COMMENTS: Nature VS Technology

OBESITY, lack of socialisation, attention disorders, poor academic performance, etc....

Of late, all manner of social, intellectual and physical deficits seem to be increasingly attributed to the rise of information and communications technology (ICT) utilisation in our daily lives.

Even the declining health of the planet is due to our love affair with the likes of computers, television, video games and mobile gadgets – if you go by a recently released report from US-based National Academy of Sciences.

The report claims that nature is giving way to virtual reality where tech preference over nature participation is fast affecting current conservation efforts.

With people shifting away from nature-based recreation, co-authors Oliver R. W. Pergams and Patricia A. Zaradic wrote, the value placed on natural areas and experiences will greatly reduce the value people place on biodiversity conservation.

To back up their statement, Pergams and Zaradic studied visiting trends in popular nature parks in the US and Japan, where there is a sharp decrease in numbers between 1990s and 2006. Various types of outdoor recreation have suffered during the same period where ICT applications were being adopted, they indicated.

But is ICT really the culprit here? Perhaps more should be focused in how outdoor recreation is positioned as a lifestyle trend. If ICT has gone through a marketing blitz that has turned it from something only a “techie” would love to a must-have for everyone in the family, why can’t the same be done for nature conservation?

If the ICT marketing blitz was largely driven by tech companies wanting to gain wider traction in the mass market, nature-based recreation and nature conservation then should have clear and driven champions.

In fact, ICT can play a big role in such efforts. Already there are technologies that can give precise view of the state of the planet. And awareness and interest can be created through Web sites, Net forums and blogs in attractive ways.

There is no need for finger pointing on who is to blame for issues like environmental decline or even social illness and the likes. The way to go is to harness all tools available and also the will to address them.