Are Humans Losing Touch with Nature?
With so much of life based on electronic representations of reality, humans risk losing touch with nature, says University of Washington psychologist Peter Kahn. From web cams that offer views of wildlife to virtual tours of the Grand Canyon to robotic pets, modern technology increasingly is encroaching into human connections with the natural world. Kahn and his colleagues believe this intrusion may emerge as one of the central psychological problems of our times. “We are a technological species, but we also need a deep connection with nature in our lives,” Kahn argues. “Robot and virtual pets are beginning to replace children’s interactions with biologically live pets,” Ruckert said. “The larger concern is that technological nature will shift the baseline of what people perceive as the full human experience of nature, and that it will contribute to what we call environmental generational amnesia.
