A growing body of literature studies how expert practices constitute issues such as climate change, migration, or public health as international objects of expertise. The article contributes to this research agenda by highlighting the role of digital visual technologies and infrastructures in the constitution and governance of these international objects. It develops the concept of visual objects and uses it to trace and explain the emergence of a new technological initiative conducted by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the EU: the vision of a ‘digital twin Earth’ (DTE). The idea behind the DTE is to combine various technologies, including satellite Earth observation, advanced computer models, and AI, to build a digital replica of our planet and thereby govern risks emanating from environmental changes and other global challenges. The article provides a first analysis of the international politics of the DTE. It shows how the visual object of the DTE functions as an attractor of heterogeneous actors and practices involved in the European space policy field thereby temporarily stabilizing this complex assemblage. Finally, it traces how the DTE and its machinic ways of seeing enact the Earth not only as an object of knowledge but also as one of experimentation and intervention.

中文翻译：

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当世界是一个物体时：关于数字孪生地球的政府承诺


越来越多的文献研究专家实践如何将气候变化、移民或公共卫生等问题作为国际专业知识的对象。本文通过强调数字视觉技术和基础设施在这些国际物体的构成和治理中的作用，为这一研究议程做出了贡献。它发展了视觉对象的概念，并用它来追踪和解释欧洲航天局（ESA）和欧盟开展的一项新技术倡议的出现：“数字孪生地球”（DTE）的愿景。 DTE 背后的理念是结合卫星地球观测、先进计算机模型和人工智能等各种技术，构建地球的数字复制品，从而治理环境变化和其他全球挑战带来的风险。本文对 DTE 的国际政治进行了初步分析。它展示了 DTE 的视觉对象如何作为欧洲空间政策领域涉及的异质参与者和实践的吸引器，从而暂时稳定这一复杂的组合。最后，它追溯了 DTE 及其观察机器的方式如何使地球不仅成为知识的对象，而且成为实验和干预的对象之一。