Toward an Ecotopian Research Project for Green Politics. Discussion Paper

This discussion paper advances inchoative design and Artificial Immanence as a research and policy program for green politics. Reading ammonia, steel, cement, and plastics through Simondon’s individuation and associated milieu, it argues that today’s technical regimes are not merely alienating; they are self-alienated—designed to coerce milieus, externalize harms, and lock in brittle trajectories. The paper proposes an Inchoation Index to shift evaluation from output efficiency to relational quality: how well technical systems co-evolve with energy, material, social, and ecological flows. Rather than black-boxing artifacts into networks, it insists on opening them—chemistry, thermodynamics, process constraints—so redesign targets operative specifics. The index is positioned as a qualitative, comparative heuristic that can complement carbon footprint and LCA by capturing adaptivity, circularity, and reciprocity. Conceptually, the program calls for ontological redesign of the technical milieu—from intervention to participation—while foregrounding ethical stakes (symbiosis over parasitism, stewardship duties, even the prospect of “rights of technical objects”). Practically, it outlines a cross-disciplinary agenda to formalize the index, test it across sectors, and embed it in standards and policy. The aim is an ecology of machines: technical ensembles that become high-technicity, high-inchoation citizens of the planet.