The speed of computation defines the performance of a computer. Before the machines as we know it, these calculations used to be done by humans computers. This workforce was mostly composed of women, as their wages were significantly lower than men. Computing, the process of performing calculations, relies on the price of labor. A CPU, the processing unit of a computer, is an integrated circuit. It's an assembly of components, whose manufacturing requires a diversity of metals and minerals, extracted and processed on a global scale. Their production relies on the workforce of low-income nations, a system of exploitation that destroys simultaneously their ecosystems.

This lecture explores the notion of conviviality from Ivan Illich and questions our relationship with time and technical progress. My starting point is the race for mining the abyss to extract polymetallic nodules, these rock concretions with a growth rate of 10 mm per million's year. I will dive into the architecture of the chips and the computing process, exploring its relations with exploitation and extractivism. This presentation brings together the perspective of rocks and the deep time of geology to the global scales of extraction and exploitation required for the manufacturing of chips.