Seeing like a planet

All too often this blinds us to deeper, more gradual changes in the world around us. Climate change is a clear example of this: an alteration of the world occurring at such inhuman scales of time and geography that we struggle to fit it into conventional narratives, let alone respond effectively. Plants, on the other hand, have their own scale of time. Plants move — and they're on the move. 

In response to shifting climates, trees migrate across landscapes in search of more favourable conditions. In the eastern United States, research shows, three-quarters of tree species are shifting north- and westwards, at an average rate of between 10 and 15 kilometres a decade. In Scandinavia — which is experiencing warming that far exceeds the global average — birch, pines, spruce and willow are now growing at higher altitudes than ever before, gaining as much as 500 metres elevation in just a couple of decades.

Plant movements are in process, and not for the first time. The last great tree migration occurred at the end of the last Ice Age, around 10 000 years ago. As the planet warmed, the forests reconquered the land. In North America, beech trees leapt over Great Lakes as the glaciers retreated. Norwegian spruces circumnavigated the North and Baltic seas before modern humans did.

While we struggle to fit climate change into our short-term narratives, some trees are adapting to climate change faster than we are, and as a result have more chance of adapting successfully. In fact, climate change is probably only one of several factors they're responding to — other human activities such as construction and pesticide use are also likely to be playing a part.

The Tools That Change How We See

Our minds are incapable of thinking of, or thinking at, the pace and scale of the world — but we do have the tools at hand, technology among them. The way we perceive the world also depends on how we choose to see, and what we choose to look at. Technology can either limit or expand our perspective.

Satellite imaging, for instance, emerged from a history of military surveillance and violence. Now, satellites can act like time-lapse cameras, offering a way to look beyond our immediate surroundings, revealing large-scale changes in the natural world that would otherwise be invisible. Satellite imaging reminds us that our technologies can offer a new way of seeing, if we use them thoughtfully.

Technology is our most direct connection to the material world around us. It shapes the way we interact with our environment and, in turn, shapes us. It allows for rapid transformations not only in the scale of our attention, but also in its kind. Instead of distancing us from the more-than-human world, technology can bring us closer to it.

Rethinking Intelligence

In The Overstory by Richard Powers, one character recounts a science fiction story that takes place in a gap between timescales: an alien civilisation that perceives time at a much faster rate than humans — so fast that Earth seconds seem to them like years — arrives on Earth. To them, humans are nothing but sculptures of immobile meat. The foreigners try to communicate, but there's no reply. Finding no signs of intelligent life, they conclude that humans are suitable for nothing more than being turned into food for their intergalactic journey.

Here and now, we are the aliens, buzzing about in human time, unable to recognise the intelligent life that surrounds us, and thus reducing it to mere insensate sustenance.

It seems significant that just as we start to question the real meaning of artificial intelligence, science is starting to explore what it means to call something or someone intelligent at all. Until very recently, humankind was understood to be the sole possessor of intelligence. It was the quality that made us unique among life forms — indeed, the most useful definition of intelligence might have been 'what humans do'.

In rethinking artificial intelligence, we might begin to rethink intelligence across the board. We can try to look beyond the horizon of our own selves and our own creations to glimpse another kind, or many different kinds, of intelligence, which have been here, right in front of us, the whole time — and in many cases have preceded us. In doing so, we might change the way we think about the world, and thus chart a path towards a future which is less extractive, destructive and unequal, and more just, kind and regenerative.

Making the Unseen Visible

At Nazka Mapps, our mission is to make the technologies for seeing the world more easily accessible, and to help people derive meaningful insights from its vast amounts of data. We specialise in visualising satellite imagery and other location-based data, offering platforms that allow anyone to explore environmental changes on any device — from desktop computers to smartphones.

Our interactive maps and geodata services provide real-time insights into changes across the globe. With these capabilities, we empower users to think at the scale of forests, oceans and entire ecosystems, fostering a deeper understanding of our place within these larger systems. We aim to create tools that — by bridging the gap between data and accessibility — not only shape how we see the world, but also how we respond to it.