Should we embrace cyberspace as part of the natural world?

Sue Thomas
5 min readSep 13, 2024
“It would be vast and rolling across hills and valleys, with no ability to see what was over the next hill.” Leonard Kleinrock, one of the founding fathers of the internet.

In recent years we’ve seen a growing number of books, reports and articles explaining why nature is good for us. But they often don’t mention the role of digital wellbeing in helping to make that connection. Indeed, the tired old ‘leave your phone at home’ admonishment is still going strong in some quarters. But isn’t it time to wake up to the potential of technology to facilitate the link?

I’m not suggesting we turn our backs on ‘real’ nature, but simply that we open ourselves to the potential of phones, screens, and other tech to enhance our relationship with it.

‘The web smells like life.‘ Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired Magazine.

My book ‘Technobiophilia: Nature and Cyberspace’ was published in 2013. Its original title had been ‘Metaphors of Nature in Cyberspace’ but it evolved into much more than a study of metaphors, hence the change. It’s a substantial study of what author Margaret Wertheim called ‘a place so new that some things still lack names’ and I’d like to share two excerpts with you: a paragraph from the very beginning of the book, and a longer one from the very end. I hope you enjoy them and would love to hear your thoughts in this post-Brexit, post-Covid, post-Truth era.

The start

Q: If the internet were…

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Sue Thomas
Sue Thomas

Written by Sue Thomas

I write about life, nature and technology. Seeking a publisher for my third novel 'The Fault in Reality. www.suethomas.net. Threads: @suethomas_bournemouth