The Death of Terra Nova

I’ve recently been discussing my essay on Cosmopolis with a friend and then came across Ari’s post at the Edge of the American West which is very much on topic. While I was concerned primarily with the ramifications of digitization on our perceptions of time and space, ubiquitous popular GPS technology could fall within the basic technology/nature framework. Ari mentions the concept of Terra Nova in one of his comments which got me thinking that GPS is perhaps different than digitization’s effect on time and space. Here, it’s the concept of discovery which is primarily challenged. Sure, there are other modes of discovery and a socially adapted ubiquitous GPS could offer new kinds of discovery. But will this be the death of Terra Nova?

More than that, though, I wonder what never getting lost means for people’s perceptions of the non-human world. We already have, because of an incredible array of technologies, an outsized sense of our mastery of nature — sorry environmental history community, but that word is just too convenient to ignore. Steamboats made the Mississippi Valley seem small. Railroads collapsed space and time in the West. Automobilies privatized and democratized these advantages. Air travel has apparently shrunk the globe to the size of a jawbreaker. And the internet means that we’re all the Borg, right? So now what? Not only am I never alone (my trusty cellphone), but I never misplace myself. Unknown locales, which once would have seemed daunting, reminding me of my insignificance in a world much bigger and more labyrinthine than I could ever really hope to fathom, now fit inside a little box that I can afix to my dashboard and bring with me anywhere. I can even upload another set of maps so that I don’t get lost in the woods. The epistemological ramifications are breathtaking.