"I think that in most cases, technological nature is probably better than no nature, but not as good as the real thing. That's the take-away message from my research so far. The analogy I use is from E. M. Forster's 1909 short story The Machine Stops, in which, in a future world, people live underground. A mother talks to her son by videoconference. She thinks it is "good enough" to be able to communicate with him at all, whereas the son yearns to see her in person, recognising all the nuances that have been lost in the digitally mediated form of communication...Eventually, humans will be able to design technology offering substantive nature-like experiences. But my research tells me that, just as in Forster's story, these will always be diminished compared with real nature. If this is true, then we should think of technological nature as a bonus, not as a substitute. Otherwise we might come to believe, as we have already to some degree, that "good enough" is "good"."
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Psychologist Peter Kahn in George, Alison. 2011. Through a window, darkly... New Scientist 210, no. 2815 (June 4): 32-33.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops
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The Machine Stops
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