The Understanding Our World

In the midst of humans, individuals drew primitive maps on cave walls and rocks to communicate and record essential information that demonstrated the ancestors' survival (Grimm 259). Our forefathers had to make challenging choices on how they would survive. The knowledge they gained was typically recorded on maps to serve as a reminder and aid in decision-making. This essay aims to help us realize how the world was perceived in the past and how modern science conceptualizes it.
When our ancestors were alive in the 1960s, the world faced big and complicated issues. Such equations could not overcome the many obstacles until the invention of computers. People from the 1960’s were more aware of the environment which has now become a natural fit for the computer technology to enable us to solve serious geographical and environmental challenges that humanity faces today. Consequently, this brought the birth of the GIS (geographic information system). Today, the GIS is used as a tool for science-based decision and problem making. The majority of people who use the GIS scrutinize the geographical knowledge in extreme ways that saves time as well as money, particularly when it is done manually. The map, however, remains the leading intermediate for the distribution of the collected geographical intelligence. According to Andreas and Ruth Lang, the development of the GIS and the global dashboard leads to the revolution of the ways people may understand our world and how the future can be planned (Andreas et. al 66).

Geographical Information Leads to Geographical Aptitude

According to research done by Hartshorne, the difference between the old world and the current one through geographical knowledge gives an inner meaning of the gap between the two worlds (240). Geographical knowledge, in this case, is the data that describes the human and natural environment on Earth. As for the ancestors, geographic information was vital for their survival. For our survival, the information gathered from the geography plays an equally essential role. However, the difference from our ancestors is that our problems are complex and the sheer data for geological disposal is daunting. Regarding the geographic information from the past, there were limitations for the rock drawings and cave paintings. Nevertheless, the GIS enabled the collection of geographical knowledge because it does not recognize any temporal or spatial bounds. The information collected today uses data and satellite imagery through the production of high-modeled data (Parsley and Taylor 80). The ever increasing social media stream of data, the censored web, and crowd sourcing threaten to overwhelm us. The GIS is the domain that is created to gather all the information by synthesizing it to something stable concerning the details of the world.

The Human-Made Ecosystems

Our usual traditions of understanding our world through landscaping have changed because the anthropogenic factors have now become the primary dominant to the changing ecosystem. Humans, in this case, have not managed to reshape the physical aspect of the world by literary moving the mountains, but they have redesigned its figure through ecology. The modern world as compared to the past days has changed dramatically because people spend the majority of their time sleeping and walking in buildings. The facilities these humans live in are human-made ecosystems that have vast assemblages of independent inanimate and living components. Unlike the past where our ancestors used to live in bushes, the humanity of today has made buildings as their primary habitats. This has changed the way people reason about collecting, storing, and using data to describe the world we live in. One key aspect that the social evolution has done is that it recognizes the effects that already exist in the ecosystem with the aim of predicting what the future holds in the midst of our actions. Once this level of understanding is achieved, the steps one takes in the world could then be done in a responsible manner (Moghadam et al. 91). The type of long-term thinking through future prediction is what makes a person adopt the human character. However, when one recognizes the overwhelming dominance of the human-made ecosystem, they then realize of the actions that should be taken for understanding and managing the understanding of our world.

The Designing of the Geography

As humans, we no longer observe the geographical changes but actively change its shape. Some of the alterations may be planned or intentional, but mostly they are unintentional. People gather more knowledge to gain a better understanding of the world and how human actions affect it. As studied by Carl Steinz (a professor in landscape planning and architecture), people can only accomplish changing the geography by design, by integrating into the GIS workflow (Heil 44). The workflow, however, should begin by making decisions of what needs to be made first. For instance, background information about the world should be gathered, thus, enabling the decisions that will assist organize it into a digital map. Once there is a full understanding of the consequences, the decisions may then be realized. The figure below simply displays a clearer understanding of the world and the human actions.

Map Evaluate Act

When the idea is planned according to the world’s significance (development of houses, shopping center, wildlife preserve, roads, and farms), then it takes the designing process. After scheming, the project is then scrutinized. A standard plan may pass through several iterations of evaluation and design to determine the impacts of the human action to the world. As revealed, the design is refined because of the traditional disciplines that have been used before for the better understanding of the world. When science is involved in the designing process, it may need a newer way of thinking to allow an easier way of designing the project actively. We must then take care of our actions to a way that it maximizes the benefits to the society by minimizing the long and short term impacts on the world (Heil 50). The Geo-design creates a profound topographical understanding of the world with the aim of assisting more in scientific, logical, future-friendly, and sustainable decisions. It is also the best way of improving the world.

The Global Dashboard

The global dashboard is another valuable tool that helps us understand the dynamics of the world. The tool operates as a framework for gathering different pieces of the past, present, and future in a collection of data from diverse sources. The tool then merges them together and displays them in an easy-to-read format that shows where action needs to be applied. The dashboard, in this case, uses the map metaphor to represent data from history so that people could understand the world. The GIS in this juncture gives a framework that the users record and exhibit multi faceted three-dimensional datasets. When all the challenges are displayed on the maps, environmental problems can be highlighted with the details of the streets and houses so as to bring a deeper understanding of the world. The dashboard has the ability to collect all the data with the aim of putting it in a dynamic context and then personalize it in a form of a powerful map.

The GIS can also be used in the analysis of the potential interplay between diverse factors that enable people to become closer to the real understanding of the Earth. This could include the incoming centuries and decades. A better understanding of the world is a common area of planners, geographers, and scientists that have always strived for. Although there are many developments that man has made through the technological infrastructure, it has enabled them to achieve the monumental task. People believe at some point that the technology and intelligence they have could modify the world and make it a better place to live in. However, they need a deeper understanding of the world before action is taken to design the future of the planet.

The Scientific Way of Understanding the World

In 1984, the Nobel Laureate and physicist Albert Michelson first stated that science had finished the understanding of the world to the point that even the breadth of the hair will be familiar with the information (Lee 425). When the 20th century began, it revealed how phenomena were the closest form of the world through social, biological, political, and economic sciences. Those were the grand principles that people strived to find.

Complexity

Complexity is the study that attempts to discover similar principles that underlie the complex behaviors of the world. The systems collect huge components that interact through the nonlinear ways and implications for a clearer understanding of the world. Scientists use the complex systems to recognize the sophistication of the cells, ant colonies, immune system, brains, economic markets, and social groups. The majority who study complexity are integrated by the evocative resemblance that is found in the disparate systems. Complexity plays a diverse role as a coherent without benefiting from any central component. It does this by processing and sophisticated encoding information that has never existed in the individual components. Over time, the complex system continues to evolve in an open-ended way to adapt and learn the equilibrium of understanding the world scientifically.

The Transformation of Understanding Our World

The discoveries from scientists, of course, transmute the way people understand nature, but the complexity goes and extra mile to make us comprehend important phenomena in the perspective of how the world operates scientifically. It is vital that we understood the significant advances that the Earth took in its interior motion for the past 30 years to create the surface plates. Every day, the planet has experienced that geological investigations explained why the Earth materials behave in different ways on the human time scale (Baker 72). However, on the geological time scale, the rocks behaved similarly to liquid and convents through a conduction that heated them up for easy transfer within the earth. With this realization, it was impossible for a human to see volcanic activities, earthquakes, sedimentary basins, and mountain belts as isolated surface phenomena. One part that made us realize how the world operates is when the melted plates were driven through the slow convective process in the mantle. However, this posed a question of how the crustal plates penetrated above three percent to form a layer around the core. Another way of understanding the world is through the flow of heat that is derived from the core because if it were not for the high temperatures, then the solid uprising material would not have formed surfaces like that seen in Iceland and Hawaii.

History

Another way of understanding the nature of the world is the relationship between human beings and history. Every step that people make has either been of imbalance or overuse. For instance, the Nomadic hunters used to roam in the lands with the aim of following the seasons. With this, they had a tremendous impact on the world particularly the environment because of their population size. When technology came into place through agriculture, humans began to affect their world for the purpose of sustain themselves (Dimock764). They did this by creating permanent settlements which aided the rapid growth of population. As society evolved, people forgot the ways of understanding the world because they began building cities that shifted inadvertently distant to nature. The shift changed when people needed more resources to modify the nature of the world.

The advancement in social order and agriculture has destroyed the modern way of the world. The growing cities have brought the separation of nature and people because of their obsession with efficiency and convenience for a new environment perspective. With the development of technology, no one ever cared to be part of the world, and its environment because all that humans wanted is the growth of industries that are known to disrupt the natural systems which have been in existence for billions of years. As humans have distanced themselves away from nature, there is an ignorance of understanding the world. The greed of growing the economy has created man to develop big cities and create a trade that has brought ignorance of taking care of nature (Zwier et al. 363). For instance, the cities have now become a place of residence, thus, exponentiation of population is felt leaving the natural touch with nature.

Despite the fact that every species has a particular role of inheritance and biosphere, not everyone can influence or change the nature of the world. However, everybody has the capability to understand the world, but people tend to ignore our present reaction. The statement does not mean that humans are degrading the inherent trait but rather because of the population’s constant progression. Therefore, it is advisable to change anything that damages nature as soon as possible.

Time of Change

The things that separate nature and humans are the ability to understand the operation of the world. The cognitive nature of people has historically created separation between nature and human. However, for us to achieve a sustainable future, humans need to assume the moral nature they have to reconsider our relationship with the world. People regard life through obvious economic, social, and political repercussion but the human cognition obliges the re-evaluation position to degrade the world. There are various ways where people can start to reconsider the relationship with the world but through enormous effort. Through an extreme universal education, people could be encouraged to consider themselves as part of the world by understanding it.

When everyone is taught about the evolution, environment, and ecology, they could quickly develop tools to change the world. As imagined by Lewis Mumford, an American sociologist, and historian, he brought a social revolution that was meant to diversify the fundamental changes of the world (Grim 217). For change to take place, it was critical for everyone to take action through a universal environmental program that made it possible for people to ponder on the new ideas and opinions of understanding the world. An education program encourages the way people view the environs and its changing attitude. As stated by Gregg Easterbrook (an American Author and writer) through his book the Ecorealist Manifesto, people learn ways of working together as it was important to the Earth (Grimm 299). The world, in this case, was to make an effort of re-evaluating its relationship with the human activities and make adjustments where possible. With this, everyone will manage to understand the world.



Conclusion

Today, people are at the peak of technology and pollution after thousands of years of going through a societal evolution. The impacts of our modern ways are now being felt through the destruction of landscapes, melting glaciers, and the extinction of species. With the continuous disruption of the natural systems of the world, people are starting to identify the rippling consequences. Being able to recognize these effects, means that our role might be more influential than it is perceived to be. It is very crucial that people put in place significant changes as soon as possible. The role that people have in nature should be more of subsistence and not of commercialization. The world has been exploited for far too long, and the consequences of these actions are all around us. Everything on the surface of the world is related to everything, and as such people have no right to violate the livelihood of any other species.

People are obliged to maintain the integrity of the environment through our understanding of nature and cognitive ability. The natural order of things should be respected, and people should develop a way to which we can live accordingly. It is a must that we enact change to how people influence the land. The change in attitudes will demand a complete reconstruction of all the current political and economic structures which will be difficult, but it is something that should be done. If expansion and development should continue to be encouraged, then people are more than likely to see significant effects on climate and ecology. People have already seen and are now experiencing how destructive capitalism and industrialism is. They have the ability to predict and measure the impact of our actions on the environment and the understanding that humanity is headed the wrong way, and significant consequences are expected. 



Works Cited

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