What is an ecocyborg?

A quick internet search on the term ecocyborg brings you results pertaining to the EcoCyborg project — some academic research conducted by Lael Parrott under the supervision of Robert Kok. The EcoCyborg project focused on modelling the creation of an artificial ecosystem suitable for sustaining life on a space station. Lael Parrott’s masters thesis opens with the point that although we’ve quite cheerfully destroyed ecosystems over the centuries, creating them still remains something of a taboo. As has been pointed out before, however (many times), our home planet can be thought of as a spaceship; and one that has, seemingly without intention (Gaia and various deities notwithstanding), managed to sustain human life for eons. However, we may now be coming to a time when continuation of that state of affairs will require intention.

I don’t really have a proper, precise definition of an ecocyborg. This is all about giving voice to poorly-articulated feelings. But it’s not too difficult to extend the concept of the cyborg (a human/machine hybrid) to the environment. For now, then, an ecocyborg is the augmentation of the environment with technology to create a designed environmental machine. The ‘useful’ parts of nature are interfaced with machines that overcome the parts that are detrimental (to humans). In such a world, only the irrelevant have the chance of persisting with relatively little interference — provided there is space for them to do so.

Boundaries are going to be difficult to define, much as they are for cyborgs. What ‘counts’? Supposing I have to take medication for the rest of my life, and if the supply of medicine stops for long enough (say a few months), I will die. Am I, in some sense, a cyborg? The pill isn’t quite a microchip, or some titanium implant giving me superpowers. But at the same time, in terms of what sustains me, it would be a mix of both the (supposedly) ‘natural’ ecosystem and the industrial supply chains associated with the manufacture and delivery of my medication.

For ecocyborgs, there are similar questions. Did we already cross the Rubicon when we applied artificial fertilizers to the land? Or created irrigation channels? Or built roads, sewage systems, and communication networks?

The question of what we should and shouldn’t be doing with the environment is highly contested. My impression of reading some of the green literature is the general advocation of things we should stop doing (e.g. driving cars, flying planes, intensifying agriculture). This suggests that we have somehow progressed too far, and so we need to go back, which then makes one wonder how far we should go? When was the ideal time when humans lived in sustainable harmony with nature? The idea that there was some time when humans lived in harmony with nature goes back to the creation stories of many religions. Clearly even thousands of years ago people were aware that there were problems with the relationship between humans and their environment. Are we to go back to being hunter gatherers, then? If we do, what is to stop us rediscovering agriculture?

To live in harmony with our environment, we must first design and build an environment we can live in harmony with. There is an old story about a king who ordered his lands to be covered with leather after treading on a thorn. A fool suggested cutting two small pieces of leather and attaching them to his feet instead. We can argue that it would be better to change ourselves than our environment; what we perhaps don’t appreciate is the extent to which the two are, I think, inseparable. I believe we can no more change ourselves without changing the environment than we can change the environment without changing ourselves: As we become cyborgs we create ecocyborgs to live in; as we create ecocyborgs, we become cyborgs so we can live in them.