Our History

Digital Naturalness founders Zach Schlosser and Carissa Kazyss have been collaborating on the Digital Naturalness project since 2017. Our initial work was supported by grants from the Human Data Commons Foundation. Carissa has an M.A. in Natural Resource Management and an M.A. in Integral Psychology with an emphasis on linking psychology and ecology. She also completed a year of studies in landscape aesthetics. Zach has a B.A. in Religious Studies and has spent the last several years building businesses at the intersections of education, coaching, and social innovation.

For Digital Naturalness, we weave together research in technology design, ecosystem dynamics, human values and perception, and the philosophy, science, history and future of human-nature interaction. Neither of us are experts in most of the fields we have relied on to begin the Digital Naturalness project. So why do it?

We are both deeply concerned about our collective future and the possibility that digital technologies will overwhelm and replace our appreciation of and participation with natural systems to the continued detriment of us, those systems and other non-human beings. We think not enough is being done that could be done to explore how these two worlds, the digital and the natural, can work together to build something beautiful which incorporates and supports both.

Our preliminary research has lead to a complex perspective meant to enable deeper conversation with the concerned public and experts in multiple relevant fields. We invite your collaboration. Please add your voice and experience, take the conversation forward, improve our research and proposal, and apply it to your own products. It will take a great many committed people over multiple generations to build a resilient and beautiful world that includes the best of technology and nature.

Our Inquiry

The foundational questions we are asking are:

1. How can digital technology be built with the patterns of nature in mind to improve humans’ aliveness, wellbeing, and the beauty of our lives?

2. What digital technologies could contribute to nature being sustained and made ever healthier, directly and/or by improving humans’ ability to sense, appreciate, and positively participate with nature?