Q: Your new book, THE WORLD WITHOUT US, poses a fascinating, extraordinary thought experiment: if you take every living human off the Earth, what traces of us would linger and what would disappear? It asks what might happen to our world if humans vanished? What was the inspiration for your book?
A: "For a long time I’ve sought some fresh, non-threatening approach to disarm readers’ apprehensions about environmental destruction long enough that they might consider the impacts of unbridled human activity on the rest of nature – and on our own fate. I’ve found that theoretically wiping humans off the face of the earth intrigues rather than frightens people."
Weisman, Alan (July 10, 2007). The World Without Us. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press.
Searching for a topic, I ran across this website that spoke about the book, The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. Although I have not yet read the book, I was able to preview some excerpts as well as these interesting videos that covered the basic topics. His writings question the impact of human interaction with the Earth, a glimpse into the future. At first it seems pretty overwhelming to take in, and the writing itself sometimes seems far fetched in some ways, but non the less, still quite possible. What interests me the most is his explanation of what the Earth would be like without humans and the tremendous capacity of the planet to heal itself. "Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; what of our everyday stuff may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe."
In relation to my work, I have been debating on whether or not to include animals into my images. According to Weisman, animals play a huge role in Earth life after humans within the first few hundred years. With that, I may be leaning more towards including this type of life into my imagery. If not, it would still be interesting to experiment with and could possibly take my work in another direction... But i definitely plan on reading the rest of this book, it may help me in visualizing possible images.
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