Ecocriticism in the Digital Age

Remapping Our Place in a Modern World

In this world of endless status updates, tweets, emails, Netflix binges, and the general deluge of data that commands our attention, ‘Nature’ can often be seen as a respite from the chivvies of modernity. While this idea has merit, the influence of the digital still makes our experiences in Nature fundamentally different from those in a past era. Gone are the stacks of reference guides and thick bundles of field notes. To write, I speak into a digital recorder. I take time-stamped and geotagged pictures and videos with my smartphone. I can ask my phone if a berry is safe to eat, or when low tide will be. Digital technologies, which have become so engrained in our being to the point of becoming extensions of ourselves, reshape the ways in which we can interface with the world around us.

The digital age casts us awash with new networks, from cell phone networks, to social networks, to the internet. In his essay Seeing Like a Network, Quinn Norton illuminates the ways in which we are integrated with networks. “In this phase of human civilization the interaction of the vast networks we’ve built is just about where everything happens. Understanding how networks function isn’t esoteric specialist knowledge anymore than being able to read is.” Being so entrenched in these digital networks, we are conditioned into thinking in systems.

Thanks to our networks, the flow of information in our society has also shifted towards a rhizomatic distribution of knowledge. In our participatory culture, everyone has a voice through comments, live tweeting, and self-publication. This model of communication has shaped the way that I communicate with the cohabitants of my environments as well.

I see the trees, rocks, and everything else as equal participants in my dialogue. I take them in with all of my senses, and this leads to new relationships with them. The objects in my environment come alive in new ways as they become imbued with metaphors. Trees dance and the water stands guard, and they begin to have their own voice within my writing. Just as in our participatory culture, the cohabitants of my environment all have something to teach and contribute to the conversation.

At a time when the consequences of our environmental abuse are coming to a head, this revisioning of our metaphors has never been more crucial. This different way of being in our environments, of cohabitating these spaces, holds implications for our relationships with each other; for our view of humanity’s place within greater systems; and for the environmental impacts of our actions. Engaging in a new Ecocriticism entrenched in the digital age may be a key factor in forming more sustainable relationships with our planet.

Mine is not a new path. Winding through the woods and mountain trails, I walk in the footsteps of writers who have explored humanity’s relationship with the earth, embarking in what has come to be called Ecocriticism. Thoreau went to Walden to ‘live deliberately’; I am spending my days among the trees to construct my metaphors more deliberately. However, I am entrenched in a new existential paradigm, one deeply intertwined with modern technologies. The digital has become a quintessential part of ourselves and our realities, and therefore seeps into the construction of our metaphors in powerful ways. My entry into the literary discussion of our relationships with the environment rides along the wave of the current moment, carrying Ecocriticism into the digital age.