How Clear-Cutting Cyberspace is Destroying Our Ecosystem

I love the mountains. If you’ve known me for even a minute, you’ll know I spend most of my free time up in the hills - hunting, fishing,  hiking, kayaking, and riding through the hollars and streams that define Appalachia. No cell service, no Wi-Fi, no people. Just me and the bears and the eagles. 

My earliest memories are walking in the woods with my Pop, learning the ways of mountain folk - how to track animals, tell time by the sky, and survive inclement weather without any modern amenities. I love the mountains, and I can’t imagine a world without them. 

The weeks I have to spend in the city for work are downright painful. I don’t waste any time putting the beltway and her city ways in my rearview mirror. I need the mountains - the one place on this big ol’ earth where everything makes sense. 

It’s home - a familiar place of which I know all the “nooks and crannies” - the best mineral-rich hot streams to soak in, the rocky paths shared by timber rattlers, and the most advantageous overlook to photograph sunsets. 

But the mountains - these mountains - didn’t always look like this. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, much of the deciduous forests I enjoy today were clear-cut through commercial interests of lumber, farming, and the most detrimental to this region - mining. The once-green pics were stripped to the ground, leaving nothing but dirt and stumps. 

Clear-cutting Comes at a Cost

This irresponsible approach to harvesting the earth’s resources devastated the Appalachian ecosystem. Wildlife and birds had nowhere to live. The rains stripped the forest floor of valuable topsoil, leading to erosion which played a big role in the historic floods that left thousands dead. Homesteaders who had sold mineral rights to the mining companies were displaced as their farms became a toxic wasteland. 

Regal trees such as the American Chestnut - a fascinating tree whose root system is a network of underground connections -  were threatened with extinction. The mountains became devoid of life - raped and pillaged by ignorant, irresponsible actions that were at one point in history termed “innovation”.

Conservationists, such as President Theodore Roosevelt, intervened, proposing better ways to live with the mountains without destroying them. Activists such as Mother Jones fought for reforms in the mining industry.  William Holland Thomas strategically purchased thousands of acres for the Cherokee nation - protecting this holy land from further decimation. 

Change didn’t happen overnight, and if you’ve seen any pictures of the clear-cut mountain faces of Appalachia, you’ll know it was just in the nick of time. But change - responsible, ethical, future-focused change occurred in response to humans doing more of the “right” thing and less of the “wrong”. 

And as a result, my Pop raised me on these mountains, and I learned that humans have a responsibility to care for things - not to simply take what we want and all else be damned, as we might just have to live with those consequences. 

Cyberspace: New Resources to Ravage

Enter technology. 

The Internet rapidly evolved as a diverse ecosystem offering immense resources for people all across the globe. Just like mining, commercial-driven “innovators” harnessed aspects of the Internet for their profitable gain. Capitalizing on capitalism isn’t a sin. Clear-cutting the “forest” and ravaging the world of its resources in a way that harms others…now that’s a problem. 

Cyberspace offered us connections - connections to community, information, and resources unlike we’d ever experienced in the history of mankind. This resource-rich digital territory was ransacked by profiteers and predators, depleted by idiots ignorant of the impacts of their online actions, and exploited through both oversteps and failures of acts by government agencies and nonprofit organizations that are charged with oversight of public spaces.  

The same technology empowered expanse that allowed me to complete my degree while bed-ridden from illness, stay connected to loved ones deployed to the other side of the world, and start a small business in a sector monopolized by international corporations enabled pedophiles to access minors, our enemies to influence elections, and terrorists to broadcast mass rape and other heinous acts of terrorism against our allies. Like the mountain forests, the wilderness that is the Internet can be bountiful with opportunity, or a treacherous expanse that poisons, drowns, and kills those who dare to enter. 

We - humans - the world’s apex predator or encrusted garden-keeper of what can be Eden - are responsible for the state of this environment. 

We Saw, We Took, and…

The computers didn’t “make” us do it. 

We did it. Irrationally, stupidly, and unethically. 

Despite warning after warning of how the Internet was evolving in response to devastating uses of technology, we persisted in our use and many cases, our decided ignorance - of how technology was impacting the world in a negative way. 

Why? 

Because it was expedient - expedient to have our packages delivered the next day, let smartphones babysit our toddlers, and post updates about our lives in place of enriching social engagements with our friends, family, and neighbors.

We wanted the timber and the coal without caring about the trees, wildflowers, and animals that our ravenous “innovations” threatened.

We looked the other way, despite the rising mental health crisis, declining communities, and slow death of local small businesses, because it was easy and convenient, and - like the Appalachian forests - would be somebody else’s problem to fix. 

A Call for Cyber Conservation 

Cyberspace evolves at a rate faster than the physical world. The damage we do to our communities and each other through irresponsible “innovation” has massive and long-lasting ripple effects through our society, potentially altering the cognitive landspace of the human experience for generations to come. 

While the forests of Appalachia suffered at the hands of clear-cutting, they were restored through thoughtful conservation practices - something we are in significant need of in the world of technology. Who will repair the devastating impacts on human networks as the result of technological “advances” - advances that were allowed to run wild across an ecosystem with little thought as to the long-term impacts? 

We once nearly destroyed our forests and, through concerted effort, brought them back to life. If we don’t take the same approach to the digital world, we may soon find ourselves in a wasteland of our own making.