Hyper-pastoral: developing a post-internet ecopoetics

我们与自然世界的日益脱节，使我们未能应对生态崩溃的情况变得更糟。可以说，由于我们与数字的联系越来越紧密，这种脱节已经增加，因为习惯性的互联网使用不仅让我们呆在室内，而且满足了我们天生的“亲生命”，或者需要沉浸在一个环境中（Matei, 2017）。然而，这种思路可能会延续“将数字和物理视为分开的系统性偏见”，这是内森·尤根森（2011）称之为数字二元论的谬论。他认为，线上和线下并不是独立或独立的领域，而是“日益融合”成一个“增强现实”。在这个增强现实中，数字媒体、人造物体和有机结构都属于自然界。数字和物理共存，但在不相容的媒介中。这个项目提出的是一种交叉授粉的尝试，重新校准，这样我们就可以平等地考虑物理和虚拟。互联网是这个星球上最普遍的、人工的、也许也是最有人居住的环境。这是我最熟悉的环境，我想许多当代诗歌读者也有同样的感受。当写作与自然世界接触时，使用互联网作为门户不仅消除了生态参与的任何人为或心理障碍，而且感觉更自然。特别是今天，当“自然”越来越多地作为数字增强的在线内容遇到时（Miles, 2021），忽视在人类和环境之间进行调解的技术将是人为的。然而，同时考虑我们的数字和物理环境有一个障碍——我们认为互联网只存在于理论上，就像某种以太中的信息“云”，而自然世界绝对是有形的。在现实中，互联网以服务器群、卫星、桅杆和海底电缆的形式存在，其有形程度令人难以置信，更不用说对环境的危害了。（Bridle, 2020）我们对数字技术的日益依赖（在疫情期间加剧）使我们呆在室内，似乎与自然世界隔绝了。由于这种依赖，我们设想有形的非人类环境的能力正在迅速消退。（Freeman, 2009）由于过度依赖互联网加速了碳排放（Griffiths, 2020），它同时把我们正在破坏的世界变成了一个抽象的概念。

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.