Nature in the future

A thorough analysis of new perspectives on the relation between man and nature in the near future.

Koert van Mensvoort, Hendrik Jan Grievink, Next Nature: Nature Changes along with Us, Actar, Barcelona 2011 (pp. 472, $49.95)

Exhibit A in Case No. CV11-10322, currently being heard in the US District Court in Los Angeles, consists of advertisements for the vast range of Tostitos and Sun Chips products. A quick scan reveals that this cornucopia of fried corn variations is marketed with an equally diverse set of promises, ranging from the optimistic "Hello healthier living" to the liberating "Trans Fat-, Gluten-, Additive-, Casein-, Lactose-, msg-, Onion-, and Pig (Porcine)-Free". All of them, however, claim to be made with 100 per cent all-natural ingredients. "But," argues plaintiff Julie Gengo, a consumer residing in Richmond, California, in her summary of allegations, "Tostitos and Sun Chips products are not made of 'all-natural' ingredients." The corn and vegetable oils of which they consist are made from genetically modified plants, and "a recognised defining characteristic of genetically modified foods is that they are not natural." The plaintiff was thus damaged, in an amount to be determined at trial, because she did not get the "all-natural" products that were advertised and for which she had paid. Unfortunately for Gengo, "natural" is a term for which the US Food and Drug Administration (among others) does not possess a working definition. Should a product made from a plant in whose DNA naturally occurring organisms (humans) have inserted naturally occurring genes from another naturally occurring species be called artificial? More succinctly: what is nature? And does the nature caused by people still qualify?

<i>Next Nature: Nature Changes along with Us</i> spread — *Next Nature: Nature Changes along with Us* spread

This is the uncertain territory explored by a recent book, Next Nature: Nature Changes along with Us. The volume has evolved from its own natural format — a blog —, offering a compendium of valuable new perspectives on the relationship between humans and their environment. Packaged in seven National Geographic-mimicking sections, Next Nature collects its online observations of strange technologies and provocative experiments alongside new short essays by Bruce Sterling, Rachel Armstrong and other assorted seers and imagineers of our techno-future.

While the physical book serves to amplify the website's existing faults (glib and stiff writing, combined with overexposed examples), it offers its own benefits: at nearly 500 densely packed pages, the sheer volume of this catalogue of next nature is exhilarating.

The book places human activity already and always within the framework of nature — and yet, at the same time, it argues that our current condition of nature has evolved from some original version, to become "next" or "altered". Yet, if Next Nature demonstrates anything, it is the fantastic hubris embedded in such clear-cut divisions between nature and culture. Instead, the book is better read as a new Ark — an encyclopaedia or curiosity cabinet of intensely thought-provoking, often visually stunning specimens from which to develop a more nuanced understanding of the human relationship with nature. Certainly, in an era of anthropogenic climate change, geo-engineering, assisted migration and all-natural genetically modified corn snacks, this kind of new perceptual framework is desperately needed. Nicola Twilley (@nicolatwilley)

Certainly, in an era of anthropogenic climate change, geo-engineering, assisted migration and all-natural genetically modified corn snacks, this kind of new perceptual framework is desperately needed