Animal Internet: Nature and the Digital Revolution

by Alexander Pschera, Elisabeth Lauffer (Translator)

Overview

"Bold and fascinating ... A truly thought-provoking book for animal lovers and technology enthusiasts alike."—Kirkus Reviews

A bestial Brave New World is on the horizon: Some fifty thousand creatures around the globe—including whales, leopards, flamingoes, bats, and snails—are being equipped with digital tracking devices. The data gathered and studied by major scientific institutes about their behavior will warn us about tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but also radically transform our relationship to the natural world. With a broad cultural and historical perspective, this book examines human ties with animals, from domestic pets to the soaring popularity of bird watching and kitten images on the Web. Will millennia of exploration soon be reduced to experiencing wilderness via smartphone? Contrary to pessimistic fears, author Alexander Pschera sees the Internet as creating a historic opportunity for a new dialogue between man and nature.

Foreword by Martin Wikelski, Director, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology. The book includes an index.

Alexander Pschera, born in 1964, has published several books on the internet and media. He studied German, music, and philosophy at Heidelberg University. He lives near Munich where he writes for the German magazine Cicero as well as for German radio.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781939931337
Publisher:	New Vessel Press
Publication date:	04/12/2016
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Alexander Pschera, born in 1964, has published several books on the Internet and media. He studied German, music and philosophy at Heidelberg University. He lives near Munich where he writes for the German magazine Cicero as well as for German radio.

Elisabeth Lauffer is the recipient of the 2014 Gutekunst Translation Prize. After graduating from Wesleyan Universityshe lived in Berlin and then obtained a master’s in education from Harvard. She now lives in Vermont, where she is the Assistant Director of the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy.

Table of Contents

Foreword Dr. Martin Wikelski i

Introduction: Why Today's Little Red Riding Hood Has a Smartphone in Her Basket: An Old Story in a New Light 1

Why We Are Now Nothing More than Beautiful Souls: In the Labyrinth of a Postmodern Awareness of Nature 16

Why We Know Whether a Swallow is Frightened in a Storm: What Really Happens on the Animal Internet 43

Why We Should Care If a Frog Wanders Around in China: The New Generation of Working Animals 57

Why Alexander Von Humboldt Hasn't Logged Off Yet… The People Behind the Animal Internet 71

… And Why "Problem Bear" Bruno Might Still Be Alive Today: On New Forms of Coexistence 82

Why Technology is Not All Bad, and Nature Not All Good: Data Protection for Animals and the Positive Sides of Transparency 93

Why Animals Were Always Friends of Humans: A Little Story of Empathy 105

Why the Internet is Crawling With Cats: The Internet As a Shared Space of Being 129

Why After Nature, Nature Will Still Exist: Humans and Animals in the Anthropocene 153

Acknowledgements 179

Notes 181

Bibliography 197

Index 201

Editorial Reviews

Excerpted in Scientific American

"Pschera reflects on the significance of the 'digital revolution' in wildlife ecology—the recent explosion of small, relatively inexpensive cameras and satellite tracking devices that have allowed humans to follow animal movements ... He argues persuasively that the 'animal internet' is full of possibilities for interspecies communication ... As Pschera speculates, technological access to animals’ lives may, ironically, restore our sensory access to them."—The New York Review of Books

"Charts the new digital frontier in the human-animal relationship. Gone are the days of an untouched natural world. We have entered wilderness 2.0 ... [An] intriguing book."—The Washington Post

"Bold and fascinating ... proposing that the Internet—and other digital technology—offers an opportunity to rediscover our animals as more than abstracted images but as autonomous individuals with inherent value. A truly thought-provoking book for animal lovers and technology enthusiasts alike."—Kirkus Reviews

"This surprising book offers a great shout-out to the next phase in our relationship with non-human beings: our brand-newly emerging recognition that they, too, are individuals, leading individual lives."
—Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel and Song for the Blue Ocean

“At last, a convincing explanation for why waldrapps are on Twitter and quolls on Facebook. In beautiful, philosophical prose, Alexander Pschera even explains why cats rule the Internet. The first book that brings nature and technology together with animals as individuals and streams of big data alike.”—David Rothenberg, author of Bug Music and Survival of the Beautiful

"Animal Internet is a most important book. This excellent work could be a strong catalyst for people ... to reconnect and become re-enchanted with all sorts of mysterious and fascinating animals, both local and distant. By shrinking the world it will bring humans and other animals together in a multitude of ways that only a few years ago were unimaginable."
—Marc Bekoff, University of Colorado, author of Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence

“Humanized pets, industrialized meat, endless sad extinctions: Must our animal future be so bleak? Not according to Alexander Pschera, who envisions humans and wild animals interacting on matters like climate change and conservation through electronic tracking. A fascinating account full of novel and unexpected examples.” —Richard W. Bulliet, author of Hunters, Herders and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships and Professor of History Emeritus, Columbia University

"Pschera, an expert on the Internet, media, and philosophy, attentively contemplates and justly criticizes postmodernist efforts to go 'back to nature.' He explores both the causes and effects of man’s severing from the natural world. He notes the ways in which the very attempts meant to protect the natural world actually harm our relationship with it and further distance us from it."—The Literary Review

"An original book that goes against the trend to stubbornly keep nature and technology divided from one another."—Der Spiegel

"Animal Internet is one of the most interesting books that I've read in recent years."—Bavarian Radio

"What Pschera describes sounds futuristic but it's already widespread reality . . . Pschera's book is not just popular science: he describes not only the status quo, but also thinks about an ongoing transformation."—Wired.de

From the Publisher

2016-01-10
In a "postdigital" era in which the Internet shapes much of our interaction with others, German media writer Pschera argues that animals can help us see the digital revolution in a new light—and situate ourselves within it more comfortably. Humans and animals have a richly symbiotic but complicated relationship that has been the focus of countless explorations, from Aristotle to Descartes to Derrida. In his first book translated into English, Pschera, who writes for German radio and Cicero magazine, draws on these thinkers, among many others, in his bold and fascinating argument that the "Animal Internet"—the "shared, intelligent sensory network that has developed over the course of evolution, and that animals are now using to communicate with humans"—will prompt a paradigm shift in the human understanding of nature. Our ability to tag and track wild animals, for example, may revolutionize our understanding of not just migration patterns, but of countless other mechanisms of the natural world. Much of the animal planet remains mysterious, but new monitoring devices have begun to reveal the vast potential for such "big animal data" in helping both animals (by identifying impediments to safe migration) and humans (tracking animal movements to predict imminent earthquakes). Yet technology can also trouble animal-human ethics by subjugating animals, as history has repeatedly demonstrated. Pschera discusses these concepts in clear, cogent prose informed by histories of science and philosophy. Moreover, he puts forth an alternative future in which animals recover their voices and rights. At its core, the book is optimistic and hopeful, proposing that the Internet—and other digital technology—offers an opportunity to rediscover our animals as more than abstracted images but as autonomous individuals with inherent value. A truly thought-provoking book for animal lovers and technology enthusiasts alike.

Kirkus Reviews