Future Archeology

Climate Data Privacy Protest Banner

18.09.25

4 min.

Conner Eastwood

Introduction: A Creative Playground for Futures Design

Welcome to a new series for our journal – a creative playground where structured futures methodology meets speculative storytelling. We're taking weak signals from our present moment and following them through a rigorous process to see what futures they might birth, and more importantly, what artefacts those futures might leave behind.

The process is straightforward but powerful: we start with weak signals (early indicators of change), map their potential consequences through a Futures Wheel, generate possible events across four plausibility categories (Probable, Plausible, Possible, Preposterous), assemble these into coherent futures, then excavate the material culture those worlds might create. It's archaeology in reverse – digging into the remains of futures yet to come.

The goal isn't prediction. It's provocation. By imagining the everyday objects, ritual items, and cultural artefacts these futures might produce, we can surface insights about the trajectories we're already on and the choices we're making today. It's a bit of fun, but hopefully generates some interesting talking points about where we're heading and whether we like the destination.

The Signal: The Internet of Plants

This first artefact emerged from our signal scanning work, where we uncovered a fascinating development from researchers at Koç University and the University of Cambridge. In September 2025, scientists announced breakthrough research reframing plant communication as an advanced data network, using principles from information and communication theory. Their work explores how plants emit and transmit signals – chemicals, electrical pulses, acoustic cues, even underground fungal networks – with findings pointing toward the emergence of an "Internet of Plants," where plants become interconnected nodes across ecological systems.quantumzeitgeist

This isn't just about understanding that plants communicate; it's about recognising their signals as data, mapping their networked responses, and treating plant life as sophisticated planetary information infrastructure. The paradigm shift promises new possibilities in precision agriculture, environmental monitoring, and bio-inspired technology, laying the groundwork for rapid detection of stress, ecosystem threats, and complex adaptive responses at planetary scale.

From this signal, we used AI to pull out the relevant consequences and generate possible futures, mapping how plant data networks might ripple through society. In one possible future – the "Planetary Intelligence Web" – we uncovered this artefact: the Climate Data Privacy Protest Banner.

Its Archaeological Story

The Climate Data Privacy Protest Banner sits in our imagined Museum of Future Archaeology, a weathered testament to one of humanity's most pivotal political moments. One metre of canvas, bio reactive fibres still faintly iridescent after forty years, the words "PLANT DATA IS SACRED DATA NO CORPORATE OWNERSHIP OF BIOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE" painted across its surface like a manifesto from another world.

This banner emerged from a society where plant data networks had evolved into critical global infrastructure by the mid 2030s. Urban trees monitored air quality in real time. Forest networks detected climate tipping points years before traditional instruments. Agricultural systems achieved unprecedented precision through direct biological feedback. The economic value of botanical intelligence exploded as governments and corporations recognised its potential for climate management and resource optimisation.

But with commercial value came commercial ownership. Suddenly, every conversation between trees, every chemical signal between plants, every electrical pulse through root networks carried a price tag. That's when citizens pushed back.

The Plant Rights Movement of 2037 emerged from a simple recognition: plant data network technology wasn't just about better farming or environmental monitoring. It was about redefining who gets to participate in planetary decision making. The banner was carried through streets during Global Plant Rights demonstrations, its bio reactive fibres responding to plant communication signals in real time, turning protests into living visualisations of the intelligence being defended.

When thousands of these banners shifted colour simultaneously during demonstrations, the message became impossible to ignore. Plant networks were communicating, and their conversations belonged to the planetary commons, not corporate balance sheets. The movement fundamentally shifted how society thought about intelligence, ownership, and governance, establishing biological intelligence as a form of commons and laying groundwork for the interspecies governance systems that followed.

What Do We Learn?

This artefact teaches us several uncomfortable truths about our present moment. We're standing at the exact threshold this banner represents – the Cambridge-Koç breakthrough happened just weeks ago in our timeline. The agricultural applications are already emerging. The economic potential is becoming visible. But the regulatory frameworks haven't been written yet.

The banner provokes questions we haven't started asking: Who gets to listen when plants start talking? Who owns the data streams flowing between forests and fields? Who decides how humanity participates in the ancient networks that sustain our planet?

Most importantly, it reveals how technological breakthroughs inevitably become political battlegrounds. Every sensor we place on a plant, every algorithm we build to interpret botanical signals, every database we create to store plant communications carries embedded assumptions about power, ownership, and value. These assumptions will ripple through society for generations, shaping the worlds we build.

The citizens who painted this banner's message understood something we're still learning: once plant intelligence networks become commercially valuable, protecting their status as planetary commons becomes exponentially harder. They chose to act while the future was still malleable, while the rules were still being written.

The plants are already talking. The question is: who's listening, and what are they planning to do with the conversation? This weathered banner reminds us that the answer to that question will determine not just the future of agriculture, but the future of planetary governance itself.

Signal:
https://quantumzeitgeist.com/network-plants-data-boosting-resilience-adaptation/