John Thackara thinks the IoT is nowhere near eco enough

wolfliving:

*That’s probably true, so somebody somewhere out to install some hylozoic Lucretian software in it and see if anything good happens.

http://thackara.com/art-perception/from-gut-to-gaia-the-internet-of-things-and-earth-repair/

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For much of human history, the idea that the world around us is ‘vital’ was literally common knowledge. Greek philosophers known as ‘hylozoists’ made no distinction between animate and inanimate, spirit and matter. Roman sages thought likewise.

In his epic work On The Nature of Things, the poet Lucretius argued that everything is connected, deep down, in a world of matter and energy. Chinese philosophers, too, believed that the ultimate reality of the world is intrinsically connective; in the Tao, everything in the universe, whether animate or inanimate, is embedded in the continuous flow and change.

Buddhist texts, too, evoke a universe that’s in a state of ceaseless movement and connection. And as recently as the seventeenth century, in Europe, the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza conceived of existence as a continuum, an inseparable tangle of body, mind, ideas and matter.

The belief that matter matters, so to speak, was then obscured – for two intense centuries up until about now  – by two developments: the fire and smoke of the thermo-industrial economy, and, more recently,  by global communication networks.

Now, as this self-devouring system unravels, the healing idea that that we are part of a world of living things, not separate from it, is resurfacing.

This reconnection with suppressed knowledge is not superstitious. Developments in science are confirming confirm the understanding in wisdom traditions that no organism is truly autonomous.

In systems thinking and resilience science, and from the study of sub-microscopic viruses, yeasts, bacteria in our gut, ants, mosses, lichen, slime moulds and mycorrhizae, trees, rivers and climate systems, old and new narratives are converging: our planet is a web of interdependent ecosystems.

These natural phenomena are not only connected; their very essence is to be in relationship with other things – including us. On a molecular, atomic and viral level, humanity and ‘the environment’ literally merge with one another, forging biological alliances as a matter of course.

The importance of this new perspective is profound. The division between the thinking self, and the natural world – a division which underpins the whole of modern thought – is beginning to dissolve. It follows that the great work of our time – and an answer to the value question that has so perplexed the Internet of Things –  is to re-connect us – viscerally, and emotionally – with the living systems we’ve lost touch with.

But how?  (…)