Eco-social feedback tools: Towards a visual lexicon in the public education of Regenerative Culture Design.

1. Eco-social feedback tools: Towards a visual lexicon in the
public education of Sustainability
Dion Rezki
Learning Technology Research Institute (LTRI)
diondionart@gmail.com
“I would like you to show me, if you can,
where the line can be drawn between an
organism and it’s environment. The
environment is in you. It’s passing through
you. You’re breathing it in and out. You and
every other creature.” - Wendell Berry

2. Systems Thinking
A system is a set of
interacting or
interdependent
component parts forming
a complex or intricate
whole’.[1] The structural
and organizational
principles of a system can
be described and
portrayed as a network
consisting of flows of
energy,material and
information.
These networks are all
around us, outside and
inside. There are
ecological networks,
biological networks, social
networks; agricultural,
economic, energetic,
transportational & the

3. Systems Thinking
“Part of the problem is that we have studied these phenomena in
separate boxes to which we have given special names — politics,
economics, the social structure, culture — without seeing that these
boxes are constructs more of our imagination than of reality. The
phenomena dealt with in these separate boxes are so closely
intermeshed that each presumes the other, each affects the other,
each is incomprehensible without taking into account the other
boxes.”

4. Systems Thinking
‘Is it not an abstraction to pull a person, idea, or organism from the
contextual relationships of family, food, culture, feelings, ecology
and so on and label them?
Is it not more abstract to take a piece of the living world and try to
make sense of it without all of the contextual, contributing aspects of
its vitality? Can we really understand anything without context?’
— Nora Bateson

5. Systems Thinking“New ways of seeing lead to new ways of being.”
— Howard Bloom

6. Systems Thinking
There’s a growing body of research among environmental and
social scientists to suggest that viewing these networks in isolation
is an incomplete assessment of their multi-dimensional functionality.[2] [3] [4]
In an academic context, this can be described as a form of research
limitation and in a wider context, can be phrased more bluntly as a
kind of ‘knowledge failure’.[5] This knowledge failure compromises
the health and resilience and weakens the mutual-viability between
social & ecological systems.
Neglect in one area of the Earth-Human dynamic can often result in
unforeseeable problems in other areas, which can in turn then
trigger feedback loops, deepening the original problems and
sometimes even generating entirely new ones [spillovers].
Conversely and perhaps more optimistically, remedial action in one
area, can sometimes result in a cascade of restorative effects
elsewhere.

7. Systems Seeing
The key challenges of climate adaptation and of our mobilization
towards sustainable, regenerative cultures are actually less logistics
orientated but perceptual in nature. One of these challenges will be in
facilitating ‘a shift of perception — from people and nature seen as
separate parts to interdependent social-ecological systems.[6]
Systems THINKING Systems BEING
?
“Ultimately, all these problems are facets of one single crisis,
which is essentially a crisis of perception.”
— Fritjof Capra
The key challenges of climate adaptation and of our mobilization
towards sustainable, regenerative cultures are actually less logistics
orientated but perceptual in nature. One of these challenges will be in
facilitating ‘a shift of perception — from people and nature seen as
separate parts to interdependent social-ecological systems.[6]
The key challenges of climate adaptation and of our mobilization
towards sustainable, regenerative cultures are actually less logistics
orientated but perceptual in nature. One of these challenges will be in
facilitating ‘a shift of perception — from people and nature seen as
separate parts to interdependent social-ecological systems.[6]
The key challenges of climate adaptation and of our mobilization
towards sustainable, regenerative cultures are actually less logistics
orientated but perceptual in nature. One of these challenges will be in
facilitating ‘a shift of perception — from people and nature seen as
separate parts to interdependent social-ecological systems.[6]

8. Systems Being“New ways of seeing lead to new ways of being.”
— Howard Bloom
Systems LEARNING
Systems THINKING
Systems SEEINGSystems BEING

9. Systems Seeing “New ways of seeing lead to new ways of being.”
— Howard Bloom

10. Systems Seeing
BIO-
feedback
ECO-
feedback
…
ECO-SOCIAL
Feedback ?

11. Biofeedback “New ways of seeing lead to new ways of being.”
— Howard Bloom
In the health sciences, there
exists a treatment
methodology known as Bio-
feedback, which aims at
helping an individual gain
greater awareness and
control of many involuntary
neuro/physiological
functions. The user achieves
this by receiving audio-visual
feedback in real-time of the
particular processes that are
being focused upon, such as
brainwaves, heart rate &
breathing rate. The process
of seeing and hearing these
functions acts as a form of
sensory intervention in which
the user is able to gain more
insight in to the relationship
between the physical and
psychosomatic factors that
influence the conditions of

12. Eco-Feedback
With the rise of smart
technology, many household
applications have emerged in
recent years also utilizing the
same feedback principle, only
this time for improving the
user’s ecological awareness
for things like their water,
electricity & gas consumption.

13. Eco-Feedback

14. Eco-Feedback

15. Eco-Feedback

16. Eco-Feedback

17. Eco-Feedback
NASA's
Earthrise.
First
example
of eco-
social
feedback
on a
global
scale?

18. Eco-Social Feedback & Eco-literacy
We have technologies for
bio-feedback and we have
technologies for eco-
feedback. What would the
technologies, applications &
interfaces for a telecoupled
‘eco-social’ feedback look
like?
If bio & eco-feedback solutions
can help the user[s] gain greater
awareness of bio-cognitive
functions, external resource
usage & energy consumption,
could eco-social feedback tools
serve as an educational interface
between human societies and
the ecological webs they're
embodied within?

19. Eco-Social Feedback & Eco-literacy
Could such tools
enable individuals,
families,
communities,
organizations,
governments and
corporations to
develop a clearer
and more
managable
understanding of
the social and
ecological
constellations of
which they exist
and operate
within? How could
this then effect
behavioural &
policy change?
How could this
effect our sense of
self and

20. Eco-Social Feedback examples
Academic examples of eco-social models tend to convey much
deeper levels of complexity and contain a lot of information but
because of their complexity and denseness, they tend to be quite
inaccessible at worst and very 2-dimensional at best.
t
fig 2: From the
paper,
“Modelling
sustainability,
population,
inequality,
consumption
and bi-
directional
coupling of the
Earth and
Human
Systems.

21. t

23. Eco-Social Feedback examples
Non-Academic examples of eco-social models tend to convey
fewer levels of complexity and less information but because of
their simplicity, they tend to be very accessible and
understandable.

25. Systems Thinking“New ways of seeing lead to new ways of being.”
— Howard Bloom

28. Eco-Social Feedback
Recent studies from Stanford
University’s Virtual human
Interaction Lab and other
independent VR documentaries
on ecological topics seem to
suggest that it is indeed possible
to apply these technologies to
drive pro-social and pro-
environmental behaviours through
a level of cognitive, sensory &
emotional engagement that can
be harder to achieve in less
How might such preliminary
models be further developed to
better enable wider audiences to
understand the interconnected
factors and actions driving our
dangerously unsustainable
global trajectory? How might the
growing capacities of public
interfaces, digital learning tools
and mediums such as VR & AR
assist in this educational
process?
Current vs future visual
models.

29. Abstract:
“Research suggests that vivid and
personalized interventions influence
proenvironmental attitudes and
behaviors. Through the use of
immersive virtual environment
technology, people can experience vivid
environmental scenarios that are
personalized to the individual. An
experiment was conducted to investigate
the impact of vivid and/or personal
messages on energy savings behavior
related to hot water use. Participants
experienced a virtual shower in which
they received feedback (varying in
vividness and/or personalization) on the
amount of energy used to heat and
transport the virtual water. Participants’
hot water use during hand washing in
the physical world was tracked before
and after treatment. Participants
exposed to vivid messages used cooler
water compared with not vivid
messages. There was no significant
effect for personal messages and no
interaction effect. The results suggest
that technology that leverages vividness
The impact of vivid and personal messages on reducing energy consumption related to
hot water use - Bailey, J.O et all.

30. Eco-Social Feedback & Eco-literacy
Recent studies from Stanford University’s Virtual human Interaction
Lab and other independent VR documentaries on ecological topics
seem to suggest that it is indeed possible to apply these
technologies to drive pro-social and pro-environmental behaviours
through a level of cognitive, sensory & emotional engagement that
can be harder to achieve in less interactive and immersive forms of
media. •
Learning tools / Education / Eco-literacy
•
Public and private interfaces displaying global feedbacks and impacts of
various consumption and behavioural habits ( communal spaces,
schools, supermarkets, places of comerce, business's etc)
•
Analytics and Optimization tools for sustainable development and
meeting the SDG's.
•
Policy Modeling and impact
•
Supply Chain management.
•
Ecological and human health diagnostic tools
•