"[1][2] He is Professor of Visual Arts at University of California, San Diego[2] (UCSD), and author and editor of numerous books and essays.

[5] Prior to teaching at UCSD, Bratton taught at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles from 2001 to 2010 and is now a distinguished visiting professor.

[13] As of 2022, Bratton is the Director of a new research program on the speculative philosophy of computation called Antikythera, incubated by the Berggruen Institute.

Drawing on the language of Stanislaw Lem, he considers planetary computation a kind of “epistemological technology.” The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty was published by MIT Press in late 2015.

[20] He argues that the Anthropocene should be understood as a kind of accidental terraforming and  the long-term project at hand is more deliberate and comprehensive composition of Earth systems for the extension of complex life in the future.

The Antikythera research studio, Cognitive Infrastructures, explored how synthetic intelligence evolves in real world contexts, and presented in the lecture film “57 Ideas About Cognitive Infrastructures.” Planetary sapience refers to the often violent process by which complex life and intelligence evolves through the interactions of planetary systems and eventually becomes the medium through which a planet partially comprehends its own processes.

He argues that once complex intelligence evolved, certain macrohistorical events may have been inevitable, but that the ecological costs of that evolution may undermine the future of planetary sapience.

In concert with the ideas of Lem, Manuel de Landa,  Sara Walker, Brian Arthur, and others, he argues that technology evolves in ways not wholly dissimilar to biological evolution.

The program is incubated by Berggruen Institute and hosts research studios, lectures and salons and publishes a book series and online journal with MIT Press.

[35] The book discusses concepts of the epidemiological view of society, cultural controversies over masks, and points toward a positive biopolitics in sharp contrast with the work of Giorgio Agamben.

[16] Its two core arguments are that planetary-scale computation “distorts and deforms traditional Westphalian logics of political geography” and creates new territories in its own image, and that different scales of computing technology can be understood as forming an “accidental megastructure” that resembles a multi-layer network architecture stack, what Bratton calls “The Stack.”[37][17] The Stack is described as a platform.

[19] His 2015 book Dispute Plan to Prevent Future Luxury Constitution was published by e-flux Journal and Sternberg Press in 2015.

[42] In his article, "iPhone City (v.2005)" Bratton was early to demonstrate the impact that cinematic user interfaces for mobile social media would have on urban design.

His current work develops a political theory of planetary-scale computation and draws from disparate sources, from Paul Virilio, Michel Serres, and Carl Schmitt, to Alan Turing, Google Earth, and IPv6.

[43] In 2017, Bratton completed The New Normal an ebook for Strelka Press, which outlines the radical effects that technology is having on our world and describes the emerging forms of city that we should now be designing for.