I chose to use this assignment as an opportunity to explore the essence of technophilia. For me, this meant going beyond a breakdown that looked strictly at the frequency of certain terms (though this remained a consideration), and instead analyzing which phrases from the readings held the most conceptual weight in order to create a word cloud that could serve as a map of the purpose and potential of technobiophilia as a notion and as a practice.
Ultimately, technobiophilia provides a bridge between the natural and the digital (Thomas, 2014), between the individual and the climate crisis (Oe et al., 2022), between the isolated individual and the benefit of a nature (Thomas, 2014). That is to say, it connects. When contemplating what technobiophilia meant to me, that connection was at the heart of its benefit, as is demonstrated by the use of words like symbiosis and synthesis.
I chose to colour-code my words, with green text for terms normally associated with nature, blue text for terms normally associated with technology, and yellow (on the colour wheel, the link between blue and green) to colour the connective actions and positive outcomes involved in technobiophilia. By placing all of these concepts together within the same tree, I recognize the argument that undercurrents technobiophilia: that all of these ideas are naturally-sourced and our attempt to polarize them against one another fails to consider that the digital is a merely an extension of the natural (Thomas, 2014). Further, by bringing a 'natural' object to the digital space, even the image may benef
Admittedly, I was initially quite apprehensive about technobiophilia’s lack of criticism of the potential impacts of the digital world. However, a benefit of the most prominent words focusing on the positive aspects of the digital world meant seeing the frequency and weight of words like inspire used to describe what happens when we fuse the biological and the technological. This reminded me of exactly how instrumental technology can be in human welfare, if only we can become transliterate enough to explore it.
Sources
References
O’Connel, C. (2018, July 9). Technologies inspired by nature. Cosmos. https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/technologies-inspired-by-nature
Oe, H., Yamaoka, Y., & Weeks, M. (2022). Technobiophilia: Nature and human interactions in the digital age. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2022.2068823
The Journal of Biophilic Design. (2021, April 17). Technobiophilia - Life, Nature and Technology. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcb7debi4wE
Thomas, S. (2014). Next nature: “nature caused by people.” Journal of Professional Communication, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.15173/jpc.v3i2.155
Thomas, Sue, (2018). Nature and Wellbeing in the Digital Age: How to feel better without logging off.
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