Next Nature

Today the human impact on our planet can hardly be underestimated. Climate change, population explosion, genetic manipulation, digital networks, plastic islands floating in the oceans. This book explores our changing notion of nature. How nature has become one of the most successful products of our time, much of what we perceive as nature is merely a simulation although a romanticized idea of a balanced, harmonic, inherently good and threatened entity. How evolution continues nonetheless. How technology - traditionally created to protect us from the forces of nature - gives rise to a next nature, that is just as wild, cruel, unpredictable and threatening as ever. How we are playing with fire again and again. How we should be careful in doing so, yet how this is also what makes us human. Will we be able to improve our human condition, or will we outsource ourselves for good? People are catalysts of evolution, yet we are only beginning to get attuned with this job description. At least we can be certain of one thing: we will get the nature we deserve. Hence the need to explore how we can design, build and live in the nature caused by people.