The Future of Cyberspace Professor Sue Thomas

Professorial Lecture, De Montfort University, 26 April 2012

www.technobiophilia.com

@suethomas

#technobiophilia

What is this place?

Electricity

“Is it a fact -- or have I

dreamt it -- that, by

means of electricity, the

world of matter has

become a great nerve,

vibrating thousands of

miles in a breathless

point of time?”

(Nathaniel Hawthorne,The House

of Seven Gables. 1851)

The Domain of Cyberspace

Internet of Things

1999

Materiality

World Wide Web

1984

Software

Arpanet/Internet

1969

Hardware

The Internet of Things

Ninja block

Going organic

lo

Biophilia

“The innate tendency

to focus on life and

lifelike processes’

Edward O Wilson

1984

Cyberspace

• A consensual

hallucination...

• Unthinkable

complexity. Lines of

light ranged in the

nonspace of the mind,

clusters and

constellations of data.

Like city lights,

receding... Gibson 1984

Terrain

Frontier

“Your legal concepts of

property, expression,

identity, movement,

and context do not

apply to us. They are

all based on matter,

and there is no matter

here.” Barlow 1996

Farming

“Topsoil grows at a rate

of an inch every 100

years. You can grow

fabulous plants

quickly in that soil, but

the soil itself is a

product of slow time.” O’Reilly 2000

Bugs

“the wolf spider is active

at night and catches its

prey by pursuit rather

than by creating a web

and waiting. The Lycos

search engine emulates

this by skipping from

server to server

gathering documents

as it goes.”

The Stories

• Creation, Birth, Parenthood

• Wilderness, Frontier, Camping, Navigation

• Physicality, Flora, Fauna, Body

• Settlements, Farms, Gardens, Tools

• Mind, Spirituality, Buddhism, Shamanism

But what does it mean?

Biophilia

“The innate tendency

to focus on life and

lifelike processes’

Edward O Wilson

1984

Bjork

Biophilia ‘app album’

Bjork, 2011

Voiceover, Sir David

Attenborough

Biophilia Research

Experimental Psychology (Kaplans)

Social Ecology (Kellert)

Behavioural Science (Ulrich)

Biology (Wilson)

Zoology (Orians)

How biophilia soothes us

Directed Attention

• Without directed attention you may be

rash, uncooperative and less competent

• But too much directed attention leads to

DAF – Directed Attention Fatigue.

Symptoms include aggression,

intolerance, and insensitivity to social

cues. Such people have also been found

to be less likely to help someone in need.

Resting Directed Attention

• “Increasing specialisation has meant that

each of us spends longer hours pursuing a

single activity, as opposed to the variety of

tasks pursued by our ancestors. Such

persistence requires discipline, which

depends heavily on directed attention.”

• The solution is to find ways to rest your

directed attention with the use of

restorative settings

Nearby Nature promises a continuation of the world beyond what is

immediately perceived

Nearby Nature Screensavers?

Being Away in which the setting is physically or conceptually different

from one’s usual environment

Soft Fascination A setting which evokes mental processes which engage

attention effortlessly but still leave room for reflection

Drifting in the stream

Interval Shifts

So where are we?

• We (unconsciously) brought nature into

cyberspace as it evolved

• The reason may lie in biophilia

• Biophilia seems to influence the way we

inhabit cyberspace. It makes us feel more

comfortable.

• In a technological environment, this could

be reshaped as technobiophilia

Technobiophilia (2013)

The innate tendency to

focus on life and

lifelike processes as

they appear in

technology

So what lies ahead?

Bionanoprotonics? Digital devices from

bacteria & DNA Transistors from protons

The Singularity?

“I set the date for the

Singularity - representing a

profound and disruptive

transformation in human

capability - as 2045.

Technical progress will be

so fast that unenhanced

human intelligence will be

unable to follow it Kurzweil

2005

Gaia?

• It may be that one role

we play is as the senses

and nervous system for

Gaia.

• The earth is more than

just a home, it's a living

system and we are part of

it.

James Lovelock

Hylozoic Architecture

The Future of Cyberspace Professor Sue Thomas

Professorial Lecture, De Montfort University, 26 April 2012

www.technobiophilia.com

@suethomas

#technobiophilia

Links from the talk

• The Internet of Things IBM http://youtu.be/sfEbMV295Kk

• Ninja Blocks http://ninjablocks.com/

• Biophilia, Bjork, promo video http://youtu.be/o8AELvVUFLw iPhone

app: http://bitly.com/biophiliaapp

• Net Smart, 2012, Rheingold, H. http://rheingold.com/netsmart/ Book:

http://amzn.to/JvxufB

• Scientists create computing building blocks from bacteria and DNA,

Imperial College News Release, 18 Oct 2011 http://bit.ly/JvxH2e

• Breakthrough: proton-based chips that communicate directly with

living things, Angelica, A., Kurzweil Blog, 21 Sept 2011

http://bit.ly/JvxOuJ

• Hylozoic Ground at the Venice Biennale 2010, Philip Beesley

http://youtu.be/v86B9Nz_LVU

Sample Biophilia Bibliography

I’ve found the following helpful in beginning to understand biophilia:

• Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S. (1989). The Experience of Nature. New York:

Cambridge University Press.

• Kellert, S. R., Heerwagen, J. H., & Mador, M. L. (2008). Biophilic Design.

Hoboken: John Wiley.

• Kellert, S. R., & Wilson, E. O. (1993). The Biophilia Hypothesis. Washington

DC: Island Press.

• Orians, G. (1986). An ecological and evolutionary approach to landscape

aesthetics. In E. Penning-Rowsell, & D. Lowenthal, Landscape meanings

and values (pp. 3-22). London: Allen & Unwin.

• Ullrich, R. (1984). View through a window may influence recovery from

surgery. Science 27 April Vol. 224 no. 4647 , 420-421.

• Wilson, E. O. (1984). Biophilia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press