Immersion across planetary scales

Presentation theme: future sustainability and worldviews

There is a natural tendency to resize human experience to any scale. The issue with this is that changing scale changes context, so assumptions may very likely not work anymore. This is important because access to today’s big data is significant at planetary scales over which aggregated human presence does matter. This is evident to indigenous communities that over time have developed place based knowledge aligning communal actions in order to preserve the greater environment. Mass human actions, that is, a massive number of people on the planet behaving the same way does affect life on Earth at a global scale. At this crossroads, understanding both what it means to exist in a place and the generalizations achieved via the scientific method when looking at large data are critical in connecting the personal with the communal and then the global contexts. A simple example of not doing so is assuming that drinking water from a plastic bottle which does not negatively affect one’s immediate safety will therefore not affect life on Earth. But data shows that it does, and the assumption that it doesn’t, further shows a deep disconnect and lack of place and data awareness. This presentation calls for an immediate desegregation of realms and for a focus on place and scale data to ground knowledge and guide adult behavior as a higher and necessary level of planetary literacy.

Image © SPB | Natalie Toczek