Next Nature: Like the New Coke, but scarier...

Google reader has taken over my life. Two weeks ago I was woefully unaware of what an RSS feed could do for me, and never before have I seen such internet jargon mean something so simple (Real Simple Syndication, in fact). I'd recommend you check it out for your own, potentially beautiful self — it compiles all your earmarked blogs and websites into one, simple to access log and reminds you that you have hundreds of irrelevant tidbits to consume each day. Time wasters — meet ultra-organized time destroyer.

So while stumbling across this wide web (the entrapment language is correct), I found this:

www.nextnature.net

It's a site devoted to the idea that, as they say, "Old nature, in the sense of trees, plants, animals, atoms, or climate, is getting increasingly controlled and governed by man. It has turned into a cultural category. At the same time, products of culture, which used to be in control of man, tend to outgrow us and become autonomous. Our notions of nature and culture seem to be trading places. The ‘natural powers’ shift to another field." Okay, it's a bit heady. But it's also frightening — this idea that technology and marketing has grown to such an extent that, to spin an old Oscar Wilde bit, technology doesn't just imitate life — life imitates technology. Thus this strangely plausible recreation of an organic coke bottle:



Because Coke chemicals are the antidote to Organic culture, this is weird... but goddam if someone doesn't try to market this soon. It's a new world out there, my friends, and I'm puttin' on my brave pants to try to grapple with it.

~Paul "Dystopia" Sorenson