act but a violent rewriting of reality that seeks to erase millennia of indigenous knowledge and culture.
The Linnaean classification system, with its apparent simplicity and capacity for standardisation, has found a perverse echo in contemporary programming, where data is structured into classes and objects with clear hierarchies. However, this structuring introduces inherent limitations and biases in AI and Big Data systems. Myaeng's research (2017) reveals how these hierarchical structures can lead to an over-simplification of reality, ignoring the inherent diversity and complexity of data. This excessive simplification not only leads to erroneous decisions but perpetuates and amplifies existing biases, creating a feedback loop of algorithmic injustice.
The transgenic war against amaranth is, in essence, a form of biocultural genocide. Multinational corporations, acting as the new colonial powers, use biotechnology as a weapon to eradicate not only a plant but an entire knowledge system and way of life. This war is not merely against a plant species but a direct attack on the food sovereignty and self-determination of Latin American peoples.
Big data and artificial intelligence systems, far from being neutral, have become the new "digital conquistadors." Their hierarchical data structures and biased algorithms reproduce and amplify the same logics of domination and exclusion that characterised colonial classification systems. In this context, the resistance of amaranth to pesticides becomes a powerful symbol of the resilience of indigenous peoples and knowledge against techno-colonial attempts at eradication.
The technification of agriculture, driven by multinational corporations and global policies, is leading to a pernicious homogenisation of agricultural practices and the erosion of local knowledge. The result is an alarming loss of biodiversity and an increasing dependency on external technologies. This phenomenon is particularly evident in large-scale land acquisitions in Africa and South America, where local agricultural practices are brutally replaced by industrial methods that ignore the ecological and cultural particularities of each region.
The work Transgenic Botany, part of A Tale of Two Seeds, exposes how modern intellectual property systems are a direct continuation of colonial plunder. Just as colonisers appropriated lands and resources, modern corporations seek to patent and privatise life itself. This act of legalised biopiracy is a form of genetic extractivism that threatens not only biodiversity but the very foundation of food sovereignty and cultural identity of LatinAmerican peoples.
The extensive use of data by agro-industrial giants like Bayer/Monsanto has created an overwhelming power asymmetry between farmers and these corporations. The implementation of wireless sensors in tractors that monitor or dictate every farmer's decision is nothing but a modern form of colonialism. This massive data collection has become a "dragnet" that seeks to predict and control agricultural events, further consolidating corporate control over food production.
In this context of agrarian techno-colonialism, digital museums, inheritors of colonial cultural institutions, find themselves at a critical crossroads. On one hand, they have the potential to democratise access to knowledge and cultural expressions; on the other, they risk perpetuating and amplifying the same power structures that have historically marginalised non-Western cultures. Integrating works like "A Tale of Two Seeds" into these digital spaces presents profound challenges that go beyond mere inclusion. These challenges demand a radical reconsideration of cataloguing, preservation, and presentation practices, as well as an active questioning of who holds the power to classify, interpret, and contextualise knowledge.
Standard formats of digital storage and presentation, much like the old colonial cabinets of curiosities, often fail to capture the complexity and context of works that challenge Western categorizations. Digital artworks that incorporate living elements, biological processes, or active critiques of classification systems, such as "Transgenic Botany," challenge traditional paradigms of conservation and exhibition. True decoloniality in the context of the digital museum requires more than non-linear interfaces or participatory approaches; it demands dismantling established knowledge hierarchies and creating spaces where indigenous and non-Western epistemologies can not only coexist but lead the narrative. In this sense, the decolonial digital museum must become a space of confrontation and transformation, where artworks are not only exhibited but actively challenge and reconstitute our ways of seeing, knowing, and relating to the world.
To counter these issues, it is imperative to consider alternative approaches that integrate diverse perspectives and knowledge. Pre-Hispanic cultures developed classification systems that considered the medicinal, agricultural, and spiritual utility of plants, offering holistic models deeply integrated into their cultural and ecological contexts. Hylomorphism, with its emphasis on the inseparability of matter and form, can provide a conceptual framework for recontextualising knowledge and technological practices both in the agricultural and digital museistic fields.
Ultimately, the challenge we face is not merely technical but profoundly ethical and political. We must actively dismantle the power structures that these techno-colonial systems uphold, whether in the fields or in our museums. Only then can we create spaces where alternative ways of knowing and being in the world can flourish, where the wisdom of amaranth can coexist and perhaps even eclipse the imposed order of transgenic soy, and where indigenous and local narratives and knowledge can reclaim their central place in the construction of our digital and cultural future.
Juan Cortés an electronic artist from Colombia. His work focuses on the intersection of art, science and nature. Juan's limited edition Casta paintings are available here.
BY JUAN CORTÉS
ABSTRACT
Carl Linnaeus's work in the 1740s, including his development of the horologium florae, highlights a fundamental dichotomy between the poetic observation of the natural rhythms of plants and the practical application of his classification techniques for economic and colonial purposes. His taxonomic methods not only optimized scientific research and resource exploitation but also laid the groundwork for racial and social hierarchies in the colonies. This essay posits a direct connection between Linnaean innovations in biological data organization and modern information management principles, underscoring how these precedents influence current computational systems. Through a contextual analysis of the problems and evolution of Linnaean systems, parallels are identified in issues of bias and techno-colonialism in contemporary technologies, particularly in mechanized agriculture. This technological moment echoes historical colonial processes in the imposition of agricultural technologies and practices that marginalize local knowledge and promote technological homogenization based on asymmetry and centralization of information.
CHAPTER ONE
During the 1740s, Carl Linnaeus undertook extensive journeys to understand the biological rhythms of plants. Observing gardens in Sweden, he noted that certain species of flowers opened and closed at specific times of the day, and that these times varied between species. Fascinated by these patterns, he proposed that one could estimate the time of day by observing which species opened their flowers at each moment. By organising these observations sequentially, Linnaeus formulated what he called the Horologium Florae or Floral Clock. Both in his botanical garden in Uppsala and during his travels throughout Sweden, he collected data on how plants changed over time. In Philosophia Botanica (1751), he listed forty-six examples of plants that opened their flowers at certain times of the day, using forty-three of them to produce his Horologium Florae (Koerner, p. 101).
However, the project never came to fruition during Linnaeus’s lifetime. The failure of the Horologium Florae reflects the dichotomy between an Enlightenment era fascinated by plant life and the utilitarian aims that would drive the standardisation and use of Linnaean methodologies. While the Horologium Florae sought to understand plants in terms of their natural biological rhythms and times, Linnaeus’s classification and standardisation techniques focused on optimising and utilising plants for economic benefits.
As Lisbeth Koerner has documented in detail, Linnaeus was a devoted follower of a peculiar form of cameralism that was popular among his country’s elites. He advocated for a centralised and bureaucratic management of the country's natural resources to boost the national economy and benefit the state. The idea was, as Koerner summarises this economic doctrine, 'that science would create a miniature mercantile empire within the borders of the European state' (Koerner, p. 188), whether by importing and acclimatising foreign plants to Swedish soil and climate or identifying domestic substitutes for costly imports. In both cases, this meant that knowledge about the uses of certain plants and animals had to be assigned and generalised across taxonomic units (Koerner, p. 188).
According to Koerner, Linnaeus viewed science as a key tool for achieving an economic ideal of national self-sufficiency through import substitution, basing his ambitious research projects on the possibility of cultivating exotic plants in Sweden or substituting them with local plants of analogous virtues (Koerner, p. 188). This perspective sought not only to order and classify nature but also to utilise this knowledge for the economic benefit of the Swedish state, as evidenced by his insistence that oeconomia be included as a mandatory part of university education.
Besides economic justifications, classification systems also became powerful tools to justify and facilitate colonial projects. In the colonies, native plants and animals were catalogued and classified not only for scientific knowledge but also to assess their economic potential and utility for colonial powers. This approach allowed European states to maximise the natural resources of their colonies, implementing agricultural and economic systems that profoundly transformed local ecosystems and traditional practices (Müller-Wille, p. 162).
Rebecca Earle, in her article The Pleasures of Taxonomy: Casta Paintings, Classification, and Colonialism, provides a clear example of how Linnaean logics of classification were used for specific purposes during the colonial era. The Casta paintings of 18th-century New Spain applied Linnaeus’s taxonomic principles to categorise people according to their race and mestizaje. These paintings not only represented racial diversity but also helped to impose a colonial social order. The Linnaean classifications of people into varieties based on physical and geographical characteristics reflected and reinforced racial hierarchies while attempting to impose order on the racial diversity perceived as chaotic by colonisers (Earle, p. 23).
Casta paintings catalogued mixed families, using complex terms to identify and label individuals according to their racial origins. This system reflected and reinforced racial and social hierarchies, legitimising colonial domination and structuring colonial society hierarchically. Casta painting, like Linnaean taxonomic systems, sought to organise knowledge and experience into manageable and comprehensible categories, although these classifications were often arbitrary and reflected social prejudices more than biological realities.
Moreover, Casta paintings included flowers and plants brought from Europe, still lifes, and elements of cuisine and food, reflecting a colonial Linnaean classification that connected racial hierarchies with plant hierarchies. This approach established a parallel between the organisation of plants and social organisation, reinforcing colonial hierarchies. In the Americas, many endemic plants, fundamental to agro-industrial matrices, became weeds due to the introduction of European species.
This phenomenon, known as colonial biology, shows how the introduction and displacement of plants during colonisation transformed local ecosystems, turning useful plants into invaders and profoundly altering traditional agricultural practices. Neither the natural history nor the power dynamics that shaped colonialism in the New World operated in a vacuum. The classifications that underpinned early modern knowledge systems in the Atlantic world encompassed both plants and people, reflecting a longing for order that transcended any division between science and state administration. Casta paintings embody these intertwined epistemologies, integrating plants and symbolism brought from Europe with the fetishisation of certain South American plants, superimposed in various ways.
For these reasons, Spanish scientists doubted the possibility of forming a general taxonomy that could accommodate the great variety of flora and fauna in the world. Carl Linnaeus insisted that each natural body could be assigned 'its own peculiar name... so that in the midst of the greatest apparent confusion, the greatest order may be visible,' but not everyone shared his confidence. Joseph Quer was certain that such a system could not exist, asserting that it was impossible 'to form a general system and a perfect method, not only for Natural History as a whole but even for a part of it.' Nature was too complex to be captured in a taxonomy.
CHAPTER TWO
The vast amount of material that Carl Linnaeus handled throughout his life becomes evident when exploring his collections, which include thousands of plant, fish, shell, and insect specimens, in addition to his extensive library and correspondence. At the height of his career, he was at the centre of a correspondence network that spanned all of Europe. Friends and other naturalists informed him about new species and corrected errors in his publications, while his students, sent to various parts of the world, maintained constant communication with him, sending books, letters, and specimens (Koerner, p. 102). The management of this constant flow of data was facilitated by Linnaeus's innovations in paper-based information processing technologies, which allowed him not only to collect but also to structure and use knowledge about species effectively (Koerner, p. 103).
Linnaeus developed a binomial nomenclature system that revolutionised the way scientists named and classified organisms, using two names (genus and species) to identify each organism. This system provided a standardised and universal way to refer to organisms, facilitating communication and information exchange among scientists from different countries and languages. The standardisation and precision of this system were essential for managing the enormous amount of information that naturalists collected and shared (Koerner, p. 110f). Although there have been several modern modifications to Linnaeus's original system, the foundation of Linnaean taxonomy has allowed biologists to group related species into genealogical trees, representing the evolutionary lineage of modern organisms from common ancestors
(Paterlini, 2021).
In the early 1730s, Linnaeus began collecting material for a series of manuscripts titled Fundamenta Botanica. These manuscripts served as the basis for many subsequent publications during his stay in Holland, such as Genera Plantarum and Hortus Cliffortianus. Volumes VII and VIII dealt with 'specific differences' and were the beginning of what twenty years later would become Species Plantarum: a universal catalogue of plant species (Koerner, p. 106). Linnaeus used a page layout divided by horizontal lines into spaces dedicated to each genus, filling these spaces with short definitions of species and bibliographic references (Müller-Wille, p. 103). This method of segmenting and clearly defining each entity facilitated the continuous updating and maintenance of information.
These spaces on paper formed two-dimensional 'boxes' where Linnaeus could add relevant information to a specific genus. This method allowed for the continuous addition of data, something that would not have been possible with the dichotomous or tabular arrangements used previously. However, the amount of space allocated could be problematic: sometimes too large or too small. If the space was insufficient, he continued writing on the other side of the page, allowing the text to flow continuously (Koerner, p. 108).
This conceptual foundation of classification is important because it gives us the basis to understand the origins of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) from our contemporary perspective. In modern computer science, OOP is a dominant paradigm for software development. Its principles of abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism enable the efficient handling of complex data and relationships. This is essential in creating artificial intelligence (AI) models, such as "transformers" in generative AI, which use these techniques to organise data, improve flexibility, and facilitate the development of robust and adaptable systems. Abstraction in programmatic systems allows the simplification of complex systems, as done in AI models by creating representations of real-world problems. Encapsulation facilitates software modularity and maintenance, allowing the development of reusable components crucial for AI applications. Inheritance helps reuse and extend functionalities, vital for complex systems. Polymorphism enables different data types to be treated uniformly, simplifying implementation and adaptability. In AI, for example, these classification methods are fundamental for organising software components into manageable structures, such as in natural language processing, where words, phrases, and grammars are hierarchically represented.
OOP is based on four fundamental principles: abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. Abstraction in OOP involves creating a simplified representation of a complex system, similar to how Linnaeus simplified biological classification through his binomial system. Encapsulation, which hides the internal details of an object and only exposes what is necessary, can be seen similarly to how Linnaeus organised his botanical descriptions, focusing on the essential characteristics for identification and classification (Koerner, p. 108). Inheritance in OOP allows new classes to be based on existing classes, inheriting their attributes and methods. This principle parallels Linnaeus's hierarchical classification, where species are organised into genera, and these into orders and families, reflecting a structure of biological inheritance. Polymorphism, which allows objects of different classes to be treated as instances of the same class through a common interface, finds its echo in the flexibility of Linnaeus's system to adapt to new species and discoveries without needing to reformulate the existing structure (Müller-Wille, p. 103).
CHAPTER THREE
The classification systems developed during the colonial era were not mere scientific tools but potent instruments of domination that imposed a Eurocentric and hierarchical worldview upon the cultures and ecosystems of the Americas. These systems, exemplified but not limited to the work of Carl Linnaeus, not only categorised nature but legitimised the exploitation of resources and the subordination of entire peoples. It is crucial to understand that beyond the individual contributions of scientists like Linnaeus, it was the colonial contexts—and from our current perspective, techno-colonial contexts—that truly became the driving force behind the imposition and perpetuation of hegemonic knowledge systems.
Yuk Hui, in his work The Question Concerning Technology in China, introduces the concept of cosmotécnica, arguing that each culture develops its own technology based on its cosmologies and moral values. This perspective urges us to reconsider technology not merely as a tool to transform the environment but as an alliance with it. Under this light, the creation of languages, which emerged alongside agriculture, can be understood as forging alliances and common languages with plants, integrating cosmic and moral order through specific technical activities.
The work A Tale of Two Seeds: Sound and Silence in Latin America's Andean Plains (Atractor Estudio + Semantica 2022) starkly exposes the continuity of these colonial power structures in the current context of technified agro-industry. The tension between amaranth, a sacred grain for many indigenous cultures, and genetically modified soybean monocultures is not merely an agricultural conflict but a manifestation of the ongoing struggle against the imposition of colonial value systems on local ecosystems and cultures. The categorisation of amaranth as a "weed" by agribusiness corporations reveals the brutality of modern colonial logic. This reclassification is not a neutral scientific act but a violent rewriting of reality that seeks to erase millennia of indigenous knowledge and culture.
The Linnaean classification system, with its apparent simplicity and capacity for standardisation, has found a perverse echo in contemporary programming, where data is structured into classes and objects with clear hierarchies. However, this structuring introduces inherent limitations and biases in AI and Big Data systems. Myaeng's research (2017) reveals how these hierarchical structures can lead to an over-simplification of reality, ignoring the inherent diversity and complexity of data. This excessive simplification not only leads to erroneous decisions but perpetuates and amplifies existing biases, creating a feedback loop of algorithmic injustice.
The transgenic war against amaranth is, in essence, a form of biocultural genocide. Multinational corporations, acting as the new colonial powers, use biotechnology as a weapon to eradicate not only a plant but an entire knowledge system and way of life. This war is not merely against a plant species but a direct attack on the food sovereignty and self-determination of Latin American peoples.
Big data and artificial intelligence systems, far from being neutral, have become the new "digital conquistadors." Their hierarchical data structures and biased algorithms reproduce and amplify the same logics of domination and exclusion that characterised colonial classification systems. In this context, the resistance of amaranth to pesticides becomes a powerful symbol of the resilience of indigenous peoples and knowledge against techno-colonial attempts at eradication.
The technification of agriculture, driven by multinational corporations and global policies, is leading to a pernicious homogenisation of agricultural practices and the erosion of local knowledge. The result is an alarming loss of biodiversity and an increasing dependency on external technologies. This phenomenon is particularly evident in large-scale land acquisitions in Africa and South America, where local agricultural practices are brutally replaced by industrial methods that ignore the ecological and cultural particularities of each region.
The work Transgenic Botany, part of A Tale of Two Seeds, exposes how modern intellectual property systems are a direct continuation of colonial plunder. Just as colonisers appropriated lands and resources, modern corporations seek to patent and privatise life itself. This act of legalised biopiracy is a form of genetic extractivism that threatens not only biodiversity but the very foundation of food sovereignty and cultural identity of LatinAmerican peoples.
The extensive use of data by agro-industrial giants like Bayer/Monsanto has created an overwhelming power asymmetry between farmers and these corporations. The implementation of wireless sensors in tractors that monitor or dictate every farmer's decision is nothing but a modern form of colonialism. This massive data collection has become a "dragnet" that seeks to predict and control agricultural events, further consolidating corporate control over food production.
In this context of agrarian techno-colonialism, digital museums, inheritors of colonial cultural institutions, find themselves at a critical crossroads. On one hand, they have the potential to democratise access to knowledge and cultural expressions; on the other, they risk perpetuating and amplifying the same power structures that have historically marginalised non-Western cultures. Integrating works like "A Tale of Two Seeds" into these digital spaces presents profound challenges that go beyond mere inclusion. These challenges demand a radical reconsideration of cataloguing, preservation, and presentation practices, as well as an active questioning of who holds the power to classify, interpret, and contextualise knowledge.
Standard formats of digital storage and presentation, much like the old colonial cabinets of curiosities, often fail to capture the complexity and context of works that challenge Western categorizations. Digital artworks that incorporate living elements, biological processes, or active critiques of classification systems, such as "Transgenic Botany," challenge traditional paradigms of conservation and exhibition. True decoloniality in the context of the digital museum requires more than non-linear interfaces or participatory approaches; it demands dismantling established knowledge hierarchies and creating spaces where indigenous and non-Western epistemologies can not only coexist but lead the narrative. In this sense, the decolonial digital museum must become a space of confrontation and transformation, where artworks are not only exhibited but actively challenge and reconstitute our ways of seeing, knowing, and relating to the world.
To counter these issues, it is imperative to consider alternative approaches that integrate diverse perspectives and knowledge. Pre-Hispanic cultures developed classification systems that considered the medicinal, agricultural, and spiritual utility of plants, offering holistic models deeply integrated into their cultural and ecological contexts. Hylomorphism, with its emphasis on the inseparability of matter and form, can provide a conceptual framework for recontextualising knowledge and technological practices both in the agricultural and digital museistic fields.
Ultimately, the challenge we face is not merely technical but profoundly ethical and political. We must actively dismantle the power structures that these techno-colonial systems uphold, whether in the fields or in our museums. Only then can we create spaces where alternative ways of knowing and being in the world can flourish, where the wisdom of amaranth can coexist and perhaps even eclipse the imposed order of transgenic soy, and where indigenous and local narratives and knowledge can reclaim their central place in the construction of our digital and cultural future.
ABSTRACT
Carl Linnaeus's work in the 1740s, including his development of the horologium florae, highlights a fundamental dichotomy between the poetic observation of the natural rhythms of plants and the practical application of his classification techniques for economic and colonial purposes. His taxonomic methods not only optimized scientific research and resource exploitation but also laid the groundwork for racial and social hierarchies in the colonies. This essay posits a direct connection between Linnaean innovations in biological data organization and modern information management principles, underscoring how these precedents influence current computational systems. Through a contextual analysis of the problems and evolution of Linnaean systems, parallels are identified in issues of bias and techno-colonialism in contemporary technologies, particularly in mechanized agriculture. This technological moment echoes historical colonial processes in the imposition of agricultural technologies and practices that marginalize local knowledge and promote technological homogenization based on asymmetry and centralization of information.
CHAPTER ONE
During the 1740s, Carl Linnaeus undertook extensive journeys to understand the biological rhythms of plants. Observing gardens in Sweden, he noted that certain species of flowers opened and closed at specific times of the day, and that these times varied between species. Fascinated by these patterns, he proposed that one could estimate the time of day by observing which species opened their flowers at each moment. By organising these observations sequentially, Linnaeus formulated what he called the Horologium Florae or Floral Clock. Both in his botanical garden in Uppsala and during his travels throughout Sweden, he collected data on how plants changed over time. In Philosophia Botanica (1751), he listed forty-six examples of plants that opened their flowers at certain times of the day, using forty-three of them to produce his Horologium Florae (Koerner, p. 101).
However, the project never came to fruition during Linnaeus’s lifetime. The failure of the Horologium Florae reflects the dichotomy between an Enlightenment era fascinated by plant life and the utilitarian aims that would drive the standardisation and use of Linnaean methodologies. While the Horologium Florae sought to understand plants in terms of their natural biological rhythms and times, Linnaeus’s classification and standardisation techniques focused on optimising and utilising plants for economic benefits.
As Lisbeth Koerner has documented in detail, Linnaeus was a devoted follower of a peculiar form of cameralism that was popular among his country’s elites. He advocated for a centralised and bureaucratic management of the country's natural resources to boost the national economy and benefit the state. The idea was, as Koerner summarises this economic doctrine, 'that science would create a miniature mercantile empire within the borders of the European state' (Koerner, p. 188), whether by importing and acclimatising foreign plants to Swedish soil and climate or identifying domestic substitutes for costly imports. In both cases, this meant that knowledge about the uses of certain plants and animals had to be assigned and generalised across taxonomic units (Koerner, p. 188).
According to Koerner, Linnaeus viewed science as a key tool for achieving an economic ideal of national self-sufficiency through import substitution, basing his ambitious research projects on the possibility of cultivating exotic plants in Sweden or substituting them with local plants of analogous virtues (Koerner, p. 188). This perspective sought not only to order and classify nature but also to utilise this knowledge for the economic benefit of the Swedish state, as evidenced by his insistence that oeconomia be included as a mandatory part of university education.
Besides economic justifications, classification systems also became powerful tools to justify and facilitate colonial projects. In the colonies, native plants and animals were catalogued and classified not only for scientific knowledge but also to assess their economic potential and utility for colonial powers. This approach allowed European states to maximise the natural resources of their colonies, implementing agricultural and economic systems that profoundly transformed local ecosystems and traditional practices (Müller-Wille, p. 162).
Rebecca Earle, in her article The Pleasures of Taxonomy: Casta Paintings, Classification, and Colonialism, provides a clear example of how Linnaean logics of classification were used for specific purposes during the colonial era. The Casta paintings of 18th-century New Spain applied Linnaeus’s taxonomic principles to categorise people according to their race and mestizaje. These paintings not only represented racial diversity but also helped to impose a colonial social order. The Linnaean classifications of people into varieties based on physical and geographical characteristics reflected and reinforced racial hierarchies while attempting to impose order on the racial diversity perceived as chaotic by colonisers (Earle, p. 23).
Casta paintings catalogued mixed families, using complex terms to identify and label individuals according to their racial origins. This system reflected and reinforced racial and social hierarchies, legitimising colonial domination and structuring colonial society hierarchically. Casta painting, like Linnaean taxonomic systems, sought to organise knowledge and experience into manageable and comprehensible categories, although these classifications were often arbitrary and reflected social prejudices more than biological realities.
Moreover, Casta paintings included flowers and plants brought from Europe, still lifes, and elements of cuisine and food, reflecting a colonial Linnaean classification that connected racial hierarchies with plant hierarchies. This approach established a parallel between the organisation of plants and social organisation, reinforcing colonial hierarchies. In the Americas, many endemic plants, fundamental to agro-industrial matrices, became weeds due to the introduction of European species.
This phenomenon, known as colonial biology, shows how the introduction and displacement of plants during colonisation transformed local ecosystems, turning useful plants into invaders and profoundly altering traditional agricultural practices. Neither the natural history nor the power dynamics that shaped colonialism in the New World operated in a vacuum. The classifications that underpinned early modern knowledge systems in the Atlantic world encompassed both plants and people, reflecting a longing for order that transcended any division between science and state administration. Casta paintings embody these intertwined epistemologies, integrating plants and symbolism brought from Europe with the fetishisation of certain South American plants, superimposed in various ways.
For these reasons, Spanish scientists doubted the possibility of forming a general taxonomy that could accommodate the great variety of flora and fauna in the world. Carl Linnaeus insisted that each natural body could be assigned 'its own peculiar name... so that in the midst of the greatest apparent confusion, the greatest order may be visible,' but not everyone shared his confidence. Joseph Quer was certain that such a system could not exist, asserting that it was impossible 'to form a general system and a perfect method, not only for Natural History as a whole but even for a part of it.' Nature was too complex to be captured in a taxonomy.
CHAPTER TWO
The vast amount of material that Carl Linnaeus handled throughout his life becomes evident when exploring his collections, which include thousands of plant, fish, shell, and insect specimens, in addition to his extensive library and correspondence. At the height of his career, he was at the centre of a correspondence network that spanned all of Europe. Friends and other naturalists informed him about new species and corrected errors in his publications, while his students, sent to various parts of the world, maintained constant communication with him, sending books, letters, and specimens (Koerner, p. 102). The management of this constant flow of data was facilitated by Linnaeus's innovations in paper-based information processing technologies, which allowed him not only to collect but also to structure and use knowledge about species effectively (Koerner, p. 103).
Linnaeus developed a binomial nomenclature system that revolutionised the way scientists named and classified organisms, using two names (genus and species) to identify each organism. This system provided a standardised and universal way to refer to organisms, facilitating communication and information exchange among scientists from different countries and languages. The standardisation and precision of this system were essential for managing the enormous amount of information that naturalists collected and shared (Koerner, p. 110f). Although there have been several modern modifications to Linnaeus's original system, the foundation of Linnaean taxonomy has allowed biologists to group related species into genealogical trees, representing the evolutionary lineage of modern organisms from common ancestors
(Paterlini, 2021).
In the early 1730s, Linnaeus began collecting material for a series of manuscripts titled Fundamenta Botanica. These manuscripts served as the basis for many subsequent publications during his stay in Holland, such as Genera Plantarum and Hortus Cliffortianus. Volumes VII and VIII dealt with 'specific differences' and were the beginning of what twenty years later would become Species Plantarum: a universal catalogue of plant species (Koerner, p. 106). Linnaeus used a page layout divided by horizontal lines into spaces dedicated to each genus, filling these spaces with short definitions of species and bibliographic references (Müller-Wille, p. 103). This method of segmenting and clearly defining each entity facilitated the continuous updating and maintenance of information.
These spaces on paper formed two-dimensional 'boxes' where Linnaeus could add relevant information to a specific genus. This method allowed for the continuous addition of data, something that would not have been possible with the dichotomous or tabular arrangements used previously. However, the amount of space allocated could be problematic: sometimes too large or too small. If the space was insufficient, he continued writing on the other side of the page, allowing the text to flow continuously (Koerner, p. 108).
This conceptual foundation of classification is important because it gives us the basis to understand the origins of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) from our contemporary perspective. In modern computer science, OOP is a dominant paradigm for software development. Its principles of abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism enable the efficient handling of complex data and relationships. This is essential in creating artificial intelligence (AI) models, such as "transformers" in generative AI, which use these techniques to organise data, improve flexibility, and facilitate the development of robust and adaptable systems. Abstraction in programmatic systems allows the simplification of complex systems, as done in AI models by creating representations of real-world problems. Encapsulation facilitates software modularity and maintenance, allowing the development of reusable components crucial for AI applications. Inheritance helps reuse and extend functionalities, vital for complex systems. Polymorphism enables different data types to be treated uniformly, simplifying implementation and adaptability. In AI, for example, these classification methods are fundamental for organising software components into manageable structures, such as in natural language processing, where words, phrases, and grammars are hierarchically represented.
OOP is based on four fundamental principles: abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. Abstraction in OOP involves creating a simplified representation of a complex system, similar to how Linnaeus simplified biological classification through his binomial system. Encapsulation, which hides the internal details of an object and only exposes what is necessary, can be seen similarly to how Linnaeus organised his botanical descriptions, focusing on the essential characteristics for identification and classification (Koerner, p. 108). Inheritance in OOP allows new classes to be based on existing classes, inheriting their attributes and methods. This principle parallels Linnaeus's hierarchical classification, where species are organised into genera, and these into orders and families, reflecting a structure of biological inheritance. Polymorphism, which allows objects of different classes to be treated as instances of the same class through a common interface, finds its echo in the flexibility of Linnaeus's system to adapt to new species and discoveries without needing to reformulate the existing structure (Müller-Wille, p. 103).
CHAPTER THREE
The classification systems developed during the colonial era were not mere scientific tools but potent instruments of domination that imposed a Eurocentric and hierarchical worldview upon the cultures and ecosystems of the Americas. These systems, exemplified but not limited to the work of Carl Linnaeus, not only categorised nature but legitimised the exploitation of resources and the subordination of entire peoples. It is crucial to understand that beyond the individual contributions of scientists like Linnaeus, it was the colonial contexts—and from our current perspective, techno-colonial contexts—that truly became the driving force behind the imposition and perpetuation of hegemonic knowledge systems.
Yuk Hui, in his work The Question Concerning Technology in China, introduces the concept of cosmotécnica, arguing that each culture develops its own technology based on its cosmologies and moral values. This perspective urges us to reconsider technology not merely as a tool to transform the environment but as an alliance with it. Under this light, the creation of languages, which emerged alongside agriculture, can be understood as forging alliances and common languages with plants, integrating cosmic and moral order through specific technical activities.
The work A Tale of Two Seeds: Sound and Silence in Latin America's Andean Plains (Atractor Estudio + Semantica 2022) starkly exposes the continuity of these colonial power structures in the current context of technified agro-industry. The tension between amaranth, a sacred grain for many indigenous cultures, and genetically modified soybean monocultures is not merely an agricultural conflict but a manifestation of the ongoing struggle against the imposition of colonial value systems on local ecosystems and cultures. The categorisation of amaranth as a "weed" by agribusiness corporations reveals the brutality of modern colonial logic. This reclassification is not a neutral scientific act but a violent rewriting of reality that seeks to erase millennia of indigenous knowledge and culture.
The Linnaean classification system, with its apparent simplicity and capacity for standardisation, has found a perverse echo in contemporary programming, where data is structured into classes and objects with clear hierarchies. However, this structuring introduces inherent limitations and biases in AI and Big Data systems. Myaeng's research (2017) reveals how these hierarchical structures can lead to an over-simplification of reality, ignoring the inherent diversity and complexity of data. This excessive simplification not only leads to erroneous decisions but perpetuates and amplifies existing biases, creating a feedback loop of algorithmic injustice.
The transgenic war against amaranth is, in essence, a form of biocultural genocide. Multinational corporations, acting as the new colonial powers, use biotechnology as a weapon to eradicate not only a plant but an entire knowledge system and way of life. This war is not merely against a plant species but a direct attack on the food sovereignty and self-determination of Latin American peoples.
Big data and artificial intelligence systems, far from being neutral, have become the new "digital conquistadors." Their hierarchical data structures and biased algorithms reproduce and amplify the same logics of domination and exclusion that characterised colonial classification systems. In this context, the resistance of amaranth to pesticides becomes a powerful symbol of the resilience of indigenous peoples and knowledge against techno-colonial attempts at eradication.
The technification of agriculture, driven by multinational corporations and global policies, is leading to a pernicious homogenisation of agricultural practices and the erosion of local knowledge. The result is an alarming loss of biodiversity and an increasing dependency on external technologies. This phenomenon is particularly evident in large-scale land acquisitions in Africa and South America, where local agricultural practices are brutally replaced by industrial methods that ignore the ecological and cultural particularities of each region.
The work Transgenic Botany, part of A Tale of Two Seeds, exposes how modern intellectual property systems are a direct continuation of colonial plunder. Just as colonisers appropriated lands and resources, modern corporations seek to patent and privatise life itself. This act of legalised biopiracy is a form of genetic extractivism that threatens not only biodiversity but the very foundation of food sovereignty and cultural identity of LatinAmerican peoples.
The extensive use of data by agro-industrial giants like Bayer/Monsanto has created an overwhelming power asymmetry between farmers and these corporations. The implementation of wireless sensors in tractors that monitor or dictate every farmer's decision is nothing but a modern form of colonialism. This massive data collection has become a "dragnet" that seeks to predict and control agricultural events, further consolidating corporate control over food production.
In this context of agrarian techno-colonialism, digital museums, inheritors of colonial cultural institutions, find themselves at a critical crossroads. On one hand, they have the potential to democratise access to knowledge and cultural expressions; on the other, they risk perpetuating and amplifying the same power structures that have historically marginalised non-Western cultures. Integrating works like "A Tale of Two Seeds" into these digital spaces presents profound challenges that go beyond mere inclusion. These challenges demand a radical reconsideration of cataloguing, preservation, and presentation practices, as well as an active questioning of who holds the power to classify, interpret, and contextualise knowledge.
Standard formats of digital storage and presentation, much like the old colonial cabinets of curiosities, often fail to capture the complexity and context of works that challenge Western categorizations. Digital artworks that incorporate living elements, biological processes, or active critiques of classification systems, such as "Transgenic Botany," challenge traditional paradigms of conservation and exhibition. True decoloniality in the context of the digital museum requires more than non-linear interfaces or participatory approaches; it demands dismantling established knowledge hierarchies and creating spaces where indigenous and non-Western epistemologies can not only coexist but lead the narrative. In this sense, the decolonial digital museum must become a space of confrontation and transformation, where artworks are not only exhibited but actively challenge and reconstitute our ways of seeing, knowing, and relating to the world.
To counter these issues, it is imperative to consider alternative approaches that integrate diverse perspectives and knowledge. Pre-Hispanic cultures developed classification systems that considered the medicinal, agricultural, and spiritual utility of plants, offering holistic models deeply integrated into their cultural and ecological contexts. Hylomorphism, with its emphasis on the inseparability of matter and form, can provide a conceptual framework for recontextualising knowledge and technological practices both in the agricultural and digital museistic fields.
Ultimately, the challenge we face is not merely technical but profoundly ethical and political. We must actively dismantle the power structures that these techno-colonial systems uphold, whether in the fields or in our museums. Only then can we create spaces where alternative ways of knowing and being in the world can flourish, where the wisdom of amaranth can coexist and perhaps even eclipse the imposed order of transgenic soy, and where indigenous and local narratives and knowledge can reclaim their central place in the construction of our digital and cultural future.
Juan Cortés an electronic artist from Colombia. His work focuses on the intersection of art, science and nature. Juan's limited edition Casta paintings are available here.
BY JUAN CORTÉS
ABSTRACT
Carl Linnaeus's work in the 1740s, including his development of the horologium florae, highlights a fundamental dichotomy between the poetic observation of the natural rhythms of plants and the practical application of his classification techniques for economic and colonial purposes. His taxonomic methods not only optimized scientific research and resource exploitation but also laid the groundwork for racial and social hierarchies in the colonies. This essay posits a direct connection between Linnaean innovations in biological data organization and modern information management principles, underscoring how these precedents influence current computational systems. Through a contextual analysis of the problems and evolution of Linnaean systems, parallels are identified in issues of bias and techno-colonialism in contemporary technologies, particularly in mechanized agriculture. This technological moment echoes historical colonial processes in the imposition of agricultural technologies and practices that marginalize local knowledge and promote technological homogenization based on asymmetry and centralization of information.
CHAPTER ONE
During the 1740s, Carl Linnaeus undertook extensive journeys to understand the biological rhythms of plants. Observing gardens in Sweden, he noted that certain species of flowers opened and closed at specific times of the day, and that these times varied between species. Fascinated by these patterns, he proposed that one could estimate the time of day by observing which species opened their flowers at each moment. By organising these observations sequentially, Linnaeus formulated what he called the Horologium Florae or Floral Clock. Both in his botanical garden in Uppsala and during his travels throughout Sweden, he collected data on how plants changed over time. In Philosophia Botanica (1751), he listed forty-six examples of plants that opened their flowers at certain times of the day, using forty-three of them to produce his Horologium Florae (Koerner, p. 101).
However, the project never came to fruition during Linnaeus’s lifetime. The failure of the Horologium Florae reflects the dichotomy between an Enlightenment era fascinated by plant life and the utilitarian aims that would drive the standardisation and use of Linnaean methodologies. While the Horologium Florae sought to understand plants in terms of their natural biological rhythms and times, Linnaeus’s classification and standardisation techniques focused on optimising and utilising plants for economic benefits.
As Lisbeth Koerner has documented in detail, Linnaeus was a devoted follower of a peculiar form of cameralism that was popular among his country’s elites. He advocated for a centralised and bureaucratic management of the country's natural resources to boost the national economy and benefit the state. The idea was, as Koerner summarises this economic doctrine, 'that science would create a miniature mercantile empire within the borders of the European state' (Koerner, p. 188), whether by importing and acclimatising foreign plants to Swedish soil and climate or identifying domestic substitutes for costly imports. In both cases, this meant that knowledge about the uses of certain plants and animals had to be assigned and generalised across taxonomic units (Koerner, p. 188).
According to Koerner, Linnaeus viewed science as a key tool for achieving an economic ideal of national self-sufficiency through import substitution, basing his ambitious research projects on the possibility of cultivating exotic plants in Sweden or substituting them with local plants of analogous virtues (Koerner, p. 188). This perspective sought not only to order and classify nature but also to utilise this knowledge for the economic benefit of the Swedish state, as evidenced by his insistence that oeconomia be included as a mandatory part of university education.
Besides economic justifications, classification systems also became powerful tools to justify and facilitate colonial projects. In the colonies, native plants and animals were catalogued and classified not only for scientific knowledge but also to assess their economic potential and utility for colonial powers. This approach allowed European states to maximise the natural resources of their colonies, implementing agricultural and economic systems that profoundly transformed local ecosystems and traditional practices (Müller-Wille, p. 162).
Rebecca Earle, in her article The Pleasures of Taxonomy: Casta Paintings, Classification, and Colonialism, provides a clear example of how Linnaean logics of classification were used for specific purposes during the colonial era. The Casta paintings of 18th-century New Spain applied Linnaeus’s taxonomic principles to categorise people according to their race and mestizaje. These paintings not only represented racial diversity but also helped to impose a colonial social order. The Linnaean classifications of people into varieties based on physical and geographical characteristics reflected and reinforced racial hierarchies while attempting to impose order on the racial diversity perceived as chaotic by colonisers (Earle, p. 23).
Casta paintings catalogued mixed families, using complex terms to identify and label individuals according to their racial origins. This system reflected and reinforced racial and social hierarchies, legitimising colonial domination and structuring colonial society hierarchically. Casta painting, like Linnaean taxonomic systems, sought to organise knowledge and experience into manageable and comprehensible categories, although these classifications were often arbitrary and reflected social prejudices more than biological realities.
Moreover, Casta paintings included flowers and plants brought from Europe, still lifes, and elements of cuisine and food, reflecting a colonial Linnaean classification that connected racial hierarchies with plant hierarchies. This approach established a parallel between the organisation of plants and social organisation, reinforcing colonial hierarchies. In the Americas, many endemic plants, fundamental to agro-industrial matrices, became weeds due to the introduction of European species.
This phenomenon, known as colonial biology, shows how the introduction and displacement of plants during colonisation transformed local ecosystems, turning useful plants into invaders and profoundly altering traditional agricultural practices. Neither the natural history nor the power dynamics that shaped colonialism in the New World operated in a vacuum. The classifications that underpinned early modern knowledge systems in the Atlantic world encompassed both plants and people, reflecting a longing for order that transcended any division between science and state administration. Casta paintings embody these intertwined epistemologies, integrating plants and symbolism brought from Europe with the fetishisation of certain South American plants, superimposed in various ways.
For these reasons, Spanish scientists doubted the possibility of forming a general taxonomy that could accommodate the great variety of flora and fauna in the world. Carl Linnaeus insisted that each natural body could be assigned 'its own peculiar name... so that in the midst of the greatest apparent confusion, the greatest order may be visible,' but not everyone shared his confidence. Joseph Quer was certain that such a system could not exist, asserting that it was impossible 'to form a general system and a perfect method, not only for Natural History as a whole but even for a part of it.' Nature was too complex to be captured in a taxonomy.
CHAPTER TWO
The vast amount of material that Carl Linnaeus handled throughout his life becomes evident when exploring his collections, which include thousands of plant, fish, shell, and insect specimens, in addition to his extensive library and correspondence. At the height of his career, he was at the centre of a correspondence network that spanned all of Europe. Friends and other naturalists informed him about new species and corrected errors in his publications, while his students, sent to various parts of the world, maintained constant communication with him, sending books, letters, and specimens (Koerner, p. 102). The management of this constant flow of data was facilitated by Linnaeus's innovations in paper-based information processing technologies, which allowed him not only to collect but also to structure and use knowledge about species effectively (Koerner, p. 103).
Linnaeus developed a binomial nomenclature system that revolutionised the way scientists named and classified organisms, using two names (genus and species) to identify each organism. This system provided a standardised and universal way to refer to organisms, facilitating communication and information exchange among scientists from different countries and languages. The standardisation and precision of this system were essential for managing the enormous amount of information that naturalists collected and shared (Koerner, p. 110f). Although there have been several modern modifications to Linnaeus's original system, the foundation of Linnaean taxonomy has allowed biologists to group related species into genealogical trees, representing the evolutionary lineage of modern organisms from common ancestors
(Paterlini, 2021).
In the early 1730s, Linnaeus began collecting material for a series of manuscripts titled Fundamenta Botanica. These manuscripts served as the basis for many subsequent publications during his stay in Holland, such as Genera Plantarum and Hortus Cliffortianus. Volumes VII and VIII dealt with 'specific differences' and were the beginning of what twenty years later would become Species Plantarum: a universal catalogue of plant species (Koerner, p. 106). Linnaeus used a page layout divided by horizontal lines into spaces dedicated to each genus, filling these spaces with short definitions of species and bibliographic references (Müller-Wille, p. 103). This method of segmenting and clearly defining each entity facilitated the continuous updating and maintenance of information.
These spaces on paper formed two-dimensional 'boxes' where Linnaeus could add relevant information to a specific genus. This method allowed for the continuous addition of data, something that would not have been possible with the dichotomous or tabular arrangements used previously. However, the amount of space allocated could be problematic: sometimes too large or too small. If the space was insufficient, he continued writing on the other side of the page, allowing the text to flow continuously (Koerner, p. 108).
This conceptual foundation of classification is important because it gives us the basis to understand the origins of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) from our contemporary perspective. In modern computer science, OOP is a dominant paradigm for software development. Its principles of abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism enable the efficient handling of complex data and relationships. This is essential in creating artificial intelligence (AI) models, such as "transformers" in generative AI, which use these techniques to organise data, improve flexibility, and facilitate the development of robust and adaptable systems. Abstraction in programmatic systems allows the simplification of complex systems, as done in AI models by creating representations of real-world problems. Encapsulation facilitates software modularity and maintenance, allowing the development of reusable components crucial for AI applications. Inheritance helps reuse and extend functionalities, vital for complex systems. Polymorphism enables different data types to be treated uniformly, simplifying implementation and adaptability. In AI, for example, these classification methods are fundamental for organising software components into manageable structures, such as in natural language processing, where words, phrases, and grammars are hierarchically represented.
OOP is based on four fundamental principles: abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. Abstraction in OOP involves creating a simplified representation of a complex system, similar to how Linnaeus simplified biological classification through his binomial system. Encapsulation, which hides the internal details of an object and only exposes what is necessary, can be seen similarly to how Linnaeus organised his botanical descriptions, focusing on the essential characteristics for identification and classification (Koerner, p. 108). Inheritance in OOP allows new classes to be based on existing classes, inheriting their attributes and methods. This principle parallels Linnaeus's hierarchical classification, where species are organised into genera, and these into orders and families, reflecting a structure of biological inheritance. Polymorphism, which allows objects of different classes to be treated as instances of the same class through a common interface, finds its echo in the flexibility of Linnaeus's system to adapt to new species and discoveries without needing to reformulate the existing structure (Müller-Wille, p. 103).
CHAPTER THREE
The classification systems developed during the colonial era were not mere scientific tools but potent instruments of domination that imposed a Eurocentric and hierarchical worldview upon the cultures and ecosystems of the Americas. These systems, exemplified but not limited to the work of Carl Linnaeus, not only categorised nature but legitimised the exploitation of resources and the subordination of entire peoples. It is crucial to understand that beyond the individual contributions of scientists like Linnaeus, it was the colonial contexts—and from our current perspective, techno-colonial contexts—that truly became the driving force behind the imposition and perpetuation of hegemonic knowledge systems.
Yuk Hui, in his work The Question Concerning Technology in China, introduces the concept of cosmotécnica, arguing that each culture develops its own technology based on its cosmologies and moral values. This perspective urges us to reconsider technology not merely as a tool to transform the environment but as an alliance with it. Under this light, the creation of languages, which emerged alongside agriculture, can be understood as forging alliances and common languages with plants, integrating cosmic and moral order through specific technical activities.
The work A Tale of Two Seeds: Sound and Silence in Latin America's Andean Plains (Atractor Estudio + Semantica 2022) starkly exposes the continuity of these colonial power structures in the current context of technified agro-industry. The tension between amaranth, a sacred grain for many indigenous cultures, and genetically modified soybean monocultures is not merely an agricultural conflict but a manifestation of the ongoing struggle against the imposition of colonial value systems on local ecosystems and cultures. The categorisation of amaranth as a "weed" by agribusiness corporations reveals the brutality of modern colonial logic. This reclassification is not a neutral scientific act but a violent rewriting of reality that seeks to erase millennia of indigenous knowledge and culture.
The Linnaean classification system, with its apparent simplicity and capacity for standardisation, has found a perverse echo in contemporary programming, where data is structured into classes and objects with clear hierarchies. However, this structuring introduces inherent limitations and biases in AI and Big Data systems. Myaeng's research (2017) reveals how these hierarchical structures can lead to an over-simplification of reality, ignoring the inherent diversity and complexity of data. This excessive simplification not only leads to erroneous decisions but perpetuates and amplifies existing biases, creating a feedback loop of algorithmic injustice.
The transgenic war against amaranth is, in essence, a form of biocultural genocide. Multinational corporations, acting as the new colonial powers, use biotechnology as a weapon to eradicate not only a plant but an entire knowledge system and way of life. This war is not merely against a plant species but a direct attack on the food sovereignty and self-determination of Latin American peoples.
Big data and artificial intelligence systems, far from being neutral, have become the new "digital conquistadors." Their hierarchical data structures and biased algorithms reproduce and amplify the same logics of domination and exclusion that characterised colonial classification systems. In this context, the resistance of amaranth to pesticides becomes a powerful symbol of the resilience of indigenous peoples and knowledge against techno-colonial attempts at eradication.
The technification of agriculture, driven by multinational corporations and global policies, is leading to a pernicious homogenisation of agricultural practices and the erosion of local knowledge. The result is an alarming loss of biodiversity and an increasing dependency on external technologies. This phenomenon is particularly evident in large-scale land acquisitions in Africa and South America, where local agricultural practices are brutally replaced by industrial methods that ignore the ecological and cultural particularities of each region.
The work Transgenic Botany, part of A Tale of Two Seeds, exposes how modern intellectual property systems are a direct continuation of colonial plunder. Just as colonisers appropriated lands and resources, modern corporations seek to patent and privatise life itself. This act of legalised biopiracy is a form of genetic extractivism that threatens not only biodiversity but the very foundation of food sovereignty and cultural identity of LatinAmerican peoples.
The extensive use of data by agro-industrial giants like Bayer/Monsanto has created an overwhelming power asymmetry between farmers and these corporations. The implementation of wireless sensors in tractors that monitor or dictate every farmer's decision is nothing but a modern form of colonialism. This massive data collection has become a "dragnet" that seeks to predict and control agricultural events, further consolidating corporate control over food production.
In this context of agrarian techno-colonialism, digital museums, inheritors of colonial cultural institutions, find themselves at a critical crossroads. On one hand, they have the potential to democratise access to knowledge and cultural expressions; on the other, they risk perpetuating and amplifying the same power structures that have historically marginalised non-Western cultures. Integrating works like "A Tale of Two Seeds" into these digital spaces presents profound challenges that go beyond mere inclusion. These challenges demand a radical reconsideration of cataloguing, preservation, and presentation practices, as well as an active questioning of who holds the power to classify, interpret, and contextualise knowledge.
Standard formats of digital storage and presentation, much like the old colonial cabinets of curiosities, often fail to capture the complexity and context of works that challenge Western categorizations. Digital artworks that incorporate living elements, biological processes, or active critiques of classification systems, such as "Transgenic Botany," challenge traditional paradigms of conservation and exhibition. True decoloniality in the context of the digital museum requires more than non-linear interfaces or participatory approaches; it demands dismantling established knowledge hierarchies and creating spaces where indigenous and non-Western epistemologies can not only coexist but lead the narrative. In this sense, the decolonial digital museum must become a space of confrontation and transformation, where artworks are not only exhibited but actively challenge and reconstitute our ways of seeing, knowing, and relating to the world.
To counter these issues, it is imperative to consider alternative approaches that integrate diverse perspectives and knowledge. Pre-Hispanic cultures developed classification systems that considered the medicinal, agricultural, and spiritual utility of plants, offering holistic models deeply integrated into their cultural and ecological contexts. Hylomorphism, with its emphasis on the inseparability of matter and form, can provide a conceptual framework for recontextualising knowledge and technological practices both in the agricultural and digital museistic fields.
Ultimately, the challenge we face is not merely technical but profoundly ethical and political. We must actively dismantle the power structures that these techno-colonial systems uphold, whether in the fields or in our museums. Only then can we create spaces where alternative ways of knowing and being in the world can flourish, where the wisdom of amaranth can coexist and perhaps even eclipse the imposed order of transgenic soy, and where indigenous and local narratives and knowledge can reclaim their central place in the construction of our digital and cultural future.
ABSTRACT
Carl Linnaeus's work in the 1740s, including his development of the horologium florae, highlights a fundamental dichotomy between the poetic observation of the natural rhythms of plants and the practical application of his classification techniques for economic and colonial purposes. His taxonomic methods not only optimized scientific research and resource exploitation but also laid the groundwork for racial and social hierarchies in the colonies. This essay posits a direct connection between Linnaean innovations in biological data organization and modern information management principles, underscoring how these precedents influence current computational systems. Through a contextual analysis of the problems and evolution of Linnaean systems, parallels are identified in issues of bias and techno-colonialism in contemporary technologies, particularly in mechanized agriculture. This technological moment echoes historical colonial processes in the imposition of agricultural technologies and practices that marginalize local knowledge and promote technological homogenization based on asymmetry and centralization of information.
CHAPTER ONE
During the 1740s, Carl Linnaeus undertook extensive journeys to understand the biological rhythms of plants. Observing gardens in Sweden, he noted that certain species of flowers opened and closed at specific times of the day, and that these times varied between species. Fascinated by these patterns, he proposed that one could estimate the time of day by observing which species opened their flowers at each moment. By organising these observations sequentially, Linnaeus formulated what he called the Horologium Florae or Floral Clock. Both in his botanical garden in Uppsala and during his travels throughout Sweden, he collected data on how plants changed over time. In Philosophia Botanica (1751), he listed forty-six examples of plants that opened their flowers at certain times of the day, using forty-three of them to produce his Horologium Florae (Koerner, p. 101).
However, the project never came to fruition during Linnaeus’s lifetime. The failure of the Horologium Florae reflects the dichotomy between an Enlightenment era fascinated by plant life and the utilitarian aims that would drive the standardisation and use of Linnaean methodologies. While the Horologium Florae sought to understand plants in terms of their natural biological rhythms and times, Linnaeus’s classification and standardisation techniques focused on optimising and utilising plants for economic benefits.
As Lisbeth Koerner has documented in detail, Linnaeus was a devoted follower of a peculiar form of cameralism that was popular among his country’s elites. He advocated for a centralised and bureaucratic management of the country's natural resources to boost the national economy and benefit the state. The idea was, as Koerner summarises this economic doctrine, 'that science would create a miniature mercantile empire within the borders of the European state' (Koerner, p. 188), whether by importing and acclimatising foreign plants to Swedish soil and climate or identifying domestic substitutes for costly imports. In both cases, this meant that knowledge about the uses of certain plants and animals had to be assigned and generalised across taxonomic units (Koerner, p. 188).
According to Koerner, Linnaeus viewed science as a key tool for achieving an economic ideal of national self-sufficiency through import substitution, basing his ambitious research projects on the possibility of cultivating exotic plants in Sweden or substituting them with local plants of analogous virtues (Koerner, p. 188). This perspective sought not only to order and classify nature but also to utilise this knowledge for the economic benefit of the Swedish state, as evidenced by his insistence that oeconomia be included as a mandatory part of university education.
Besides economic justifications, classification systems also became powerful tools to justify and facilitate colonial projects. In the colonies, native plants and animals were catalogued and classified not only for scientific knowledge but also to assess their economic potential and utility for colonial powers. This approach allowed European states to maximise the natural resources of their colonies, implementing agricultural and economic systems that profoundly transformed local ecosystems and traditional practices (Müller-Wille, p. 162).
Rebecca Earle, in her article The Pleasures of Taxonomy: Casta Paintings, Classification, and Colonialism, provides a clear example of how Linnaean logics of classification were used for specific purposes during the colonial era. The Casta paintings of 18th-century New Spain applied Linnaeus’s taxonomic principles to categorise people according to their race and mestizaje. These paintings not only represented racial diversity but also helped to impose a colonial social order. The Linnaean classifications of people into varieties based on physical and geographical characteristics reflected and reinforced racial hierarchies while attempting to impose order on the racial diversity perceived as chaotic by colonisers (Earle, p. 23).
Casta paintings catalogued mixed families, using complex terms to identify and label individuals according to their racial origins. This system reflected and reinforced racial and social hierarchies, legitimising colonial domination and structuring colonial society hierarchically. Casta painting, like Linnaean taxonomic systems, sought to organise knowledge and experience into manageable and comprehensible categories, although these classifications were often arbitrary and reflected social prejudices more than biological realities.
Moreover, Casta paintings included flowers and plants brought from Europe, still lifes, and elements of cuisine and food, reflecting a colonial Linnaean classification that connected racial hierarchies with plant hierarchies. This approach established a parallel between the organisation of plants and social organisation, reinforcing colonial hierarchies. In the Americas, many endemic plants, fundamental to agro-industrial matrices, became weeds due to the introduction of European species.
This phenomenon, known as colonial biology, shows how the introduction and displacement of plants during colonisation transformed local ecosystems, turning useful plants into invaders and profoundly altering traditional agricultural practices. Neither the natural history nor the power dynamics that shaped colonialism in the New World operated in a vacuum. The classifications that underpinned early modern knowledge systems in the Atlantic world encompassed both plants and people, reflecting a longing for order that transcended any division between science and state administration. Casta paintings embody these intertwined epistemologies, integrating plants and symbolism brought from Europe with the fetishisation of certain South American plants, superimposed in various ways.
For these reasons, Spanish scientists doubted the possibility of forming a general taxonomy that could accommodate the great variety of flora and fauna in the world. Carl Linnaeus insisted that each natural body could be assigned 'its own peculiar name... so that in the midst of the greatest apparent confusion, the greatest order may be visible,' but not everyone shared his confidence. Joseph Quer was certain that such a system could not exist, asserting that it was impossible 'to form a general system and a perfect method, not only for Natural History as a whole but even for a part of it.' Nature was too complex to be captured in a taxonomy.
CHAPTER TWO
The vast amount of material that Carl Linnaeus handled throughout his life becomes evident when exploring his collections, which include thousands of plant, fish, shell, and insect specimens, in addition to his extensive library and correspondence. At the height of his career, he was at the centre of a correspondence network that spanned all of Europe. Friends and other naturalists informed him about new species and corrected errors in his publications, while his students, sent to various parts of the world, maintained constant communication with him, sending books, letters, and specimens (Koerner, p. 102). The management of this constant flow of data was facilitated by Linnaeus's innovations in paper-based information processing technologies, which allowed him not only to collect but also to structure and use knowledge about species effectively (Koerner, p. 103).
Linnaeus developed a binomial nomenclature system that revolutionised the way scientists named and classified organisms, using two names (genus and species) to identify each organism. This system provided a standardised and universal way to refer to organisms, facilitating communication and information exchange among scientists from different countries and languages. The standardisation and precision of this system were essential for managing the enormous amount of information that naturalists collected and shared (Koerner, p. 110f). Although there have been several modern modifications to Linnaeus's original system, the foundation of Linnaean taxonomy has allowed biologists to group related species into genealogical trees, representing the evolutionary lineage of modern organisms from common ancestors
(Paterlini, 2021).
In the early 1730s, Linnaeus began collecting material for a series of manuscripts titled Fundamenta Botanica. These manuscripts served as the basis for many subsequent publications during his stay in Holland, such as Genera Plantarum and Hortus Cliffortianus. Volumes VII and VIII dealt with 'specific differences' and were the beginning of what twenty years later would become Species Plantarum: a universal catalogue of plant species (Koerner, p. 106). Linnaeus used a page layout divided by horizontal lines into spaces dedicated to each genus, filling these spaces with short definitions of species and bibliographic references (Müller-Wille, p. 103). This method of segmenting and clearly defining each entity facilitated the continuous updating and maintenance of information.
These spaces on paper formed two-dimensional 'boxes' where Linnaeus could add relevant information to a specific genus. This method allowed for the continuous addition of data, something that would not have been possible with the dichotomous or tabular arrangements used previously. However, the amount of space allocated could be problematic: sometimes too large or too small. If the space was insufficient, he continued writing on the other side of the page, allowing the text to flow continuously (Koerner, p. 108).
This conceptual foundation of classification is important because it gives us the basis to understand the origins of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) from our contemporary perspective. In modern computer science, OOP is a dominant paradigm for software development. Its principles of abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism enable the efficient handling of complex data and relationships. This is essential in creating artificial intelligence (AI) models, such as "transformers" in generative AI, which use these techniques to organise data, improve flexibility, and facilitate the development of robust and adaptable systems. Abstraction in programmatic systems allows the simplification of complex systems, as done in AI models by creating representations of real-world problems. Encapsulation facilitates software modularity and maintenance, allowing the development of reusable components crucial for AI applications. Inheritance helps reuse and extend functionalities, vital for complex systems. Polymorphism enables different data types to be treated uniformly, simplifying implementation and adaptability. In AI, for example, these classification methods are fundamental for organising software components into manageable structures, such as in natural language processing, where words, phrases, and grammars are hierarchically represented.
OOP is based on four fundamental principles: abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. Abstraction in OOP involves creating a simplified representation of a complex system, similar to how Linnaeus simplified biological classification through his binomial system. Encapsulation, which hides the internal details of an object and only exposes what is necessary, can be seen similarly to how Linnaeus organised his botanical descriptions, focusing on the essential characteristics for identification and classification (Koerner, p. 108). Inheritance in OOP allows new classes to be based on existing classes, inheriting their attributes and methods. This principle parallels Linnaeus's hierarchical classification, where species are organised into genera, and these into orders and families, reflecting a structure of biological inheritance. Polymorphism, which allows objects of different classes to be treated as instances of the same class through a common interface, finds its echo in the flexibility of Linnaeus's system to adapt to new species and discoveries without needing to reformulate the existing structure (Müller-Wille, p. 103).
CHAPTER THREE
The classification systems developed during the colonial era were not mere scientific tools but potent instruments of domination that imposed a Eurocentric and hierarchical worldview upon the cultures and ecosystems of the Americas. These systems, exemplified but not limited to the work of Carl Linnaeus, not only categorised nature but legitimised the exploitation of resources and the subordination of entire peoples. It is crucial to understand that beyond the individual contributions of scientists like Linnaeus, it was the colonial contexts—and from our current perspective, techno-colonial contexts—that truly became the driving force behind the imposition and perpetuation of hegemonic knowledge systems.
Yuk Hui, in his work The Question Concerning Technology in China, introduces the concept of cosmotécnica, arguing that each culture develops its own technology based on its cosmologies and moral values. This perspective urges us to reconsider technology not merely as a tool to transform the environment but as an alliance with it. Under this light, the creation of languages, which emerged alongside agriculture, can be understood as forging alliances and common languages with plants, integrating cosmic and moral order through specific technical activities.
The work A Tale of Two Seeds: Sound and Silence in Latin America's Andean Plains (Atractor Estudio + Semantica 2022) starkly exposes the continuity of these colonial power structures in the current context of technified agro-industry. The tension between amaranth, a sacred grain for many indigenous cultures, and genetically modified soybean monocultures is not merely an agricultural conflict but a manifestation of the ongoing struggle against the imposition of colonial value systems on local ecosystems and cultures. The categorisation of amaranth as a "weed" by agribusiness corporations reveals the brutality of modern colonial logic. This reclassification is not a neutral scientific act but a violent rewriting of reality that seeks to erase millennia of indigenous knowledge and culture.
The Linnaean classification system, with its apparent simplicity and capacity for standardisation, has found a perverse echo in contemporary programming, where data is structured into classes and objects with clear hierarchies. However, this structuring introduces inherent limitations and biases in AI and Big Data systems. Myaeng's research (2017) reveals how these hierarchical structures can lead to an over-simplification of reality, ignoring the inherent diversity and complexity of data. This excessive simplification not only leads to erroneous decisions but perpetuates and amplifies existing biases, creating a feedback loop of algorithmic injustice.
The transgenic war against amaranth is, in essence, a form of biocultural genocide. Multinational corporations, acting as the new colonial powers, use biotechnology as a weapon to eradicate not only a plant but an entire knowledge system and way of life. This war is not merely against a plant species but a direct attack on the food sovereignty and self-determination of Latin American peoples.
Big data and artificial intelligence systems, far from being neutral, have become the new "digital conquistadors." Their hierarchical data structures and biased algorithms reproduce and amplify the same logics of domination and exclusion that characterised colonial classification systems. In this context, the resistance of amaranth to pesticides becomes a powerful symbol of the resilience of indigenous peoples and knowledge against techno-colonial attempts at eradication.
The technification of agriculture, driven by multinational corporations and global policies, is leading to a pernicious homogenisation of agricultural practices and the erosion of local knowledge. The result is an alarming loss of biodiversity and an increasing dependency on external technologies. This phenomenon is particularly evident in large-scale land acquisitions in Africa and South America, where local agricultural practices are brutally replaced by industrial methods that ignore the ecological and cultural particularities of each region.
The work Transgenic Botany, part of A Tale of Two Seeds, exposes how modern intellectual property systems are a direct continuation of colonial plunder. Just as colonisers appropriated lands and resources, modern corporations seek to patent and privatise life itself. This act of legalised biopiracy is a form of genetic extractivism that threatens not only biodiversity but the very foundation of food sovereignty and cultural identity of LatinAmerican peoples.
The extensive use of data by agro-industrial giants like Bayer/Monsanto has created an overwhelming power asymmetry between farmers and these corporations. The implementation of wireless sensors in tractors that monitor or dictate every farmer's decision is nothing but a modern form of colonialism. This massive data collection has become a "dragnet" that seeks to predict and control agricultural events, further consolidating corporate control over food production.
In this context of agrarian techno-colonialism, digital museums, inheritors of colonial cultural institutions, find themselves at a critical crossroads. On one hand, they have the potential to democratise access to knowledge and cultural expressions; on the other, they risk perpetuating and amplifying the same power structures that have historically marginalised non-Western cultures. Integrating works like "A Tale of Two Seeds" into these digital spaces presents profound challenges that go beyond mere inclusion. These challenges demand a radical reconsideration of cataloguing, preservation, and presentation practices, as well as an active questioning of who holds the power to classify, interpret, and contextualise knowledge.
Standard formats of digital storage and presentation, much like the old colonial cabinets of curiosities, often fail to capture the complexity and context of works that challenge Western categorizations. Digital artworks that incorporate living elements, biological processes, or active critiques of classification systems, such as "Transgenic Botany," challenge traditional paradigms of conservation and exhibition. True decoloniality in the context of the digital museum requires more than non-linear interfaces or participatory approaches; it demands dismantling established knowledge hierarchies and creating spaces where indigenous and non-Western epistemologies can not only coexist but lead the narrative. In this sense, the decolonial digital museum must become a space of confrontation and transformation, where artworks are not only exhibited but actively challenge and reconstitute our ways of seeing, knowing, and relating to the world.
To counter these issues, it is imperative to consider alternative approaches that integrate diverse perspectives and knowledge. Pre-Hispanic cultures developed classification systems that considered the medicinal, agricultural, and spiritual utility of plants, offering holistic models deeply integrated into their cultural and ecological contexts. Hylomorphism, with its emphasis on the inseparability of matter and form, can provide a conceptual framework for recontextualising knowledge and technological practices both in the agricultural and digital museistic fields.
Ultimately, the challenge we face is not merely technical but profoundly ethical and political. We must actively dismantle the power structures that these techno-colonial systems uphold, whether in the fields or in our museums. Only then can we create spaces where alternative ways of knowing and being in the world can flourish, where the wisdom of amaranth can coexist and perhaps even eclipse the imposed order of transgenic soy, and where indigenous and local narratives and knowledge can reclaim their central place in the construction of our digital and cultural future.
Juan Cortés an electronic artist from Colombia. His work focuses on the intersection of art, science and nature. Juan's limited edition Casta paintings are available here.