Equilibrium MycoProcessing (EMP)

By Ashlee Conery with collaboration from Tuuli Utriainen, as part of the School of Commons, Zurich University of the Arts workshop with CERN IdeaSquare innovation space, 2025.

It’s funny how the nature of an object—let’s say a strawberry or a pair of socks—is so changed by the way it has come into your hands, as a gift or as a commodity.¹

When gifts were given to the settlers by the Native inhabitants, the recipients understood that they were valuable and were intended to be retained. Giving them away would have been an affront. But the indigenous people understood the value of the gift to be based in reciprocity and would be affronted if the gifts did not circulate back to them. Many of our ancient teachings counsel that whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again.²

The integration of AI tools into our everyday lives has largely followed the logic of commodification—data extracted, siloed, and sold by a handful of powerful entities. Yet, as we stand in what may be the “important-middle” of international regulatory efforts, there is a growing urgency to question the terms under which these systems have been developed, and whose values they encode. Data, like a gift, does not exist in a vacuum; it is relational, generated through our interactions, our movements, our communities. This paper explores the adaptive intelligence of natural distributing networks—particularly mycelium—as an alternative model for data processing and governance, which we are calling Equilibrium MycoProcessing (EMP). By turning to ecological teachers who have sustained growth over centuries, rather than corporate precedents—that in just eight generations have operationalized resource extraction to multiple points of economic and environmental collapse—we can begin to imagine infrastructures rooted in reciprocity, resilience, and collective benefit. This shift is especially urgent now, as the distributed data networks that support our AI tools are shaping not only our individual stake in emerging markets, but how our health information is used, how insurance is calculated, how home ownership is determined, and even whether we are considered employable. In essence, what is taking root beneath the surface of these new gifts is the distribution of our data in ways that increasingly direct the flow of resources within human networks, quietly determining which systems are nourished and which are left to wither.

MycoProcessing

Mycelium form networks that interact with various materials, break down toxins, and balance ecosystems. As part of this process, they secrete enzymes capable of decomposing the materials they encounter, as well as reusing and embracing them with an ambiguity of purpose—a compelling model for adaptive data processing systems. Unlike unchecked growth, fungal networks can expand or contract as needed, migrate to required areas, and reduce their consumption as systems self-regulate, maintaining balance not only for symbiotic partners but for the entire ecosystem through environmental responsiveness.

Applying Equilibrium MycoProcessing (EMP) principles to data processing infrastructure could reconfigure how we generate insights—not just by connecting disconnected sources to improve dataset diversity, but by embracing ambiguity to reduce waste and duplication. As Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” And while the bulk of this proposal focuses on the study of how mycelium uses, processes, or makes decisions around the distribution of information and resources, it also alludes to the direct relationship between those behaviours and the physical cycles of this soft technology, which is a shared, modular, and adaptable infrastructure used by many systems. We use the word ‘data’ to refer to both information and material—which mirrors human data’s now-direct relationship to both information and resource distribution. In one of the final chapters, titled More than just Good vs Bad, we address current thinking around responsibility, oversight, and consent in relation to data—suggesting, without fully understanding the principles behind mycelium’s model, that it is the human approach to data, that we aim to replace with mycelium’s model of Equilibrium MycoProcessing.

Many existing processing and transportation networks imitate the architecture of natural systems, but the relationships these human imitations foster—between infrastructure and ecosystems, extraction and value creation, access and dependence—reveal how natural processes have been disassociated from their designs, greatly altering their overall impact and long-term sustainability. The approach has been to focus on what could be valuable or immediately applicable to our existing infrastructure for mitigating specific human costs, rather than adopting a holistic view of natural systems' regenerative and relational operations, and their overall value and cost creation. By learning from mycelium’s millennia of success, we can move beyond biomimicry toward genuine collaboration with natural systems. Modeling the checks, balances, and distribution methods of mycelial networks may allow us to integrate their logic and engage directly with soft, regenerative technologies like fungi—perhaps even tapping into the data stored within these natural infrastructures. In 100 years, mycelium’s computational power, including its ability to produce energy from what it decomposes, could offer cross-infrastructure solutions to crises like the energy demands of data hoarding. EMP encourages us to rethink computational processing as not just a means of generating information, but also of producing energy—processing that supports decomposition, circularity, and a more symbiotic relationship between hardware, software, and energy systems.

First, some context. Mycelium is the ‘open source’ processor of many fungi, trees, plants and even some animals. However, to provide some scale of use, there are more than four million species of fungus, which is ten times more fungus species than plant species and six hundred times more fungus than mammals—all supported in some way by mycelium. The size of a single mycelium network ranges from 1 micrometer to 9.6 square kilometers—Marmularia Bulbosa, discovered in Michigan, is a mycelium network that over several thousand years had come to weigh as much as a whale covering 15 hectares. Mycelium operates like the vascular system, made up of a network of threadlike structures called hyphae. Hyphae can grow inside plant and animal cells, supplying water, nutrients, and immune support in exchange for sugars. Plants, for example, use sunlight to transform water and carbon dioxide into glucose through the process of photosynthesis, a process unavailable to fungi on their own. Five hundred million years ago, when the earth was rocky and the soil tough, mosses and liverworts began migrating from water onto land. However, they lacked the roots needed to access scarce nutrients. To overcome this, they formed partnerships with fungi, allowing mycelium networks to attach to their roots and search for distant resources. To this day, all trees and most plants continue to depend on fungal partners, with mycelium and hyphae webs attaching to their roots. Plants keep mammals going and fungus keeps plants growing, ensuring a healthy ecosystem.

Every year fungi release 110,231,131,092 lbs of spores³, and if the conditions are just right, they sprout new hyphae. For a mushroom to grow, two parent mycelia need to join together and store enough nutrients to yield this fungal body. Mycelium can both search and digest; though its hyphae are narrow, they are able to soak up large pools of molecules which include information, nutrients and embryonic potential.

Fungi, in relation to mycelia, are like the corporations, governments, and collective commons that rely on the data extraction and processing layers of hyphal networks—much like how AI models, agentic tools, and behaviour-trained algorithms operate on top of systems of data collection, storage, and distribution. Like these human entities, fungi can be partners, predators, decomposers, and crucial recyclers within an ecosystem. Some even establish barriers at an impasse in territorial warfare and can alter the structure of their mycelium to defend against—or eliminate—other fungi.

Mycelium, unlike most human data extraction and processing tools, functions as both open-source software and hardware. It has no proprietor, and its core functions serve access, redistribution, and connection. Mycelium redistributes resources in ways that sustain ecosystems, acting as accessible infrastructure for fungi, plants, and animals alike. Life moves through it—and is interconnected by it.

EMP specifically focuses on the processes of mycelium, rather than fungi—which have quite diverse processes. This distinction is important because the millions of fungal species also exhibit very diverse objectives, and their actions do not always promote equilibrium within an ecosystem. In some cases, fungi may even drive the extinction of symbiotic partners. Mycelium, however, serves as critical infrastructure necessary for gathering resources, processing new information, evolving existing materials and immune responses, with changing conditions and existing needs, in support of complex and diverse ecosystems. Importantly, everything within an ecosystem can be connected by this adaptive system, which to generalize, is an infrastructure capable of combating bad actors, environmental change, risk and loss, right at the processing level.

Mycelium networks often connect tree and plant roots forming partnerships, called ectomycorrhizas, exchanging nutrients between them. The hyphae of mycelium networks can also share information between separate systems, swapping messages of “need” and “found” materials, telling each other when and where to search, determining and ensuring collective success, which is a process beautifully described by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass:

Mast-fruiting trees spend years making sugar, and rather than spending it little by little, they stick it under the proverbial mattress, banking calories as starch in their roots. When the account has a surplus, only then could my Grandpa bring home pounds of nuts. This boom and bust cycle remains a playground of hypotheses for tree physiologists and evolutionary biologists. Forest ecologists hypothesize that mast fruiting is the simple outcome of this energetic equation: make fruit only when you can afford it. That makes sense…

If this were true, each tree would fruit on its own schedule, predictable by the size of its reserves of stored starch. But they don’t. If one tree fruits, they all fruit—there are no soloists. Not one tree in a grove, but the whole grove; not one grove in the forest, but every grove; all across the county and all across the state. The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don’t yet know. But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together. …The pecan groves give, and give again. Such communal generosity might seem incompatible with the process of evolution, which invokes the imperative of individual survival. But we make a grave error if we try to separate individual well-being from the health of the whole. The gift of abundance from pecans is also a gift to themselves. By sustaining squirrels and people, the trees are ensuring their own survival.

There is some evidence that certain cues from the environment may trigger fruiting, like a particularly wet spring or a long growing season. These favorable physical conditions help all the trees achieve an energy surplus that they can spend on nuts. But, given the individual differences in habitat, it seems unlikely that environment alone could be the key to synchrony.

Scientists have identified specific compounds that one tree will release when it is under the stress of insect attack—gypsy moths gorging on its leaves or bark beetles under its skin. The tree sends out a distress call: “Hey, you guys over there? I’m under attack here. You might want to raise the drawbridge and arm yourselves for what is coming your way.” The downwind trees catch the drift, sensing those few molecules of alarm, the whiff of danger. This gives them time to manufacture defensive chemicals. Forewarned is forearmed.

…Some studies of mast fruiting have suggested that the mechanism for synchrony comes not through the air, but underground. The trees in a forest are often interconnected by subterranean networks of mycorrhizae, fungal strands that inhabit tree roots. The mycorrhizal symbiosis enables the fungi to forage for mineral nutrients in the soil and deliver them to the tree in exchange for carbohydrates. The mycorrhizae may form fungal bridges between individual trees, so that all the trees in a forest are connected. These fungal networks appear to redistribute the wealth of carbohydrates from tree to tree. A kind of Robin Hood, they take from the rich and give to the poor so that all the trees arrive at the same carbon surplus at the same time. They weave a web of reciprocity, of giving and taking. In this way, the trees all act as one, because the fungi have connected them. Through unity, survival. All flourishing mutually. Soil, fungus, tree, squirrel, boy—all are the beneficiaries of reciprocity.⁴

Mycelium offers a compelling model for adaptive systems because it migrates toward new material (data), forming networks that interact with each other, produce antibodies to toxins, or break compounds down into resources that help maintain or establish new balances across an ecosystem. This includes not only the redistribution of nutrients, but also of new information.

As you walk across the forest floor, for example, you disrupt and leave behind traces of material. Mycelium will migrate toward your imprints, consuming and processing matter exposed or introduced by your movements. Mycelium achieve this by secreting extracellular enzyme waves that break down materials and repurpose them into new forms—a process not limited to what they already know how to process or what currently has a defined use.

The ambiguity of this strategy suggests possibilities for adaptive data processing models that engage with information without a predefined question—interacting first with curiosity, to learn, and then to repurpose. This approach would mark a significant departure from most current models, which process information until it conforms to human understanding. Looking outside ourselves for answers requires integrating biosciences with data processing, distribution and intelligent systems development.

For mycelium, the act of learning is a process of ongoing data extraction and creation. Each enzyme wave breaks down material, and each interaction generates new information—enabling the development of new enzymes with adapted behaviours. By contrast, current data models largely rely on comparing new information with old information or an average definition, reinforcing the gradient mean. While there are elements of observation and discovery in this process, they are constrained by the questions we have deemed most important, and by our systems’ dependence on fixed relationships—or rather, silos—within which information or resources must remain. These silos serve to maintain market opportunities for everyone from researchers to manufacturers. As a result, what was once true remains “true,” even as truth evolves.

MycoProcessing proposes that learning systems should be adaptive and ecosystem-oriented, incorporating balance rather than reinforcing preconceptions or observable patterns. This includes balance checks that do not center human behaviour or desire in the distribution or use of data—for example, in decision-making or business development tools—but instead consider the complex requirements of the many ecosystems that sustain and support one another across the planet. Colonial capital ‘G’ globalization, operates on an equation that reduces resources for many in order to increase resources for a few. MycoProcessing argues that global data infrastructure already exists—and has served the distribution of resources across the planet for millennia. Developing human data systems based on the processes of this natural infrastructure, creates the potential for our own to serve people and ecosystems planet-wide in much the same way. What new truths, ideas, or processes might emerge from such an approach?

This line of thought might resemble arguments like DeepMind’s claim that data hoarding will eventually enable AI to solve the world’s problems.⁵ However, mycelium offers an important distinction: it’s not about the amount of data. What matters is what is collecting, storing, processing, using and distributing it—its connections, and the parameters that guide its approach, its knowledge creation or its distribution of materials. These equations determine its ability to address issues across ecosystems; currently our more limited equations focus on the immediate question and are guided by fluctuating human values. For mycelium, the goal is not value creation but balance. Its infrastructure extracts in order to contribute to the sustainability of both its users and its environment. It does not collect solely for its own survival, nor does it design its networks to serve other mycelium at the expense of the broader system. The problems we encounter when trying to “protect” our data often stem from issues around who owns and operates the infrastructure gathering and processing it, how those systems determine its use, and who can access the outputs. Ultimately, protecting data is nearly impossible. Transparent, collective, and modular infrastructure is a far more feasible path toward developing healthy and equitable data ecosystems.

Finally, if it is not already obvious, we ask, like many before us, whether the “average human response” is an appropriate baseline for data processing. Human-centered thinking is a colonial invention—there are hundreds of sources that cite its origins. So, as many others have pointed out—like Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias, referenced later in this paper—the various developing and infrastructure-governing bodies that make claims to decolonization will always reach an impasse if they continue to build on human-centered principles, which, contrary to popular belief, are neither ancient nor the only foundations upon which societies or technologies have been built.

More than just ‘Good’ vs ‘Bad’

It has been observed that mycelium networks make decisions about where to distribute nutrients. This includes redistributing excess material from one organism to another—for example, transferring surplus chlorophyll or sugars from a mature tree to a nearby sapling or to a plant that cannot produce them. Through chemical communication, mycelium can enter into a form of ‘microbial symbiosis’ with plant partners, essentially asking the plant to expose its cells for infiltration. This allows the mycelium to enter a plant’s tissue and engage directly with its immune system, enhancing its foraging and processing capabilities. In doing so, the mycelium helps locate, extract, and distribute resources both from within the plant and across its networks. It's not unlike the emerging symbiosis between humans and LLMs, like GPT, which are embedding themselves within the tissue of human life, extending our own cognitive foraging and processing powers. These engagements often ask us to expose everything from personal identity to health information—in exchange for resources. Yet in our current relationship, the liminal space of exchange runs checks centred on sliding definitions of good vs. bad, and is governed by systems focused primarily on driving sales. The energy consumed is not regenerated within the act of processing, and what we receive in return, is arguably more generic than personalized.

The decision to take surplus from one system and provide it to one in need, expresses what some might refer to as a kind of consciousness. However, mycelium does not serve only one species and its hardware seemingly plugs into and connects the various consciousnesses of its many animal and vegetable partners. It is an infrastructure shared by many systems, hosts, and relationships. Mycelium’s resilience stems not just from its adaptability to different organisms or its capacity to recycle and regenerate itself. As Oxford Professor Mark Fricker put it, it is infrastructure that has survived billions of years by supporting the growth of life as we know it, by successfully self-regulating in response to changing conditions. We can also observe that many of its early partners, such as mosses, continue to flourish under this collaboration, in ecosystems around the globe. Mycelium is observably in a constant state of self-assessment and reconstruction. It recedes, recycles and rebuilds itself in response to an unknown number of conditions, which include the needs and stresses of direct and indirect connections.⁶

The behaviours of mycelium are not yet fully understood. In the early 2000s, terms like “Phalanx and Guerilla forging types”⁷ were used to describe the observed relationship between a species' architecture and its foraging behaviour. We do know that mycelium expresses adaptable processes—material outputs that change with inputs, learning and evolving even materials it has never encountered before. In relation to data structures, we might imagine systems that adapt to the data—or even the source itself—by forming an intermediary operational space that responds to the relationships between them, distant and immediate networks.

Importantly, mycelium’s foraging behaviours are not only for themselves. As far as it has been observed, mycelium ultimately performs the same functions no matter the system it engages with. However, as described earlier, not all its fungal partners share its balancing behaviours. The study of mycelium networks often focuses on their physical design, offering a window into efficient systems that function without centralized control. Professors of Plant Sciences, Mark Fricker (University of Oxford) and Microbial Ecology, Lynne Boddy (Cardiff University), conducted experiments tracking material transfer through lab-grown mycelium, finding that it unevenly distributed a radioactive substance to only parts of its network. Their 2008 paper, produced in collaboration with researchers at both their universities, concluded that fungal networks are shaped by diverse growth and connection strategies:

A network develops without centralised control and must both transport nutrients between spatially separated source and sink regions, and also maintain its integrity in the face of continuous attack by mycophagous insects or random damage… Individual [fungal] species operate slightly different local growth and connection algorithms and form visually distinct network structures. Subtle shifts in the developmental process for different species may have effectively weighted the relative importance of each of these aspects to adapt to different spatial and temporal patterns of resource availability and environmental conditions, giving rise to a set of foraging strategies for each species. We do not know what factors have been most significant in shaping each strategy in evolutionary terms or how organisation and integration of such networks can emerge without centralised control.⁸

In 2023, Michael Hathaway—author of What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make (2022)—and Willoughby Arévalo—author of DIY Mushroom Cultivation (2019)—wrote for MIT Technology Review on fungal communication, an area of research that continues to lag behind studies on plant and animal communication. Though they refer to ‘fungi’, many of the behaviours they describe more accurately belong to the actions of fungi’s mycelium and hyphae:

As fungi grow, they are constantly ⁹sensing, learning, and making decisions⁹. Fungi are like polyglots: they both ‘speak’ and understand a wide range of⁹ chemical signals⁹… fungi not only perceive but actively interpret a chemical’s meaning depending on the ⁹context⁹ and in relation to other chemicals. …Fungi are more than just passive wires; they are, in fact, actively perceiving, interpreting, and signaling themselves. They do this constantly, with a wide range of beings. How mushrooms create and interpret these signals in a cacophony of chemical and electrical noise remains a fascinating mystery.⁹

EMP does not aim to provide a comprehensive overview of all mycelium-related studies; instead, it seeks to spark deeper dialogue, attract financial support, and ideally foster more collaborative efforts between fields around exploring mycelium as a model for non-proprietary, modular, data collection and processing infrastructures serving interconnected nodes. Instead of augmenting existing systems to mimic natural systems—as seen in the applications of Physarum Polycephalum in transit planning and in the Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm (ACO)—EMP invites a shift in approach. It advocates for increased attention to the study of mycelium behaviour/communication and the integration of these insights into the early stages of designing both open-source infrastructure and government regulation—internationally and at the grassroots level. This feels especially urgent as we stand at a critical crossroads in the evolution of quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and data policy. By creating processing systems within repeatable structures that reflect the relational and adaptive nature of mycelium networks, we open the door to technologies shaped by different priorities—ones with better ancestors.

Returning to the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer:

How can we begin to move toward ecological and cultural sustainability if we cannot even imagine what the path feels like? …In other words, our relationship with land cannot heal until we hear its stories. But who will tell them? …In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top—the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation—and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as ‘the younger brothers of Creation.’ We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out. They live both above and below ground, joining Skyworld to the earth. Plants know how to make food and medicine from light and water, and then they give it away.

…The synchrony of our Gathering is determined by our leaders, but more importantly, there is something like a mycorrhizal network that unites us, an unseen connection of history and family and responsibility to both our ancestors and our children. As a nation, we are beginning to follow the guidance of our elders, the pecans, by standing together for the benefit of all. We are remembering what they said, that all flourishing is mutual.¹⁰

Mycelium teaches us that no data is waste. New information, even if it doesn’t fit existing models, hypotheses or solve current problems, is processed and left open for emergent insights, embracing ambiguity, the unknown, and for building an intrinsic immune system. Instead of a binary kill-or-be-killed response to toxins, mycelium inoculated with bacteria releases metabolites that can modulate their environment. Fungal-bacterial interactions, particularly in the hyphosphere (the zone surrounding fungal hyphae), involve the exchange of metabolites that can influence environmental conditions. For instance, arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi release carbon-rich exudates that recruit various bacterial species. These bacteria, in turn, can mineralize organic phosphorus and nitrogen sources, aiding nutrient cycling and modulating the surrounding conditions.¹¹ In this process, what begins as a threat becomes a resource, with documented instances in which nutrient-rich materials are stabilized and extracted from initially foreign and invasive materials. Mycelium re-establishes balance within the ecosystem, strengthening its immunity and isolating compatible nutrients in the process of discovery—an intriguing concept when applied to security, energy or even habit-related challenges in human systems. The need to opt out of data collection is not removed in a mycelium model, but how removal occurs is perhaps what changes. Likewise, we see mycelium networks develop barriers around areas of growth under attack, andas well as reduce input and output along certain branches even when there are no visible resource limitations. Without knowing exactly why, we can infer—based on other behaviours—that chemical signals, compounds of consent, determine these isolated arms within the network. Research into mycelium is expanding, with initiatives like MycoHAB,the world’s first self-supported mycelium structure—a collaboration between MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and Standard Bank Group (SBG), which has led to the creation of MicoBlocks. Globally, studies continue on the “Wood-wide-web,” exploring the relationship between mycelium and tree communication. While we are still far from fully understanding the factors that drive mycelium’s decision making, Hathaway and Arévalo’s description of the “three realms of communication”—within a fungus, between fungi of the same species, and with other organisms—offers valuable insights that could provide alternative solutions to current intelligent systems challenges:

Within a fungus, each growing tip has both autonomy from and accountability to the whole organism, akin to the relationship of social insects to the hive. Between the cells within every mycelium flows a stream of chemicals, nutrients, and electrical impulses. Their movements act to keep the whole informed about happenings and coordinate actions across the network. Research by Andrew Adamatzky, a professor of unconventional computing at the University of the West of England in Bristol, suggests that they influence the mycelium’s internal bioelectrical signals, which may form a sort of ‘language.’ While a mycelium neither is nor contains a nervous system, mycelia share much in common with these systems. Both have branched structures, reinforce or prune pathways as needed, and use some of the same amino acids to transmit information.

Between fungi of the same species, many fungi are sexual and must mate to reproduce. They send out pheromones and “sniff” out those of others, and then they grow toward those that seem attractive (based on whatever it is fungi are attracted to). Whenever two mycelia meet, they communicate to negotiate their relationship, which can range from fusion (to form a reproductive or nonreproductive partnership) to indifference to physical exclusion and even chemical antagonism. Each mated mycelium negotiates the physical dynamics of fusion, and of life in partnership thereafter.

With other organisms fungi "talk" and respond to many other beings. Through ¹²mycorrhizal mutualisms¹², they may share water and food with plant partners. Parasitic fungi produce a myriad of plant growth regulators, modifying plants to suit their needs. ¹²

In 2022, a New York Times article, “Are Trees Talking Underground? For Scientists, It’s in Dispute,” explored the ongoing debate over subterranean communication between trees via mycelium networks. Peter Wohlleben popularized this idea in The Hidden Life of Trees, comparing mycorrhizal fungi to “fiber-optic internet cables.” Despite this compelling analogy, few studies have rigorously mapped fungal connections in nature, and critics such as Dr. Karst and Dr. Hoeksema argue that the evidence for tree-to-tree communication remains inconclusive. Scientific research, like intelligent systems development, tends to silo areas of study and development. This stands in stark contrast to the cross-system collaboration we see in the natural world; adopting mycelium’s dynamic infrastructure approach requires similar collaboration between researchers in many fields and developers.

However, while scientific research is continuously stagnated—as “researchers must repeatedly validate foundational findings, making it difficult to advance to broader systemic observations”¹³—intelligent or data-systems development lacks any such oversight. As funding shrinks for independent research on AI and data infrastructure effects, there is a growing lack of due diligence in the development of technologies that are rapidly entering the public sphere and have far-reaching, cross-system consequences.

There are certainly parallels between mycelium and existing search engines and open-source softwares that redistribute resources and compare datasets. However it is also widely accepted that in-use large language models (LLMs) do not truly “understand” meaning but rely on statistical patterns to predict meaning, missing nuances especially in ambiguous, culturally or environmentally specific contexts. These models, therefore, remain biased toward preset notions of “use,” “value,” “meaning,” “good,” and “bad”.

Taking inspiration from mycelium’s approach to data processing could shift the focus away from human-centered frameworks and toward an ecosystem model—one that encompasses all living beings, natural resources, and infrastructures. However to achieve mycelium’s balanced integration with the diverse systems it supports it would be essential to also adopt its self-cycling hardware/software approach. By doing so, we would truly disrupt the current model of extraction at every level (from hardware to software), by prioritizing renewable, soft-systems research.

Why bother?

Globally, discussions are underway among governing and commercial institutions on: how to address the growing "territorialization" of data by large corporations; security challenges in quantum computing; and the ethical implications of intelligent systems. Governing bodies are struggling to create regulations that foster development while ensuring the equitable and fair use of data within existing frameworks—decisions that will profoundly influence how AI is developed and who benefits. Mycelium offers a centuries-old example of intelligent, open-source data collecting and processing infrastructure, one that supports diverse organisms, thrives globally, and plays a key role in sustaining and developing ecosystems of fair trade.

Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry’s ¹⁴Data Grab the New Colonialism of Big Tech (and how to fight back)¹⁴, names the existence of current data territories, which can be “exploited ad infinitum by an unlimited number of parties, which is what economists mean by saying that data, unlike land, is a non-rival good.”¹⁴ Corporations compound the value of data through its constant re-sale and repurpose by interested parties. And extraction is only the first move; how connections are formed between big tech companies and national governments will determine the extent of this value creation and who has access. As it stands, when you sign-up to most platforms on the web, you essentially sign a blank cheque, allowing them to extract an unlimited sum from their surveillance of your materials and your actions.

Collective infrastructure is an obvious necessity for public good, and for ensuring colonial harms don’t continue to accelerate within these new systems. It would also intrinsically benefit the diversification of information and the discoveries made possible by an expanded view. However, creating replicable, intelligent systems that could be used everywhere and by all, also has as much potential for harm as for good, depending on who and what they intrinsically serve. This is skillfully imagined by Jonelle Monáe in The Memory Librarian; where data collecting hardware becomes as compact and ubiquitous as ATMs—within a society enslaved to dispensing experiences for credit.

Data powered AI systems do and will handle important decisions on our behalf. They may also have the power to foresee and invent solutions outside our understanding. So how are they growing to factor the balance of healthy ‘ecosystems’ rather than solely perpetuate the goals and bias of commercial or government stakeholders?

While doctors and human rights organizations continue to rely on spreadsheets or expensive, inefficient data collecting software—often earning around $500 in government bursaries in Canada for their information—Facebook and Google have access to hundreds of tools that help them capture data and earn billions in return. And, like many colonial stories, the infrastructure these companies offer back to people and communities for ‘improving our processes’, come at a cost that far outweighs their benefits. But not all fungi are benevolent either; some operate in mutualistic symbiosis, benefiting all parties, while others are parasitic, like polypores, sometimes killing their host. Their mycelium morph to play both sides in an infrastructural balancing act. The mycelium story is neither altruistic nor about good vs. evil—it's possibly operating beyond such binaries and expressing an intelligence yet accessible to humans except through careful observation of this natural system.

If, by 2030, data infrastructure is projected to consume 13% of the world’s energy and emit 300,000 tons of carbon monoxide—and if each 1°C increase in temperature is expected to reduce global GDP by 12% (a $35 billion hit by 2030)¹⁵—then it’s arguably imperative that we build new economies on more sustainable infrastructures. Because the economic system being protected by small changes, is ultimately self-destructing.

Yes, it’s tough not to fall back into equations of "good" and "bad" when defining balance, especially considering the oscillations that often characterize both human and natural systems. Observing the behaviour of balancing organisms like mycelium, which operate across animal, mineral, and vegetable realms, may offer our only way out of the moral whiplash currently shaping the development of data and so-called "intelligent systems." The first response to this idea will likely argue that human data and human balance are far more complex than those of animals, minerals, or plants. However, the observable social systems, complex climate changes, and myriad predators that influence the lives of plants and animals suggest otherwise. To reiterate, we are not aiming for human-data balance alone. We are aiming for balances within balances—our systems within natural systems, supporting life in the process of transferring information and resources. The question is not whether balance for data aligns with balance for us; it’s how mycelium calculates and recalculates balance, having supported diverse networks through millennia of change. Networks that also make human life possible. Mycelium’s intersystem behaviour could offer solutions to human-created problems, highlighting beneficial “data compounds” for our ecosystems while breaking down elements that disturb equilibrium. Even with its unknowns, it seems clear that mycelium’s processes are more complex and dynamic than the parameters set by human corporations. As Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry rightly point out, we face a real risk that “the whole surface of social life becomes covered many times over by relations of data extraction.” However, the entire surface of the world is already many times over covered by relations of data extraction—through mycelium. And while our human systems are failing, perhaps even cycling toward our self-destruction, mycelium continues to sustain millions of life-giving systems amidst ever-changing conditions.