In the quest for a sustainable future in the 21st century, we face multifaceted challenges: climate change, environmental degradation, economic disparity, global health crises, and the impacts of technological advancements like artificial intelligence. Political instability, shifting population dynamics, migration, resource scarcity, and the need for sustainable agriculture further intensify these challenges, calling for global cooperation and innovative, sustainable development strategies.
Global cooperation and collaboration can be understood as a new single consciousness - in our globally connected and networked world, constructed by technological information systems and infrastructures - the internet - Holly Jean Buck argues networks and infrastructures do not only 'play a role in global events like COVID-19 or climate change, but shape them.' This prompts critical questions about power dynamics, data, knowledge, and digital sovereignty in this era of a primarily commodified, market-driven digital world. How can we reimagine these structures to ensure a viable future for our society and planet?
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Electricity, extending our central nervous system, has transformed our perception and understanding of the world, reshaping our interactions and knowledge structures...might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness? - Marshall McLuhan
From the first media revolution in the 15th century, to models of cybernetics to concepts of ecosystems, to the era of post-truth and deep fakes, our societies and perception of possibility of action and interference have been shaped by media technological revolutions and their ontological frameworks. We constructed a language of humans being in Dominion of the world, in control of manageable objects, such as Technology or Nature. Climate Change and AI - Large Language Models have recently challenged this perception and are pressing us to reconsider our entanglement and relationality with the world.
I am interest in how knowledge, specifically around climate action, is produced, and how debates are disputed across disciplines. How data analysi, remote sensing and machine learning allows us to study, predict and envision deep histories and future scenarios - and how these can confront the challenges.
Reading
Hotter Time Climate Change and Democratic Transformation, CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE IN EXTREMELY ONLINE TIMES Holly Jean Buck
All data are local : thinking critically in a data-driven society, Loukissas, Yanni A.
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All data are local... data are cultural artefacts created by people, and their dutiful machines, at a time, in a place, and with the instruments at hand for audiences that are conditioned to receive them. - Loukissas, Yanni A.
My process of engaging with these complex topics, investigating the digital and physical realms of Knowledge Networks, has been an exploration of computational design methods, tools and methods for navigating networks.
Within this process I seek to understand how these networks intersect with climate strategy and infrastructure, revealing their digital and socio-environmental implications.
...vulnerability due to interconnectivity… In general interconnectivity induces a remarkable non-locality… behind each complex system there is an intricate network that encodes the interactions between the system’s component… - Network Science, Albert-László Barabási
