MAEBB01 / M02 ECOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE / MICRO-ESSAY
On McKenzie Wark,
‘Adventures in Third Nature’,
pp. 179 – 182.
The idea of second nature1comes from the layer of physical transformations that humans have built all around our environments: houses, cities, and even RVs. Second nature operates through tangible items and mechanisms that directly affect the physical environment. It does not replace nature; rather it acts as a mediator that shapes and facilitates how we interact with the natural world. Wark argues that our very understadning of nature comes from these modifications and adaptations.
Wark also coins the idea of an evolution of a second into a third nature2, an emergent realm that fuses the physical environment with information and technology. This creates a virtual layer powered through the internet, smartphones, and platforms such as Google and Facebook, that extract information from both nature and second nature, establishing a system in which everything can be quantified, classified, and compared.
Our interactions with the natural world are becoming increasingly subject to the same logic and mechanisms that govern the digital real, therefore, we become stuck in this cycical process where our wants and needs are channeled back into a profit-generating system. Experiences in nature are enabled by third nature, which then uses our participation to harvest data and improve its ability to commodify and commercialize such experiences.
1 second nature: the built environment designed for human comfort and convenience.
2 third nature: the invisible stratum of commodities, a more abstract and interconnected space where information moves faster than physical objects
