ruins of our planet
Slashdot has an article online that once again shows the impact of technologies such as Google Earth which – in McLuhanesque terms – extend our senses, in raising awareness, convincing people, moving them to (re)action, influencing or even altering their behaviour etc.
“On Monday, an environmental advocacy group [Appalachian Voices] joined with Google to deliver a special interactive layer for Google Earth. This new layer will tell ‘the stories of over 470 mountains that have been destroyed from coal mining, and its impact on nearby ecosystems. Separately, the World Wildlife Fund has added the ability to visit its 150 project sites using Google Earth.”
One only needs to look at the advertising industry to understand the power of crafted audiovisual information in influencing human behaviour. There’s a large body of research on this not only in the advertising world, but also in the fields of media & behavioural studies as well as more recent endeavours in the academic world concerning the possible roles of technology in this, e.g. so-called captology (Stanford University’s fascinating Persuasive Technology Lab, who also run a blog here).
In a sense, creating images of possible futures or making them ‘experiencable’ or tangible in various ways, fits in similar categories as they influence how we make decisions today.
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