Hyper-pastoral: developing a post-internet ecopoetics
Lead Research Organisation:
Lancaster University
Department Name: English and Creative Writing
Abstract
Our failure to respond to ecological collapse is made worse by our increasing disconnection from the natural world. Arguably, this disconnection has increased as a result of our increasing connection to the digital, as habitual internet use not only keeps us indoors, but satisfies our innate "biophilia", or need to feel immersed in an environment (Matei, 2017). However, this line of thinking could perpetuate a "systematic bias to see the digital and physical as separate", a fallacy Nathan Jurgenson (2011) calls digital dualism. He argues that online and offline are not separate or self-contained realms, but are instead "increasingly meshed" into one "augmented reality". In this augmented reality, digital media, man-made objects, and organic structures all belong to the natural world. The digital and physical co-exist, but in incompatible mediums. What this project proposes is an attempt to cross-pollinate, to recalibrate, so that we can consider the physical and virtual in equal measure.
The internet is the most ubiquitous, artificial, and perhaps most inhabited environment on the planet. It's the environment I'm most at home in, and I suspect many contemporary poetry readers feel the same. When writing to engage with the natural world, using the internet as a portal not only removes any man-made or mental barriers to ecological engagement, it also feels more natural. Today especially, when 'nature' is encountered increasingly as digitally-enhanced online content (Miles, 2021), it would be artificial to ignore the technology which mediates between humanity and our environment.
However, there is an obstacle to considering our digital and physical environments simultaneously - we conceive of the internet as existing only in theory, as a "cloud" of information in some kind of ether, whereas the natural world is overwhelmingly tangible. In reality, the internet's physical presence in the form of server farms, satellites, masts, and undersea cables is incredibly tangible, and not to mention harmful to the environment. (Bridle, 2020) Our increasing dependence on digital technology (exacerbated during the pandemic) keeps us indoors, seemingly separated from the natural world. Because of this dependency, our ability to conceive of tangible non-human environments is rapidly fading. (Freeman, 2009) As over-reliance on the internet accelerates carbon emissions (Griffiths, 2020), it simultaneously turns the world we're destroying into an abstract concept.
The internet is the most ubiquitous, artificial, and perhaps most inhabited environment on the planet. It's the environment I'm most at home in, and I suspect many contemporary poetry readers feel the same. When writing to engage with the natural world, using the internet as a portal not only removes any man-made or mental barriers to ecological engagement, it also feels more natural. Today especially, when 'nature' is encountered increasingly as digitally-enhanced online content (Miles, 2021), it would be artificial to ignore the technology which mediates between humanity and our environment.
However, there is an obstacle to considering our digital and physical environments simultaneously - we conceive of the internet as existing only in theory, as a "cloud" of information in some kind of ether, whereas the natural world is overwhelmingly tangible. In reality, the internet's physical presence in the form of server farms, satellites, masts, and undersea cables is incredibly tangible, and not to mention harmful to the environment. (Bridle, 2020) Our increasing dependence on digital technology (exacerbated during the pandemic) keeps us indoors, seemingly separated from the natural world. Because of this dependency, our ability to conceive of tangible non-human environments is rapidly fading. (Freeman, 2009) As over-reliance on the internet accelerates carbon emissions (Griffiths, 2020), it simultaneously turns the world we're destroying into an abstract concept.
