RESEARCH/TECHNOLOGY: The Internet of Nature?
Our latest project looks at the different ways we can use emerging digital technology to help understand the environmental changes taking place today especially in rural Asia and Africa. That is, if proper ecological management and knowledge around climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, urbanisation etc will be one of the biggest challenges of the future, how can then our unique style of research, technological prototyping and art experiments help us prepare for what is to come. The project that we are launching – at this point tentatively called The Internet of Nature (or Project ION) – will therefore combine classical research, technology and experimental art around what we believe to be some of the key topics and themes of the emerging future. How could such work then help us predict and prepare for the changes that will be reality, say, 2, 5, or 10 years from now? What is needed?
We have already started work around these important questions and hope to expand to more areas with increased time and resources:
1. BOOK CHAPTER/CONFERENCE: We are next presenting at the “Between mainstream and the fringe: environmental activism in a globalised world” conference on December 9th and 10, 2010 in Delhi. This conference is co-organised by University of Heidelberg in collaboration with Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Milia Islamia University in New Delhi. We will also write a book chapter for the conference book, which will outline explicitly some of the theoretical and practical issues that we are dealing with around environment, research and digital media.
2. MCO2. We have been already working for the past year on research and a technological prototype around a mobile-based solution for climate change targeted especially towards the millions of smallholder farmers in Asia and Africa. The project is done in collaboration with environmental scientists and farmers in Ethiopia. The following description gives a good overview of the kind of work/research we are developing:
CHASING THE LONG TAIL OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The core idea behind mCo2 is simple: you provide us with the details of a tree or a plant – we calculate the amount of carbon dioxide tied into its biomass, its change over time and its current market value. On top of this simple concept, all kinds of services from agroforestry management tools to carbon offset trade platforms to even environmental gardening communities can be built.
Current approaches to climate change so far, we believe, have been too focused on reducing the harmful effects of consumption, our so-called carbon footprint. This, however, neglects the fact that most people in the world are not only consumers – they are also producers. This is to say, they are involved, in one way or another, in the production of plants and trees into which carbon dioxide is tied in complex ways. This applies as much to the millions of smallholder farmers in rural Asia and Africa as it does to hobbyist gardeners in US and Europe. Given this fact, then, how could we reach out to this ‘long tail’ of climate change: the millions and millions of people involved in the production of biomass for their livelihoods and who are now increasingly connected by the rapid spread of mobile phones and the Internet? Moreover, how could we best encourage the positive effects such activities can have both on the environment but, as importantly, for the livelihoods of the people involved?
Our solution is simple. By combining innovative web & mobile-based technology with sophisticated science, we are able to develop new tools that make this paradigm shift possible. The low carbon economy of the future will be as much production-based as it will be consumption-based – our mission is to make this possible. We are currently testing the demo version of mCo2 together with a project working with farmers in rural Ethiopia, of which you can see the first version here being tested out.
Please read more about this here at New York Times or at our prototype website HERE.
3. INTERNET OF NATURE – THE BOOK. We are eventually also planning to write an experimental theory-technology-art book around these themes. The planned book would of course contain some of the the philosophical-theoretical foundations around the concept of “the Internet of Nature” but also examples of the technological and art experiments that help us best understand this “archeology of the future.”
