Digital Weather Information in an Embodied World

Abstract

We review the emergence of digital weather information, the history of human embodied knowing about weather, and two perspectives on cognition, one of which is symbolic (amodal, abstract, and arbitrary) and the other being embodied (embodied, extended, embedded, and enacted) to address the question: Beyond the general weather information they provide, to what extent can digital devices be used in an embodied way to extend a person’s pick-up of weather information? This is an interesting question to examine because human weather information and knowledge has a long past in our evolutionary history. Our human ancestors had to pick-up immediate information from the environment (including the weather) to survive. Digital weather information and knowing has a comparatively short past and a promising future. After reviewing these relevant topics, we concluded that, with the possible exception of weather radar apps, nothing currently exists in the form of digital products than can extend the immediate sensory reach of people to alert them about just-about-to-occur weather—at least not in the embodied forms of information. We believe that people who are weather salient (i.e., have a strong psychological attunement to the weather) may be in the best position going forward to integrate digital weather knowing with that which is embodied.