While transitioning to an intelligent life, don't forget to take a look at the natural environment of things

Life habits have been decisive in molding our ability to think, affecting how we perceive and manipulate our surroundings. Over the last ten thousand years of adaptive history, we went from nomadic hunter-gatherers to populate dense agricultural, industrial and urban settlements while driving noticeable changes over the earth’s surface in this process [1,2].

The development and refinement of tools during this process has been fundamental both to achieve some of the most challenging tasks as to acquire new life habits, enabling new needs and new ways of thinking [3]. Industrial development has allowed us to move from a predominantly agricultural way of life (≈ year 1840) to agglomerate more than 54% of a population over 7,000 million inhabitants in urban areas [4].

The world's growing urban population has pushed its surroundings towards a fragile environmental, economic and public health scenario. There is an increasing awareness of the economy's dependence on sustainable processes with special concern on energy and water availability, climatic stability and predictability of the biogeochemical cycles. It is increasingly common to associate 'quality of life' to access to sustainable energy, resilient infrastructure and cleaner transportation means [5].

Although scientific, political and social debate has been surrounding global climate change during several decades, global decision makers are now playing their cards on the fourth industrial revolution, driven by the advent of the artificial intelligence (IA). Life will change with intelligent automation surrounding us, simplifying tasks in our workplaces, in our homes and even in places historically 'disconnected' from the rest of the civilization.

From task automation to decision-making automation, these changes may deeply affect the way we communicate, perceive and interact with our surrounding environment [6].

There is an increasingly common use of devices with the ability to track and share personal data through remote networks. Third parties can access this data, not without the risk of invading privacy, cause individual vulnerability and even increasing authoritarianism in some political contexts [7]. This phenomenon could drive deep changes on our behavior patterns.

Today many of us may be questioning to what extent should we delegate the power of decision-making to recent developments like artificial intelligence. 

But, that might not be the only challenge we're facing during this process... Let's stop and reflect about this for a moment:

Will we retain our ability to interact with our natural surroundings?
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While we transition to 'digital consciousness', let's not forget to take a look at the natural environment of things.


 
CITATIONS
 
​[1] Ripple, W. J., Wolf, C., Newsome, T. M., Galetti, M, Alamgir, M., Crist, E., Mahmoud, M. I., Laurance, W. F., 15,364 scientist signatories from 184 countries; 2017. World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice, BioScience, bix125, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix125

[2] Vitousek, P. M., Mooney, H. A., Lubchenco, J., & Melillo, J. M. 1997. Human domination of Earth's ecosystems. Science, 277(5325), 494-499.
​Link: http://webspace.pugetsound.edu/facultypages/kburnett/readings/vitousek.pdf 
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[3] Diamond, J. M., & Ordunio, D. 2011. Guns, germs, and steel. Books on Tape. Orwell, G. 1949. 1984. New York: New American Library.

[4] United Nations, 2014. Concise Report on the World Population Situation in 2014. UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division. ST/ESA/SER.A/354. 30 pp. Link: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/

[5] Bartlett, A. A. 1994. Reflections on sustainability, population growth, and the environment. Population & Environment, 16(1): 5-35.
Link: http://www.albartlett.org/articles/art_reflections_part_1.html

[6] Murphy, W. 2016. Transitioning to the Intelligent Automation Age.
​Link: https://medium.com/@willmurphy/transitioning-to-the-intelligent-automation-age-151fe72b3fd3 
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[7] Laszlo, E. 1984. Cybernetics in an evolving social system. Kybernetes, 13(3), 141-145.  Link: https://doi.org/10.1108/eb005684 
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About the author - Juan C. Arias Jimenez

I am passionate about sustainable transformations. Collaboratively and through scientific research, consultancy, education and fundraising for environmental networks, I envision contributing my best to achieve a sustainable society.