Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Our tools can be directed at Gaian Gardening, like the
Electronic Field
Guide
. They can be directed toward extending pleasure, wonder, and
knowledge, like
Starwalk
. We can use our tools (or invent new ones) to
extend our ability to see the unseen, or to take action in the polis. We can
use our technology in ways that support being in
right relationship
with
Gaia. For 18th-century Quaker John Woolman, “right relationship” meant
eschewing evils like materialism and greed, warning that these qualities
would injure future generations. The Iroquois Nation's understanding of
right relationship focuses on reciprocity; the Q'ero of Peru speak of reci-
procity, harmony, and balance.
The writer Barry Lopez has been a constant source of inspiration to
me over the years. In his essay “Landscape and Narrative” (1968), Lopez
describes what we have been calling “right relationship” in a slightly differ-
ent way. He observes that most indigenous peoples perceive a sacred order
in the land, where both material and philosophical aspects of their cultures
derive from “observations and meditations on the exterior landscape.”
He continues: “Each individual, further, undertakes to order his interior
landscape according to the exterior landscape. To succeed in this means to
achieve a balanced state of mental health.” He advocates for “continuous
attentiveness to both the obvious (scientifi c) and ineffable (artistic) orders
of the local landscape.”
I think of the term as embracing our Gaian belonging with virtue in
Aristotle's sense, which leads to happiness and balance. In our consumer-
ist world, right relationship can seem like an impossible goal. How can we
pull our heads and hearts out of a culture of short-sightedness and greed
when it is the soup in which we swim? To achieve right relationship with
one another and with Gaia, we must strive for radical change. Cultural in-
tervention at a large scale is necessary and Good.
A typical response to this call from interaction designers is often one
of dismissal or frustration. “I work for a giant game company. They would
never approve a project that went against their winning strategies in the
marketplace.” Well, friends, we are living in an entrepreneurial time. Elon
Musk (founder of Space-X and Tesla Motors) will go to Mars because he is
making it so.
15
People with a lot less wealth than Musk have funded com-
panies to do right-relationship building with investment by regular people
through tools like Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
15. At the conference South by Southwest in 2013, Musk remarked, “I'd like to die on Mars,
just not on impact” (Terdiman 2013).
