Mediating Nature: Technology and (dis)connecting to the outdoors

Digital technology is playing an increasingly important role in human-nature interactions. Not only are nature conservation organisations using technologies such as GIS or camera traps for monitoring and evaluation, digital... [ view full abstract ]

Digital technology is playing an increasingly important role in human-nature interactions. Not only are nature conservation organisations using technologies such as GIS or camera traps for monitoring and evaluation, digital technology has also become an important tool to reach the wider public. However, in both academic and popular literature, concerns are expressed regarding people’s day-to-day technology use. In particular, our increased interaction with technological devices is often seen as a contributing factor to a growing disconnection from nature. This presentation explores people’s everyday use of digital technologies when visiting nature, in order to develop a better understanding of the relations between technology, people and natural places.

At the moment we lack empirical understanding about how digital technology is used in natural environments and how virtual engagement (through internet and media) links to everyday practices. The study discussed in this presentation obtained qualitative data through in-depth interviews. Participants of different age groups revealed the ways in which they use technology when performing activities outdoors and how they relate to nature when indoors. I will present an examination of the character of relevant technologies, the types of places that my interviewees related to (with or without the use of technology) and the diverse ways of using digital technologies.

These interactions are subsequently explored in a larger context of debates on place and ‘placelessness’. These debates go back to the discomfort human geographers in the 1970s expressed about technology and its contribution to a disembodied experience of place. However, other academics have argued for a more open and fluid account of place, in which the local and the global are connected. Reflecting on the empirical data gathered in my study, I critically discuss the extent to which technology fosters distraction and loss of nature-based connections or offers possibilities for linking networks of local and global (natural) places and identities. This improved understanding of the ways in which technology enables dis- and/or reconnection to nature is used as the basis to reflect on current strategies for conservation management.