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| What Becomes Of Humans If Robo-nature Replaces The Real Thing? |
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| SciMed - Neuroscience | |||
| TS-Si News Service | |||
| Monday, 06 April 2009 10:00 | |||
 Seattle, WA, USA. Ray Bradbury recorded his alarm one day as he strolled through town: a woman walking her dogs was oblivious to her surroundings. A companion had to help her up and down curbs and safely navigate street crossings. That was many years ago; the lady enveloped in the world of the Walkman was the start of something really big. The device was an invention to come that Bradbury had presaged with his seashell radio in Fahrenheit 451 [cf. Note].
"I don't try to describe the future," Bradbury said. "I try to prevent it."
It may be too late. Web cams now focus on falcons, ferrets and fish, virtual tours of the Grand Canyon and Yosemite, and robotic dogs, seals and even dinosaurs. But what about the real deal: observing animals in their natural habitat, hiking the John Muir Trail or a playing with a live pet?
Increasingly, modern technology has encroached into human connections with the natural world. Psychologists at the University of Washington believe this intrusion may emerge as one of the central psychological problems of our times.
"People might think that if technological nature is partly good that that's good enough."
"But it's not. Because across generations what will happen is that the good enough will become the good. If we don't change course, it will impoverish us as a species." - Peter Kahn"We are a technological species, but we also need a deep connection with nature in our lives," said Peter Kahn, a UW developmental psychologist and lead author of a new study exploring how humans connect with nature and technological nature. Writing in the current issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, Kahn and two of his UW graduate students, Rachel Severson and Jolina Ruckert, look at the psychological effects of interacting with various forms of technological nature and explore humanity's growing estrangement from nature.
The UW researchers cite earlier experiments conducted by Kahn's laboratory, one with a plasma display "window" and several with AIBO, a robotic dog.
The plasma window study showed that people recovered better from low-level stress by looking at an actual view of nature rather than seeing the same real-time high-definition television scene displayed on a plasma window.
 "What do we compare technology to? If we compare it to no nature, technological nature works pretty well. But if we compare it to actual nature, it doesn't seem to provide as many psychological benefits," Kahn said.
The AIBO studies showed that children were in some ways were treating the robots as other beings. But compared to interacting with a real dog, their interactions with AIBO were not as social or deep.
"Robot and virtual pets are beginning to replace children's interactions with biologically live pets," said Ruckert. "The larger concern is that technological nature will shift the baseline of what people perceive as the full human experience of nature, and that it will contribute to what we call environmental generational amnesia."
This concept of amnesia proposes that people believe the natural environment they encounter during childhood is the norm, against which they measure environmental degradation later in their life. The problem with this is that each generation takes that degraded condition as a non-degraded baseline and is generally oblivious of changes and damages inflicted by previous generations.
"Poor air quality is a good example of physical degradation," said Kahn. "We can choke on the air, and some people suffer asthma, but we tend to think that's a pretty normal part of the human condition."
"Some people get the idea on one level if they are interested in environmental issues," said Severson. "They see the degradation, but they don't recognize their own experience is diminished. How many people today feel a loss such as the damming of the Columbia River compared to a wild Columbia River? A lot of us have no concept of it as a wild river and don't feel a loss."
Kahn likened the situation to the effort to convince people that climate change is a serious challenge. But unlike climate change, the threat posed by technological nature, isn't right in our faces.
"People might think that if technological nature is partly good that that's good enough," he said. "But it's not. Because across generations what will happen is that the good enough will become the good. If we don't change course, it will impoverish us as a species."
NoteFahrenheit 451: A Novel. Ray Bradbury. New York: Simon & Schuster (1953; 40th Anniversary Edition, 1993 ). ISBN-10: 067187036X; ISBN-13: 978-0671870362.
"The little mosquito-delicate dancing hum in the air, the electrical murmur of a hidden wasp snug in its special pink warm nest. The music was almost loud enough so he could follow the tune. Without turning on the light he imagined how this room would look. His wife stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of the tomb, her eyes fixed in the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable. And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time." FundingThe National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the research.
CitationThe Human Relation With Nature and Technological Nature. Peter H. Kahn Jr., Rachel L. Severson, Jolina H. Ruckert. Current Directions in Psychological Science 18(1): 37-42. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01602.x
Download PDF Abstract Two world trends are powerfully reshaping human existence: the degradation, if not destruction, of large parts of the natural world, and unprecedented technological development. At the nexus of these two trends lies technological nature—technologies that in various ways mediate, augment, or simulate the natural world. Current examples of technological nature include videos and live webcams of nature, robot animals, and immersive virtual environments. Does it matter for the physical and psychological well-being of the human species that actual nature is being replaced with technological nature? As the basis for our provisional answer (it is "yes"), we draw on evolutionary and cross-cultural developmental accounts of the human relation with nature and some recent psychological research on the effects of technological nature. Finally, we discuss the issue—and area for future research—of "environmental generational amnesia." The concern is that, by adapting gradually to the loss of actual nature and to the increase of technological nature, humans will lower the baseline across generations for what counts as a full measure of the human experience and of human flourishing. Keywords: nature, biophilia, technology, adaptation, environmental generational amnesia.  The TS-Si News Service is a collaborative effort by TS-Si.org editors, contributors, and corresponding institutions. Sources can include the cited individuals and organizations, as well as TS-Si.org staff contributions. Articles and news reports do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates. We welcome your comments. Use the form below to leave a public comment or send private correspondence via the TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.TS-Si is dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, and legal protection of individuals correcting the misalignment of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition into society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens.
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