Stack is the word I want in place of "ideology" as the unit of analysis. A stack is a bundle of design principles, protocols, interoperability rules and security measures, and polities organize their energy and information around one.
How the word moved
In August 2025 I proposed the swap and noticed that energy stacks are sticky because elites draw their power from them. By September 2025 I saw two stacks being fought over, the Electric Stack and the Intelligence Stack. In December 2025 they turned into metabolic stacks, a Prediction Stack in the US and a Production Stack in China.
In February 2026 I went back to Bratton's The Stack and read it as a computational grammar for planetary institutions. Same word, four jobs in six months. I don't apologize.
In my words
"But first, we need a change in terminology; we need to replace 'ideology' with 'stack.'"
from Bhumics: The Pauper #9, 6 Aug 2025
"He who controls the Stack controls the (mental) State."
from Cognitive Sovereignty, 7 May 2026
Related
- Inherited from Benjamin Bratton - I got the planetary sense of the word from Bratton's Stack.
- Related Electric Stack - It's one of the two stacks being fought over in 2025.
- Related Prediction Stack - That's the American metabolic stack.
- Related Production Stack - That's the Chinese one.
- Related protocol - A stack is, i.e., a bundle of protocols.
Still open
I said I wasn't going to explain why we need the shift from ideology to stack in that essay. I still owe that argument.