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Featured Page #03: Tomorrow’s Fossils

During the coming weeks, we will present a selection of our favourite pages from the Next Nature book. This week the thirs one in this series: Tomorrow’s Fossils.

Ode to the car in 40 years’ time? A future Museum of Obsolete Objects? Inspired by Stonehenge while living in England, Jim Reinders, an experimental American artist, originally built Carhenge in Western Nebraska as a memorial to his father. Created in 1987 with the help of his family, it is now a free tourist attraction. It uses 38 vehicles, including a 1962 Cadillac, to mirror the position of the rocks that comprise Stonehenge.

England’s ‘natural’ past, an idealized place of agrarian idyll and legendary deeds, is transported to contemporary America. Reinders argues for the mythological resonance of the automobile, both as a continuation of past traditions, and as a progenitor of myth itself. As much as we live exclusively in next nature, we look to old nature, and old culture, for context. Will vintage gas-guzzlers prove as enduring as Stonehenge’s boulders?

Past Perfect
Certain technologies, already obsolete in our time, may be as inscrutable in the distant future as long-extinct species are to us. When presented as a natural part of the geological record, a cellphone or a Playstation controller becomes a rare oddity. The skeletons of videogame and cartoon characters are just as disorientating, conjuring a life (and death) for the patently fictional. Yet these imagined artifacts recognize the same premise: the fossil record of our species will not be distinguished by our bones, but by our technologies.

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Featured here are pages 56-57 from the book Next Nature: Nature Changes Along with Us. More information about the book can be found here.
NextNature.net
on 01/06/12 Comments »
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- Back to the Tribe | Design-for-debate | Image-Consumption | Made-to-debate
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Archaeologist Finds Ruins of ‘Friendster’

Last month internet archaeologist Dr Maxwell Fry stumbled upon the perfectly preserved ruins of an online community called ‘Friendster’. Remember, that predecessor of Facebook, which might share the same fate? Surely, future archaeologists can’t wait to dwell on your ‘timelines’ dear tribe members.

Created by The Onion. Via Beyond the Beyond (repost).
Van Mensvoort
on 07/05/12 Comments »
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- Back to the Tribe | Made-to-debate
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Humans Caused Mass Extinctions Before There Were Even Humans

Humans and other hominids have a reputation for bringing about mass extinctions. Homo erectus has been blamed for the disappearance of many African carnivores, our ancestors likely caused the Pleistocene extinctions, and modern humans are currently embroiled in the midst of the sixth great extinction event.

New evidence indicates that hominids have been causing significant extinctions far earlier than ever thought. Australopithecus afarensis, of Lucy fame, has been implicated in the disappearance of 23 species of carnivores that prowled Africa around 2 million years ago. Omnivores and small to mid-sized carnivores all bowed out at the same time tool-using A. afarensis showed up, leaving only hyper-specialized carnivores such as lions and hyenas.

Lars Werdelin, of the Swedish Museum of Natural History, theorizes that Australopithecines were such efficient scavengers that they knocked out any species that relied on part-time carcass theft. Groups of A. afarensis with stone tools likely were enough to scare away civets or large, predatory otters that competed for meat. This finding is all the more the remarkable becuase Australopithecines’ brains and bodies were only slighter larger than those of modern chimpanzees. Human-style social living and tool use, it seems, have made us top competitors from the beginning.
Allison Guy
on 30/04/12 Comments »
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- Anthropocene | Back to the Tribe | Food Technology | manufactured-landscapes
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Ronald van Tienhoven – Techno Animism

Once upon a time animism ruled people’s beliefs: both organisms and objects were imbued with a conscience. Artist Ronald van Tienhoven states that as technology closes the gap between organisms and objects, a new form of techno-animism arises.
Van Mensvoort
on 20/04/12 Comments »
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- Back to the Tribe | Sentient Spaces | Techno Animism
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Gordan Savicic – Facebook Suicide

Slowly but steadily the digital environment is becoming the primary living space where we interact and define ourselves. According to Gordan Savicic however, some things are still missing… like committing suicide.
Van Mensvoort
on 06/04/12 Comments »
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- Back to the Tribe | Boomeranged Metaphors | Digital-Presence | Intimate Technology | Symbolic-Overdrive
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Arne Hendriks – Incredible Shrinking Man

The human population is expected to grow to 9 billion within this century. As a result we need more energy, more food and more space. If we continue our current consumptive patterns we soon need three planets. But what if we could turn this trend around?

Artist Arne Hendriks explores the possibilities and implications of downsizing the human species to better fit the earth. Can we do it?
Van Mensvoort
on 30/03/12 Comments »
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- Anthropomorphobia | Augmented-Bodies | Back to the Tribe | Green Blues | Humane-Technology | Technorhetoric
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Essay: Next What?

In this essay, anti-civilization, anarchist philosopher John Zerzan critiques the concept of ‘next nature.’ He argues that rather than freeing us, our self-domestication through technology has created a disconnected, depressed and over-medicated population. Phenomena from global warming to workplace shootings are all symptoms of global human “progress” gone totally awry. If we abandon ‘technology’ in favor of ‘tools’, what are the next steps for humanity?

BY JOHN ZERZAN

Next Nature “refers to the nature produced by humans and their technology.” The prevailing attitude of Next Nature is “techno-optimism.”

What is the nature of this “nature” and what are the grounds for the optimism?

I’ll start by citing some recent technological phenomena and what they seem to indicate about the nature and direction of our technoculture. We’re already increasingly inhabitants of a technosphere, so let’s look at some of its actual offerings.

A virtual French-kissing machine was unveiled in 2011. The Japanese device somehow connects tongues via a plastic apparatus. There is also a type of vest with sensors that transmits virtual “hugs.” From the Senseg Corporation in Finland comes “E-Sense” technology, which replicates the feeling of texture. Simulating touch itself! Are we not losing our grounding as physical beings as these developments advance?

In some nursing homes now, the elderly are bathed in coffin-shaped washing machines. No human touch required. And as to the mourning process, it is now argued that online grieving is a better mode. Less intrusive, no need to be physically present for the bereaved! There is an iPhone application now available called the “baby cry app.” For those who wire their baby’s room to be alerted when she stirs, this invention tells parents what the baby’s cry means: hungry, wet, etc. (there are five choices). Just think, after about two million years of human parenting, at last we have a machine to tell us why our child is crying. Isn’t this all rather horrific?

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John Zerzan
on 27/03/12 8 Comments »
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- Back to the Tribe | Fake-nature | Green Blues | http://www.nextnature.net/wp-admin/post.php?post=21470&action=edit | Plastic Planet
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Organic Drink Dispenser

Recently, while traveling in Africa, I spotted this all organic coco-drink dispenser. Opening the can was a bit more difficult than I was used to, but then again I didn’t need to insert a coin before collecting my refreshment! Isn’t it just great when you can rely on your environment to store your food? Peculiar image of the week.
Van Mensvoort
on 04/03/12 Comments »
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- Back to the Tribe | Food Technology | Supermarket
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Surviving Progress

Montreal filmmakers Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks’ documentary feature, Surviving Progress presents the story of human advancement and reveals the risk of running the 21st century’s software — our know-how — on the ancient hardware of our primate brain which hasn’t been upgraded in 50,000 years. It is up to us to prove that making apes smarter was not an evolutionary dead-end.

Thanks Linda.
Van Mensvoort
on 20/02/12 Comments »
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- Back to the Tribe | Designed-by-Evolution | manufactured-landscapes | Technorhetoric | Wild-systems
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Conservationists Turn Their Sights on Urban Habitats

For city-dwellers, the closest ‘true wilderness’ to be found is usually the weeds sprouting in abandoned lots. Snow-capped, postcard nature might be beautiful but is often inaccessible. The Nature Conservancy, a US-based charity that buys up land to stop development, is debating re-focusing its conservation ethic on the concrete jungle. With 50% of the human population now living in cities, the Conservancy is worried that a wilderness-focused message is loosing its relevance for urbanites.

Bill Ulfelder, the director of the Nature Conservancy in New York, sees the 22,000 acres of roof in the city as a vast potential habitat. “There’s a lot of talk about rooftop gardens and storm-water catchment,” Ulfelder says, “But this is also a great opportunity to put habitat back in the city. Let’s think about habitat for pollinators and birds.” A concentrated effort to bring wild organisms back into an urban environment may mean that we can soon welcome birds more exotic than the standard pigeons, sparrows, and redtail hawks. Let’s hope our kids still remember the word for ‘heron’ or ‘magpie’.

Story via Grist. Image via Wallyg. Thanks to twitter-er Namhenderson for the heads-up.
Allison Guy
on 16/02/12 Comments »
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- Back to the Tribe | manufactured-landscapes | Suburban Utopia
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Essay: Essay: Time Between Emergence and Design

Previously, experiences of time emerged from nature as given – offering seasons, the rhythm of humans, plants and animals. Nowadays, people integrate nature-time, body-time, inner-time, clock-time, and global 24/7 systems-time. Human beings, in past, current and next natures, have to deal with emergence and design of time in order to survive.

By CAROLINE NEVEJAN

To think about how future new worlds are visualized, assumes that these images reveal how life in decades to come will be shaped. These visualizations offer insight into today’s imagination of next natures and next cultures to come. However, in these visualizations ‘time’ as a process of emergence and design, is often forgotten. This essay argues that time design is distinct in any next nature that will emerge.

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carolinenevejan
on 07/02/12 1 Comment »
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- Back to the Tribe | Feed-Back | Officegarden | Suburban Utopia
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Where Be Dragons? Try Your Instinctual Fear of Snakes

This last Monday rang in the Chinese Year of the Dragon. Not restricted just to the benevolent, snake-like creature of Chinese mythology, or to the greedy, princess-stealing monster from Europe, dragon-like creatures occur throughout the world. Legendary reptiles occur as far apart as the feathered snake of Precolombian America and the rainbow serpent of Aboriginal Australia. It may be that, like flight in bats, pterosaurs and birds, the dragon “evolved” multiple times independently throughout human mythology.

If, indeed, the dragon can be considered a cultural universal – it may be that “large scaly monster” is too general a category to be meaningful – several theories purport to explain their origin. Giant reptiles like the crocodile or monitor lizard are obvious suspects. It’s easy to imagine how word-of-mouth could transform an already terrifying beast into something that flies or breathes fire. Dinosaur bones may have inspired other dragon myths, while the rotten carcasses of sharks and whales are even today routinely mistaken for sea monsters. By far the most interesting theory is that of anthropologist David E. Jones, who argues that dragons are a mash-up of the predators that ate our distant primate ancestors. Dragons prey on what we’re genetically primed to fear.

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Allison Guy
on 04/02/12 1 Comment »
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- Back to the Tribe | Fake-nature | Genetic-surprises | Manufactured Animals
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Hybrid Hummer

Who knows after some future energy crisis, it becomes en vogue to use a horse to pull your horseless carriage. For now it is our peculiar image of the week. Created by Walter Robinson.
Van Mensvoort
on 02/02/12 Comments »
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- Back to the Tribe | Manufactured Animals | Progressive Nostalgia | Suburban Utopia
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Years

Good old analog technology, now even better than ever before. Artist Bartholomäus Traubeck created a hyper-nostalgic record player that, rather than making music from vintage vinyl records, uses slices of woods to generate sound.

The player analyses a tree’s year rings for their strength, thickness and rate of growth as input for a generative algorithm that outputs piano music. Watch the video to enjoy the sound of a tree and appreciate the beauty and variety of nature from a whole new unexpected perspective.
<a href="http://www.vimeo.com/30501143">http://www.vimeo.com/30501143</a>
Thanks Yuri Keukens.
Van Mensvoort
on 30/01/12 Comments »
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- Back to the Tribe | Calm-technology | Information Decoration | Progressive Nostalgia | Symbolic-Overdrive
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Goats Replace Lawnmowers in San Francisco

They might not be as fast, but goats offer several advantages over diesel-powered lawnmowers. They’re quieter, they emit fewer greenhouse gases, and they fertilize soil as they go for no extra charge. They can easily climb slopes where mowers can’t reach, and can clear thick brush without the help of herbicides. City Grazing of San Francisco has capitalized on the benefits of goats, and leases out their 50-member herd for landscaping needs around the city.

These back-to-the basics of landscapers who replace mowers with goats, or farmers who replace tractors with horses, represent an unusual trajectory for the Hierarchy of Technology.* Technologies normally become accepted and widely-used before they are superseded by new technologies and sink out of sight. Except for meat production, livestock has largely lost out to machinery in industrialized settings. In a time where oil was cheap and global warming unknown, goats and horses were clearly obsolete. But in other contexts – greenhouse gas emissions, soil erosion, cuteness – it becomes clear that old-fashioned, four-legged technologies can become cutting-edge a second time.

*For more about the Maslow-style Hierarchy of Technology, get your hooves on a copy of the Next Nature book.
Allison Guy
on 28/01/12 Comments »
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- Back to the Tribe | Calm-technology | Humane-Technology | manufactured-landscapes
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Rule #7: Respect Social Standards

Part 7 of the 11 part series Golden Rules of Anthropomorphism and Design.

Anthropomorphic products enter the human social space. Humans have the most complex social behavior of any organism on Earth. Anyone or anything trying to join in should be careful to do it right. Although an anthropomorphic product may function perfectly, if it crosses social boundaries it will still tick people off. This can cause the product to become a social reject, which won’t do sales much good. Luckily, it’s not hard to figure out why things go wrong. Imagine a scenario where a person and a product interact, then replace the product with a second person. If the actions of the second person and the product don’t match up, then there’s something off about the product’s design.

Image via Anvari.
NextNature.net
on 21/01/12 Comments »
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- anthropomorphism and design | Anthropomorphobia | Back to the Tribe | Officegarden | Technorhetoric | Toys-are-Us
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Hidden Cities Emerge from the Amazon

Famed for its jaguars, orchids, and horrifying parasites, the Amazon is just as famous for what it lacks: human presence. For many years, the prevailing wisdom has been that throughout history, the Amazon rainforest has only been sparsely occupied by nomadic tribes. However, new evidence of permanent and complex human settlement is emerging from the forest floor. The role of these geoglyphs, trenches carved into the ground 1,000 to 2,000 years ago, are largely mysterious, but they may share characteristics with the Nazca Lines.

Researchers first became aware of the geoglyphs in the 1970s. As deforestation accelerates, more and more of the gigantic geometric shapes are coming to light. These discoveries are helping to upend traditional notions of the Amazon as a primordial, pristine wilderness. Large portions of Amazonia may in fact be a second-growth forest that regenerated after European warfare and disease wiped out massive portions of the native population.

The first Spanish explorers to the region reported finding settled towns and cities with palisades, roads, and fortifications. Though their accounts have usually been dismissed as exaggerations, their descriptions may in fact provide an accurate portrait of a lost civilization. According to geographer William Woods, “If one wants to recreate pre-Columbian Amazonia, most of the forest needs to be removed, with many people and a managed, highly productive landscape replacing it.”

Image via Google Maps. For a history of the search for civilizations in the Amazon, read Finding the Lost City.
Allison Guy
on 19/01/12 Comments »
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- Back to the Tribe | manufactured-landscapes | Wild-systems
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Rule #4: Complex Products Tend to Be Anthropomorphized

For past entries and an introduction to the 11 Golden Rules of Anthropomorphism and Design, click here.

Think about a spoon. Now think about a spoon with a face. What do you think it is? Most likely, you think it’s a spoon with a face. Now think about a computer, which doesn’t have a face. Are you more likely to swear at the spoon or the computer? Humans have a natural tendency to anthropomorphize things they can’t explain. In the past, mysterious phenomena such as the weather, the sun or the moon were anthropomorphized in the form of gods.

Nowadays, technological products have advanced to such a degree that most people don’t understand them. They try to explain a device by ascribing human emotions and motives to its behavior. The more complex, capable and autonomous a product is, the more likely it’s going to be anthropomorphized. Designers of technologically advanced products should anticipate how users will anthropomorphize their product, and design it accordingly.

Photo via Top Design Mag.
NextNature.net
on 06/01/12 1 Comment »
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- anthropomorphism and design | Anthropomorphobia | Back to the Tribe | Physical-computing
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