Nature in the Internet Age

Internet-age technologies have fundamentally changed the way we perceive nature. The unity of nature that anchored the scientific era has now given way to presumptive fragmentation of the physical world. This shift goes hand in hand with the social fragmentation that arose from the rising wealth, urbanization, mobility and technological prowess of modernity. The internet both promotes and constrains the double fragmentation, for a thriving existence where things and people don't quite connect. The book contains four essays that explore the change. The first describes the shifts in nature and society and their roots in internet technology. The second takes an anthropological perspective to illuminate the key traits of our doubly fragmented world. Third examines how fragmented nature now permeates physics, particularly string theory. The final essay analyses why PowerPoint presentations have become the essential tool of collective pathfinding in the internet age.