Merging Technology & Nature w/ Koert van Mensvoort
BONUS | Dubai Future Forum #04
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | SoundCloud | Goodpods | CastBox | RSS Feed
Bonus episode recorded live from the Dubai Future Forum at the Museum of the Future in partnership with the Dubai Future Foundation on 20 November 2024.
Summary
Philosopher Koert van Mensvoort shares his insights into humanity’s ever-evolving relationship with nature, how integrating technology and biology can support ecology, and the possibility of becoming an interplanetary species.
Guest Bio
Koert van Mensvoort is an artist and philosopher best known for his work on the philosophical concept of Next Nature, which revolves around the idea that our technological environment has become so complex, omnipresent, and autonomous that it is best perceived as a nature of its own. He is the Director of the Next Nature Network. Koert aims to better understand our co-evolutionary relationship with technology and to help set a track towards a future that is rewarding for both humankind and the planet.
Show Notes
01:03 Humanity's Relationship with Nature
02:52 Human Impact on Nature
05:17 Technology’s Role in Evolution
08:02 Balancing the Technosphere and Biosphere
12:23 Speculative Futures and Space Exploration
17:08 The Future of Humanity
Links
Transcript (AI-Generated)
NOTE: This transcript is AI-generated and unedited. It may contain errors. A human-transcription is coming soon.
Koert van Mensvoort: These cities, we should design them into something that fits our humanity better, fits our biology better, and also has room for other biological species, because it is our next nature. It's not something you do a few days in the week and then you move out, you know, it's part of who we are.
Luke Robert Mason: You're listening to the futures podcast live from the Dubai future forum at the museum of the future. A building that not only celebrates progress, but accelerates it. On this show, we meet the scientists, technologists, artists, and philosophers working to imagine the sorts of developments that might dramatically alter what it means to be human.
Some of their predictions will be preferable, others might seem impossible, but none of them are inevitable. My name is Luke Robert Mason, and I'm your host for this session. Humanity was shaped by its environment, but now humanity wields the power to shape the environment itself. This transformative period, known as the Anthropocene Epoch, forces us to reconsider our relationship to nature.
Are humans risen apes, striving to transcend the natural order? Or are we fallen gods, imbued with divine dominion over nature, with a responsibility to steward it? Our ever changing renegotiation with nature forces us to ask some profound questions about humanity's impact and our ultimate role. At the forefront of exploring these ideas is artist and philosopher Kurt van Mensvoort.
Through his work at Next Nature, he's playfully and provocatively examining the story of how humankind is reshaping its world. So Kurt, Welcome to the podcast lounge. Thank you. Luke. Good to be here. Thank you for being here. It's been a long while I was a reader of next nature as far back as almost a decade ago now It really informed my my early days of how I got engaged with many of these subjects and many subject matters but I guess My key question is this relationship that we have with nature.
We, we hear about it from, from multiple viewpoints, but what do you think is the appropriate relationship that we should be having with this thing called nature?
Koert van Mensvoort: Well, this is the big question, right? And it was also my big insight because, you know, there are so many people that try to save nature or.
restore our relationship with nature, but hardly ever does anyone ask the question, what is our image of nature? What is nature and how might that be changing? And it's tempting to think nature is this static force, this natural paradise that was kind of perfect before humanity came along to spoil everything.
But I think that's rather naive. You know, nature is dynamic. It's a dynamic force of life. It changes. Along with us, uh, right now the question for us. How do we relate to it? Because, well, first of all, I want to say we're not, I don't think we're God's. We're not becoming God's. Uh, we're not, we're not even the dominant species on the planet.
I sometimes think because we as humanity for ages. If you go back into history while we evolved on the savannah, uh, Uh, and we had very little impact on the planet similar to fireflies or gorillas, but that in a certain moment we started cooking food, domesticating fire that cooking our food basically allows us to, uh, grow bigger brains, have more calories in less time and go bigger, bigger brains that need lots of energy and then we start manipulating everything and that's where we're at now because, yeah, right now, uh, yeah, if you look around in the room you are in now, Then, uh, and you find to try to find the most natural thing in the room.
Well, it's you, you know, because the rest of our environment, we, we manipulated, we designed, and yeah, we're now in Dubai, which is even if you look around in the city you are in and try to find the most natural thing in the city, it is you. So that's the situation in Dubai, which I think is also, uh, challenging thing.
Uh, but also I think a wonderful thing that, um, I see Dubai as the, as, as the Venice of the, of the 21st century, in a way there are so much, uh, trade money power, but also vision connected in one spot. And then you get this coral growing in, in, in the desert. And I deliberately call it like that because of course it's a city, but Hey, if, if a bird builds a nest.
We call it nature. If humanity creates a city, we call it so. And that's the conversation we need to have,
Luke Robert Mason: you know, that's so important with regards to language because human beings were fundamentally from nature is you so wonderfully expressed there. If we look around at cities, we sometimes land our eyes back onto ourselves and go, well, we're the most natural thing.
But does that. idea that human beings are fundamentally of nature, does that drive some of the narratives that Next Nature engages with this, these ideas of transhumanism, whereby because we're from nature, we are allowed to take the reins of evolution, i. e. this is nature's plan. Humans are here to redesign nature.
Koert van Mensvoort: Yeah, indeed. And I well I'm not in that camp like okay, the trend turns humanist camp like, okay, knowledge is power. And then when we have the knowledge with the power and then we can design our environment and then we arrive in this perfect world and my body will be I will be an angel it will be heaven.
I think that's that's that's Techno utopism. That's utterly naive. Uh, it relates to the enlightenment period and the 20th century of modernism. You know, you know, the world, and then you can basically control it. Uh, but right now in the 21st century, we realize that yes, we can manipulate a lot. But while we're doing that, we also create a situation that we do not control.
And, uh, we have to improvise. It's basically like we are playing with fire all over again. You know, every time, every new technology gives us new, uh, opportunities. Uh, yeah, new chances. This is wonderful, but also new risks and new responsibilities. And I think this is never ending because I already made the point.
Nature is not static. It is dynamic. It changes along with us and it will never let us relax. You know, every new invention causes the rising of a next nature, and I also call it next rather than new nature because new nature that will would assume it happens once, but next is more like next, next, next, and this next nature is tends to be wild and unpredictable as ever, and we have to find a path in it, and there's something at stake, you know, because right now, Uh, well, recently scientists calculated if you put all technology on a scale.
Uh, so yes, your smartphone, but also the chair we sit on and the building, these are all inventions. If you put that on a scale that is already heavier than the entire bio, biological world. So, uh, all plants, fungi, animals, and humans together, the technosphere is heavier than the biosphere. And we humans, we caused this, but it also kind of happened to us because it was not this moonshot project that we thought, okay, let's build a technos, you know, it kind of, yeah, it's a rising and, and now we're in a period that we see it.
And the next step is to, I think, balance it with the biosphere, better balance technology and biology.
Luke Robert Mason: Yeah, that process of creating the technosphere, that's still based on, uh, I guess an old narrative of we must overcome nature. Where did that narrative come from? And do you think we're retracing from it?
Do you think there's a new narrative or a next
Koert van Mensvoort: narrative emerging? For humans to manipulate their environment, to basically free themselves from the wild forces of nature. Yeah, that starts with building a roof above your head, uh, finding a fur of an animal, turning it into a coat. You know, it's an invention.
It's a, it's a, it's an early technology. And I think the thinking of, um, yeah, this, we are the masters of the universe that started with, uh, well, people like Francis Bacon, the philosopher who says, knowledge is power, the enlightenment period. We can understand the world. We can, we can not only manipulate it, we can control it.
Also, I think landscape painters played a role in the 17th century, because yeah, there it's, it's fascinating that if you look at very old paintings, of course there's landscape in it, but it's always in the backdrop of something else. And then in the, in the 17th century painters, artists started painting the landscape to show, okay, this has a value in itself.
Uh, and we should look at it. And I think there's a tension there because, um, it, it's artist taught us to appreciate the value of the natural world in itself. However, also at a moment where we kind of moved away from it with industrialization, living in cities. Yeah. And now we're there, you know, over half of the population.
On the of the of humanity lives in a city so uh humanity is a city dwelling species are we becoming this just like bees live in a bee uh colony um yeah and where does it bring is i think definitely i'm not in the position that we should say we have the city and then we have the the outskirts and the urban area and that's where nature is no we should make this These cities, we should design them into something that fits our humanity better, fits our biology better and also has room for other biological species because it is our next nature.
It's not something you do a few days in the week and then you move out. You know, it's part of who we are. So how do
Luke Robert Mason: we, how do we appreciate those other ecosystems in a technosphere? I mean, I'm thinking about my phone right now. The background of my phone is the moon. A lot of people have landscapes on the backgrounds of their phones and their laptops and their screens.
In what way are we using technology, I guess, to rediscover nature in new ways?
Koert van Mensvoort: Yeah, I have on the background of my phone, uh, I have the earth, but the earth at night. Um, so yeah, it's this image of our planet at night. Maybe this answers your question on my perspective a bit. Uh, because. Humans, of course, we evolved from, from nature.
We are also technological beings from the very first day that we are human. So it's in our biology that we are technological. Um, yeah. And now we're at this. Crossroads in a way, like we're, we're basically also the catalyst between, uh, or, or the, the, the moderator between the biosphere and the techno sphere.
And I think we have to balance them. So, yeah, I have an image of our planet at night. In my phone, which is always a reminder when I open the phone, like, Whoa, this plan, this, this, this dark side of the planet. If you, if you are an alien and you would arrive at this planet and you see the dark side of planet earth, you see all these lights emerging.
But 1000 years ago, it was pitch black. So what's happening there? You know, is it on fire? Or is it springtime on planet Earth and some corral is flourishing? And that's, of course, not how it feels for many people. Um, but maybe we can turn that into some beautiful next nature that is more balanced with the biological world that was already there.
Luke Robert Mason: It's so fascinating you mentioned aliens because it does feel like we've, we've colonized this terrestrial planet with technology. As you said there, you can, at night, you just see these little glowing lights, these artificial lights all across the earth. And, and we, as human beings, we're looking up to the sky, to the stars, to the moon and Mars right now, thinking about how we can now, engender those environments, move to the next planet, move to the next planet, find, find, uh, find new spaces to, to, uh, bring our technology.
Do you think as human beings, perhaps that was our purpose to become gardeners of the galaxy, to, to do the horticulture of the heavens? Do you think that desire to look upwards and go elsewhere is, is innate within our nature?
Koert van Mensvoort: Well, um, I think the desire is there and If you look at this long term, then you could say, uh, okay, planet Earth is the cradle of humanity, but maybe humanity cannot stay in the cradle forever, and we will go out, or we, maybe, we desire to go out at a certain point, but really we're not ready to do this.
Yeah. Absolutely not, because let's first prove that we can live harmonically on planet Earth before we move out and spoil another planet, because then we're basically this, this, uh, swarm of grasshoppers, like, uh, like destroying the planet, move to the next planet. That's not what I aspire for, for humanity.
I think we can do better than that. We're not this, this, this cancer of virus. So, so let's fix things. Well, fix is maybe not the right word, but. Let's show we can do it on earth. And then, yes, at a certain point. I hope we can move to other planets, if only, because, but then I'm really thinking long term.
Yeah. In five billion years, our sun, well, is at the end of its lifespan and it will flare up and, uh, basically that probably is the end of Earth. So we have to move out before that. Five billion years. Yes, we have five billion years. So if you wake up in the morning, well, okay. Getting off the planet is not the highest priority at this moment, but you can aspire at a certain point.
And yes, there are always cowboys and they want to rush it. Um, but I think it will take way more time to do it, if only because, you know, to live on the, on Mars. Uh, well, you would rather live on the South Pole. It's easier, you know, uh, so it's very, very, uh, difficult. And we have time.
Luke Robert Mason: You're right. When you, when you said that the idea that we need to learn to live in symbiosis with our terrestrial environment right now, I'm reminded of, uh, this concept, the reverse Fermi paradox.
I don't know if you've heard about this, but the Fermi paradox is the idea that the reason we haven't found aliens. is because they became so technologically advanced that they destroyed themselves before they got off earth. But the reverse Fermi Paradox is more like the avatar version of how aliens exist, i.
e. we haven't met aliens because aliens live in complete symbiosis
with their planet, that they've never looked at the dark sky at night and gone, I wonder if it's better out there than it is. Yeah.
Koert van Mensvoort: Yes. Or if they do move across the universe, they live in that kind of symbiosis that we would not recognize them as aliens, but as something natural, uh, any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from nature.
Luke Robert Mason: I love that idea. I love that idea that it'll be invisible because it's so integrated and so in symbiosis.
Koert van Mensvoort: Yeah. Because true. Yeah. It, once, once technology becomes really advanced at the highest level, it becomes part of, Our humanity, it becomes natural. So I already mentioned cooking. That was an invention 200, 000 years ago and other animals don't cook their food.
But yeah, for humanity, we do it and it's part of who we are. Same for farming. It was the biotechnology of 10, 000 years ago that we started farming. Um, yeah. And now with 8 billion people on the planet without farming, that's not going to work. And. And farming, I think, is the example where we can still make lots of refinements, and we have to do that.
But once it becomes advanced enough, it's so, well, integrated within the biological world that you don't recognize it as a technology anymore.
Luke Robert Mason: Your work at Next Nature, it interrogates this idea, as you mentioned there, of biotechnology, this new form of technology which uses nature, uses bacteria, uses genetics as a way to change ourselves and our environment.
Sometimes it's argued that the reason for, uh, pioneering in space travel is because that's the time at which we will be able to ethically justify massive genetic changes to the body. If you go to Mars and there's going to be, uh, radiation that's going to mess with your eyes, and it's a one way trip.
Then, of course, do the genetic intervention to strengthen your eyes for the new planets that you may eventually arrive at. But the thing with biotechnology is that it engenders so much power. So how do we use these new forms of wet technology? technologies in a way in which there's a lack of unintended consequences because there's a real damage that we could do to the biosphere.
Oh, yes.
Koert van Mensvoort: And there will be unintended consequences and we will have to improvise. But what I think, because often the discussion is between the two camps and the camp that says you should not do that, you should not play God, you should not fiddle with nature like that, and the other camp says yes, we should do it, and then we go all ahead in the deep end of the pool, but I think they're both wrong, and the question should be How do we do that?
How can we do it in a in a concise in a mature way? Because we have to realize, yes, we are playing with fire. And you can say you should not play with fire. But it is what we humans we we we play with fire since the very first day that we are human. It's also in a way, it's a wonder that we're still here.
Um, and if we play with fire, every time we have to do it in a, in a responsible way. And that's what the conversation should be about. If, and then we're really in the far future, because I think this is not happening in the next few decades. But if, if at a certain point we move to other planets, maybe in another solar system, while the trip only, apparently it will take so much time that the group of people in the spaceship, they will evolve before they get there.
Um, and, and what I think then is the question. Would we recognize each other as humans still? And my desire is yes, we should. Um, but then we should not look at, okay, what kind of x ray do you have in your eyes should more about be, do we still recognize? A humanity in it, and it's hard to define. Um, this is the question we should also ask in our ourselves in our co evolutionary relationship with technology, because humanity is not the end point off evolution.
We're not the summit off some big project, and then it's the end of it. No, you humans will change. And what direction do we want to go? And how can we co evolve with technology in a way that it increases our humanity, it supports our humanity, it doesn't numb our senses but extends them, it doesn't outsource people but empowers them, it resonates with our hearts.
rather than it's only estranging. Yeah. And it will also maybe realize some dreams we have of ourselves. So yeah, the question is, what do we dream of for our own future and our future of the planet?
Luke Robert Mason: You have this beautiful text available online called Letter to Humanity, where you address humanity as this form of collective agency.
Uh, do you think that together? We have that sort of agency? Do you think humanity is some form of project and underneath there's something guiding us, like a Hegelian spirit or something? Or will we have this kind of subspeciation where humanity will split across the universe? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Koert van Mensvoort: yeah. Yeah, well, I wrote the letter because it felt kind of Well, maybe megalomanic, but at the same time, I just felt like, okay, I have to write this letter to humanity because I'm also, uh, very much playing on team human, uh, with, uh, people like Douglas Rushkoff, whom, you know, very well.
Uh, and, um, yeah, I think it's also, I, I have it in my heart that I think if we move forward, we can, it's easy to say, like, we have a private dream for a billionaire that maybe is a public nightmare for. All the others, but that's not desirable. You know, if you, if you realize truly advanced technology is becoming part of our humanity is becoming natural, then we should also make it accessible and exclusive for all of humanity.
And that's what needs to be done. So, uh, and maybe it will not be this big rounded organism because it's, you know, it is a very varied Yeah. Uh, species, um, but rather than look at humanity as a cancer or, uh, yeah, a virus, I would look at it as a, as a coral, you know, uh, if we can grow on this planet as a coral and at a certain moment.
Think like, okay, we have a good balance and we know the sun, uh, it has an end of its lifespan. And at a certain point, we also want to bring life to other parts of the galaxy. And we do that in a way to bring something valuable. And we're confident about it. Yeah, then that's the future I would sign on.
Luke Robert Mason: The one thing I love about your work and Next Nature is you also sometimes engage with this thing called speculative biology.
So to ask the question a different way, what if Homo sapiens never evolved? You know, what non human agency do you think would be allowed to express itself on this terrestrial earth? And what other forms do you think maybe something like intelligence or consciousness could have taken?
Koert van Mensvoort: Yeah, the question is, would, would, would something similar have happened?
And it's tempting to think like, okay, then maybe the dinosaurs would have started cooking and growing in neocortex. Dino sapiens. Dino sapiens. Um, well, maybe that's a bit flat, but I do think if you look at the stages in evolution, if you start basically with the big bang, um, and there you see elementary particles you see atoms emerging.
And, you know, after that big bang, atoms are there. That could have been the end of it. Um, but it didn't happen because somehow these atoms, they organize themselves in more complex structures, molecules. And that's the start of chemistry. And that could have been the end of it. Just an entire universe with.
atoms, molecules, but hey, at least on this planet, we know something else happened because of these molecules. They organized themselves in more complex structures and, and their cells emerged. Biology emerged. Could have been the end of it. Just a world with cells bumping around being happy, but also these cells, they Organize themselves in more complex structures in, in colonies first, because that would help them not be washed away as easily.
And that's how multicellular species emerged. Um, every time you see that life and evolution, life builds on other life. It builds on itself to develop new layers of complexity and. We are also part of this world with multicellular species, just like flowers and bananas and dinosaurs. But maybe the shift humanity makes is that we move from genes to memes, to information, uh, uh, as this kind of evolutionary factor.
And yeah, The Hollywood image is that robots will come and they will replace us. But I think right now we already have a robot growing around us. Um, so we're living in a big robot and you could say we're living in a super organism already, a next stage of evolution that that we are encapsulated in, similar to cells being encapsulated in our bodies, and molecules in cells, and atoms in molecules.
So yeah, is it the vector of evolution that life builds upon itself and that we are encapsulated in this superorganism? And would this, would this has happened if Humanity was not the one, but some other species. Well, I would guess yes, uh, because I would, yeah, I would guess this is how evolution organizes itself in different stages.
And it also gives us some answers towards the future. I already mentioned, maybe we're not the dominant species on the planet because we are being encapsulated in a superorganism. And then what does the superorganism want? What are its needs? You know, what, how can it guide the planet? Maybe if we're optimistic, it can do a better job than homo sapiens.
Um, maybe not, but yeah, I think also towards our future in long term, just like as a human being, you know, at a certain moment you will die. Uh, but you could also say as a species. Will you die? Uh, so will humanity be extinct at a certain point, or will we be encapsulated in this superorganism? Well, if these are the choices, then I'd rather be encapsulated in that superorganism.
But I also think we have to make choices now to, to at least steer it a bit. And, uh, in a direction that it is also benevolent towards not only humanity, but basically all life on the planet, uh, and the planet at large. I sometimes feel we not only need to, uh, save the polar bear and the rain forest. But the humans as well.
Luke Robert Mason: Koert it's always fascinating to talk to you. Thank you for showing us some multitude of visions for what could possibly be next. And on that note, I just want to thank you for joining us for the Futures Podcast live from the Dubai Future Forum. If you like what you've heard, you can find out more by visiting futurespodcast.
net. And Kurt, I just want to say thank you for joining me in the podcast lounge at the Museum of the Future. My pleasure, Luke.
Credits
If you enjoyed listening to this episode of the FUTURES Podcast you can help support the show by doing the following:
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | YouTube | SoundCloud | Goodpods | CastBox | RSS Feed
Write us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Subscribe to our mailing list through Substack
Producer & Host: Luke Robert Mason
Assistant Audio Editor: Ramzan Bashir
Transcription: Beth Colquhoun
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @FUTURESPodcast
Follow Luke Robert Mason on Twitter at @LukeRobertMason
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://futurespodcast.net
