TECHNO-NATURALISTS

Many people believe that technology is the antithesis of nature. Here’s an alternate view. A fishing rod is technology. So is that fancy backpack. Or a compass. Or a tent. When boomers my age ran through the woods with play guns (as distasteful as that might be to some people), they were using technology as an entry tool to nature.

Today, the family that together goes geo-caching or wildlife photographing with their digital cameras, or collecting pond samples, is doing something as legitimate as going fishing; both involve gadgets that offer an excuse to get outside. Young citizen naturalists are bound to have a different attitude about technology from many older people — and that could be an advantage.

Not long ago, I received a note from Jim Levine, who happens to be my literary agent, and who also has written several books about fatherhood and family life. He and his wife, Joan, were staying at their getaway cabin in Northampton. Jim was on his way out the door to take their 4-year-old grandson, Elijah, on a walk through a nature preserve and to gather pond samples “to look at under the very cool microscope I got him,” he said.

Jim, who is a bit too attached to his own smartphone, was excited about the microscope: “It hooks up to my computer (desktop or laptop) and lets us both see the images on screen and record still or movies. So from our last outing, I have pix of the outing, pix of him setting up the microscope, and then a video of what he actually saw — paramecium and all — when he looked through. He just got done explaining to Joan that we won’t necessarily retrieve a paramecium in our sample! At age 4!”

Personally, I’m not keen on the kind of gadgets that go over the line — to the point where they make us watch or listen to the gadget instead of nature (iPod-guided tours of natural areas, for example). But techno-naturalists are here to stay.

Any gadget can distract from nature. A person can become so transfixed by the camera screen that they never look past it to see the stream. In the same way, some fishermen are so intent on their gear, or on winning the tournament trophy, that they are unaware of the environment around them, except for the rod, the reel, the feel of monofilament, the tell-tale pattern of water.

Therefore, the proof of the worth of any nature-oriented getaway gadget should not be how focused the user becomes on the technology, but on how long it takes that person to put down the gadget, or become unaware of it, so they feel free to look away and use their own eyes and all the other senses.

“How do we create experiences for children, particularly in cities, that foster awareness of the natural world?” asks Janis Dickinson, director of Citizen Science at Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which offers the Celebrate Urban Birds project, available in Spanish and English. “It is possible, even likely, that a new generation of techno-naturalists will document their outdoor experiences not with paper and pen but with electronic data, digital images, and video, creating new communities of action and meaning. Celebrate Urban Birds is exploring these ideas while remaining grounded in the real world. It is our overriding belief that spending real time in real nature, with its rhythms, sights, smells, and sounds, may be facilitated with technology but cannot be fabricated!”

The Cornell program is one of several citizen naturalist programs that use the Internet to encourage connection to the natural world. (Others are described on the C&NN Web site, Nature Rocks, and in the Field Notes section of the 2008 edition of “Last Child in the Woods.”)

We live in a goal-oriented society, and so most people need some goal in mind when entering the natural world, whether that goal is to live out a fantasy or to hunt and gather. Shouldering that toy gun as a 10-year-old and heading for the woods was one way to enter nature.

So, I have an imaginary new toy in mind.

A pretend gun? A real camera? Take your pick; the device could visually be mistaken for either. (Anyone who has raised boys knows that, even when toy guns are discouraged, they’ll eventually turn sticks into guns. So let’s offer something positive to express that hunter-gatherer instinct.) Boys, girls — for that matter, adults (think paintball) — could take this gadget on explorations in nature. Within this device would be a digital camera, a microphone and a wireless phone connection. Point this device at a bird and click, the image is immediately sent to a.) your own Web-based life list, and b.) to a Web site that maps and tracks species migrations and sightings. Using image and sound recognition, the bird would be identified and registered, thus aiding scientists and citizen naturalists working to understand migration patterns and population distribution.

In fact, something like this service already exists for iPhone users — and by the time you read this entry, some other, more sophisticated version may be available. In this way, play becomes purposeful and participatory science — without seeming like science.

And, most important, more kids would get outside.

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Richard Louv is chairman of the Children and Nature Network. He is the author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.”

For some quick tips for families on how to enjoy nature, see Nature Rocks.