Next stage of digitalisation and water stewardship: HYPEROBJECTS?
Today, I had a presentation on "Reflections on the need for digitalization when moving towards water stewardship" at the Digital Summit 2021 in Copenhagen. Though I am not sure the audience found it to be a eureka! moment it was to me. The idea of hyperobjects in the context of digitalization is in my eye a promising path forward because it have the potential of solving an incredible important problem.
I am still not sure how exactly to frame the problem, but it goes along these lines: "We find ourselves in a transition to a new/different sustainable civilization. This transition means struggling with problems on scales that is so vast that it overwhelms us in two important ways: it overwhelms our ability to comprehend the 'wicked problems' and it overwhelms our ability to act. An example is 'climate change' which overwhelms our understanding (leading to futile and counter productive conflicts as well as a numbing apathy) and it overwhelms our ability to act, because it appears that my actions amount to such a little extent, that it is incredibly close to negligible (while at the same time our thinking like that is the crux of the problem)". The spread of Covid19 carries the same difficulties and in my mind the Covid19 crisis looks like a kind of global team-building exercise trying to train us taking responsibility for the other hyperobjects. Hyperobjects that in some cases are trying to kill us.
This gets relevant to "Water stewardship" and "Smart Water utility" is because the issue of water pollution is also a hyperobject. Imagining water pollution globally is mind boggling, imagining the impact for the next centuries likewise so, imagining the effort to solve the problem(s) is also extremely complex and encompasses billions of changes. Even solving the problem locally in each of the utility areas, municipality areas or watershed areas is vastly complex.
The concept of hyperobjects was invented/discovered by Timothy Morton. He writes: "Hyperobjects are massively distributed in time and space and we are obliged to care about them, even if we didn’t manufacture them. Take the biosphere. I can’t see it. I can’t touch it. But I know it exists, and I know I’m part of it. I should care about it." Timothy mentions all the styrofoam in the world as an example, the biosphere as an other example. These hyperobjects are obviously there, but at the same time intangible and to a degree seem somewhat theoretical - still their effects are both real and consequential.
Morton also claims: “You can’t know hyper objects directly; you can only know data.” And that exactly is the key to why this might be the next step for digitalisation.
What we need to achieve is a way to make these immensely important hyperobjects visible and actionable and importantly the data visualisations should show how and to what extent our actions matter. It should show/explain us the proportions and it should show/explain us the positive and negative implications of our actions now and in the vast future. This is (perhaps not, but it seems so to me right now) the only way we can find our way of aligning our actions with the real effect of said actions. We are in a situation where we create massive scale effects by (the sum of) our microscale actions. It is a conundrum, that we need to wrap our head around. Creating systems that can depict this in a convincing way will be an important way forward.
This raises two questions in my mind:
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I am not certain of either of the answers. However, I imagine - a bit half-baked - that the answer to question 2 is that a lot of the hard work is required for the complex work regarding hyperobject visualisation, monitoring, feedback, transparency etc. to work out in practice. We see with the hyperobject of Covid 19, that even though we monitor it online in many countries, the varying contexts of e.g. test protocols and recommendations makes it difficult to compare strategies, to learn from one another and to learn fast enough etc. Hence, there is a need for the basic information infrastructure to work. The place where I start hesitating is when it comes to whether this infrastructure will ever work well enough and what it would mean to live in such an overly quantified world.
As for question 2, I am just enthusiastic and wants to try it out. I imagine having seen good examples already, though I need to see them again to realize that what I saw was actually a hyperobject visualisation. Looking at e.g. Worldometer, I think there is some interesting stuff there. So that might be a place to start...
I can sort of imagine a 'Mark II' for digitalisation as reaching an ability to easily visualise and monitor hyperobjects and understand my/our role and responsibility to the hyperobject in a way that does not sow conflict or apathy.
Timothy Morton describes the understanding of hyperobjects as "the end of the world". At least it is the end of the world with the current understanding of our role as humans in it. Suddenly, the world is no longer a grand scene, where we can experimentally fold out all our human aspirations. In stead, the world is a large assembly of all kinds of hyperobjects around us and inside us, that we must find ways to navigate in, around and together with. The 'rules of the games' of living suddenly changed.
Morton calls this an upgrade: "Human beings are now going through this upgrade. The upgrade is called ecological awareness." And in a sense it is an upgrade to stewardship and these reflections tend to suggest that such an upgrade may go through an advanced usage of data and digitalisation. Perhaps, when we truly manage to understand the new world order, we may be able to change our actions and way of living effortlessly.
I don't know if all I said above is 'true', but it tickles my brain in a good way. It seems like a whole bunch of pieces of the puzzle falls in place.
I would be very happy to hear your reflections on this - and if you know of good examples of something in this general direction it could be very interesting. It must be out there somewhere ...
Chair World Water Community | Director World Water Lab | Doing the Great Work to Heal Our Waters
3 年Dear Pernille, thanks for your thoughts and sharing. My first reaction is that 'mapping', 'creating a picture' or 'quantifying' these 'complex' systems is the issue, because as soon as we try to quantify, the 'relation' is lost. This refers to the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics (quantification let's us lose the phase information). The phase in this case relates to the relationship we have with those systems. We are resonating water systems, our human bodies are a complex orchestra, connecting with different objects, systems, ecosystems, in small and large scales around us, all through water btw! Everything we do has an impact on the world around us. If we can return to this sensitivity, the beautiful nature of our water selves and the relationships we have to the things around us (through water), we wouldn't need to create these mappings, measurements, and quantifications (which will always be just a certain perspective of the thing we are trying to relate to or understand). Although I do see the urge to 'show' that we are impacting with our actions all the different hyperobjects that you are suggesting. So my thoughts on this will continue...
Produktionschef
3 年Pernille, this really tickles your brain in a both tempting but also provocing way - As all large thoughts do I guess. I thought I should share the visualisation that turned up in my head when trying to grasp the idea of hyperobjects. Before the notion of hyperobjects, the world was a 2 D map, and humans walked around it being 3D, therefore being able to conquer the map as they pleased. When hyperobjects took form in my mind, they turn up as manifestations of large 3D objects (transparent and floating, like huge deformed bubbles) that we now need to collaborate with. If we don’t manage to collaborate with the objects, they grow inevitably and shrink the free space we used to roam freely before. Without that visualisation, I would have less understanding of the concept. Isn’t the challenge about visualising data from these hyperobjects also the challenge of collaboration between different fields? Psychology, language, technology etc.?
Professor Em. p? Lund Univ., Swede
3 年Thank you Pernille for a most fascinating description. This is exactly what I am struggling with just now: how to describe how climate-water-energy-food-economy-lifestyle are connected. Yes, there are so many ways to describe the coupling, but still I have great problems to find ways to visualize this. We tend to see one coupling at a time, and still we need to understand the complexity of this wicked problem. Your reflections are a great inspiration and encouragement to try more! Of course I will catch up the writings of Timothy Morton. With great appreciation for your - as always - new way of thinking, Gustaf
4.?????How do we secure, what we measure creates the best possible picture of “what is”? Or are there “Black Swans”? 5.?????How are these data presented and facilitated to the population in a format that they can follow, understand and know what to do? 6.?????Could your idea be put forward by using the good force in competition, and let every university in the world pick their own Hyberobject to measure and present to the population in such a way that it facilitates a critical mass for change, and thereby create a sustainable “Manual for Spaceship Earth”? And may the best university win!
Beautiful article and insights into wicked invisible problems. And how to see more than the tip of the iceberg by gathering data. Thereby creating a platform to operate from and do good for the whole. These thoughts ran through my head, when I read about the eureka moment (I got one too) – sorry for the messy order: 1.?????One of our biggest problem is WILLED DENIAL, where we don′t want to see the situation as “it is”, and thereby become the group of good people doing nothing. So, this article shows a way to opes people’s eyes and make them see the Hyperobjects, where you today only see the tip of the iceberg, and peacefully stay in your denial. 2.?????A huge contributor to climate change is that we humans are so stuck in our present habits, that change only occurs when we get a wakeup call. So, we need a wake-up call. Data could be such a wake-up call 3.?????If around 10% of the population is changing their habits by facing the reality as “it is”, we will create a critical mass for change.