Re-creating Wilderness 2.0: Or getting back to work in a virtual nature

Abstract

Camping on Twitter, trekking in Google Street View, mountaineering on Snapchat. Wilderness is dead. Long live Wilderness 2.0. In this paper, the term “Wilderness 2.0” refers to the articulation of new media technologies, including mobile digital devices, web 2.0 and locative media, with the practice of wilderness recreation. In this new era of virtual nature, outdoor recreation occurs as much in the statusphere and blogosphere as it does in the biosphere. While much public and academic debate about Wilderness 2.0 has focused on the extent to which new media technologies connect people to, or disconnect them from, nature, this paper argues that wilderness is not a static and essential reality that can simply be connected to or disconnected from, but a social construct that is continually re-created in different cultural contexts. In this sense, Wilderness 2.0 reflects the re-creation of a new ontology of wilderness as DigiPlace: an augmented reality that blurs the lines between the “actual” and the “virtual.” Moreover, Wilderness 2.0 does not simply refer to the creation of a new ontology of wilderness, but the incorporation of outdoor recreation into the political economy of the web 2.0. In the context of Wilderness 2.0, outdoor recreation is increasingly exploited as a form of virtual labour. Thus, despite being associated with a discourse of “sharing” and “connecting to nature,” Wilderness 2.0 is, above all else, a nature that capital can see.