The Compass in the Fog: Perception and Navigation in a Technological Age

Prof. Amit Raphael Zoran
The Rachel and Selim Benin School of Engineering and Computer Science
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Email: zoranamit@gmail.com

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Synopsis:

We increasingly rely on technological systems to explain the world and tell us how to act within it. Predictive models, algorithms, and digital interfaces give us more information than ever before. Yet the world itself feels increasingly unstable. Political, ecological, technological, and personal realities are changing faster than our maps can contain them. We may know more, while feeling less certain about where we are and how to proceed.

This talk asks a practical question: how do we find direction when no reliable map is available?

Drawing primarily on research into shamanic traditions, hunter-gatherer societies, ethnography, ethnoecology, and forest ecology, alongside consciousness studies and human-computer interaction, I examine forms of orientation that do not depend entirely on prediction or abstract representation. In these traditions, knowledge develops through attention, bodily participation, long familiarity with a place, and sensitivity to relationships within a living environment.

The forest offers a central example. Finding one’s way requires listening, peripheral awareness, memory, movement, and responsiveness to changing conditions. Orientation is not given in advance. It emerges through contact with the world.

The talk presents these capacities as a contemporary resource. It proposes a compass for uncertain times: a cultivated form of perception that can help us act intelligently, remain responsive, and move forward even when the path is not yet clear.

Biography: 

Amit Raphael Zoran is an Associate Professor at the Rachel and Selim Benin School of Engineering and Computer Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he leads the Hybrid Design Lab. He received his PhD from the MIT Media Lab. His work explores human-computer interaction, design, creativity, consciousness, and the ways technological and natural environments shape human perception. He is the author of several books connecting science, technology, ecology, and contemplative practice, and the founder of FirstLight, a platform devoted to perception, consciousness, and the relationship between humans, nature, and technology.

For more information, visit his website: www.1stlight.org