iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

000

oh that bit (the son of a man who failed his 11 plus becoming prime minister) choked me up

001

Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

“Dr. Mestre said that he analyzed the same data a year ago, which helped them identify the RNA genes associated with the jumbotrons. They shared this unpublished information with Claude” 👀

093

Reposted by Rowan Hooper

Nick Sousanis @nsousanis.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I love it when my reading interests collide, as Alan Moore & Swamp Thing turn up rather unexpectedly in the final chapter of @rowhoop.bsky.social’s important look at the symbiotic interconnected nature of life in Togetherness!

Page from a book, with text:

CHAPTER 22
Our symbiotic future
As a teenager, my favourite DC superhero wasn't Batman or Superman or Wonder Woman, it was Swamp Thing. A plane-based sentient monster modelled on a man who died in a swamp in Louisiana, he — they would be a better pronoun - they are the personification of the wood wide web, the vast network of connections between life forms in a forest. Swamp Thing's superpower is the ability to connect with all other forms of plant life, to interface, to mesh with them, and swap information. When! first went to New Orleans, on my own as a teenager, I was drawn partly by the desire to hear jazz on Bourbon Street, but also by the ecological pull of the Mississippi Delta, by the fertility, the exuberance of life that I read about in Alan Moore's Swamp Ibing: Until then l'd seen only European ecosystems, and Louisiana was a startling new experience. The heat, the steam, the trees draped with Spanish moss, the grinning caiman slipping into the water, the scrape, the buzz, the bite of the insects! The place seemed more full of life, with more niches crammed with more life forms than I was used to.
This book has been about these life forms and their con-nections. We've learned of the sheer extent of the mycorrhizal network, in forests and graslands, and the mind-boggling amount of information that travels through the network. As we ve seen, scientists have been able to measure that information

Text from the book:

on a small scale. They have tound that warnings about her-bivory, for example, can be transmitted through the network, and perhaps information about drought and other environmental conditions. What if, like Swamp Thing, we could tap into this symbiotic network, this alliance between plant, fungi and bacteria, and learn something? In this final chapter we will look ahead to our symbiotic future, starting with the concept of a programmable land.
Andrew Adamatzky runs the Unconventional Computing Lab. He is in the right place. When I spoke with him almost the first thing he said, as an aside, was that most people over eighty are tired of life. Why, for example, do fungi or slime moulds - theoretically immortal - never get tired? Or do they?' Well, I thought, the sexual and social lives of fungi and slime moulds are far more active than those of most humans of any age, let alone those over eighty. Perhaps this keeps them going? Whether ancient life forms - slime moulds, Pando the polytree, elderly lichens, slow-growing stromatolites - get tired of life is something I'd never considered.
But I wanted to talk to Adamatzky about interfacing with fungi. In effect tapping into their network with electronic com-puters. He has shown that electrical activity is transmitted in fungal networks in the lab; he thinks about whether we can take this further. Manipulate that activity, and build a funga computer." Adamatzky grows oyster mushrooms in the lab and connects them to electrodes; he has wired up a decaying stick gathered from a nearby woodland. The sight of this piece of wood, sprouting mushrooms and covered in lichen, in a lab connected to wires and electrodes and connected to machines - it's incongru-ous. Adamatzky thinks we could not only interface with fungal networks, but that we could weave them into wearable computers

393

Reposted by Rowan Hooper

Karen Tanenbaum @drtanenbaumii.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Just finished the audiobook of Togetherness by @rowhoop.bsky.social and I can tell it's going to be one of those books that sticks with me. If you have care about ecology, evolution, climate change, fungi, lichen, plants, the gut biome, mutual aid, or just what it means to be a human, read it!

271

Reposted by Rowan Hooper

Climate News @climatenews.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Number 4 on the Climate News Weekend Watchlist is from @newscientist.com with @rowhoop.bsky.social discussing the extreme weather conditions being forecast globally during the extremely powerful El Niño of 2026/27. Worth watching:

youtu.be

This El Niño Is About To Cause a Global Catastrophe

Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

21611

Wow a Netflix adaptation is in the works of LONESOME DOVE

000

Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

An image for our times (petrol station in Argentina hit by massive floods)

022

Reposted by Rowan Hooper

Ian Robinson @ianrobinson.info · 23/09/2026

I finished listening to the audiobook edition of Togetherness. Symbiosis and the Hidden Story of Life's Greatest Collaborations by @rowhoop.bsky.social It is a much-needed book. And a must-read. Well worth your time. www.audible.co.uk/pd/B0G7KS8VHJ #Science #Ecology #Books #Audiobooks

audible.co.uk

Audible | Listen to Audiobooks, Podcasts, & Originals

Try Audible free for 30 days. Discover best-selling audiobooks, free podcasts, and exclusive Audible Originals. Listen offline with the Audible app.

131

Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

1. Solar installation is unstoppable! 2. GLP-1 3. We can get rid of synthetic fertiliser 4. Entirely new class of drugs 5. The best diet 6. Hopeful about AI (!) 7. Resilience of nature 8. Extraterrestrial life www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5lk... @mscaitlinmoran.bsky.social

youtube.com

How Science Can Give Us Hope: Caitlin Moran with New Scientist

Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

162

Grim sign of future food shortages: the heat and drought this year wiped out 3.1m tonnes of potatoes. www.ft.com/content/8eda...

ft.com

Heatwave triggers potato shortage in Europe

Extreme weather wiped out about 3.1mn tonnes of spuds, worth up to €620mn

032

Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Saw Lucy Kirkwood’s brilliant play The Children at the @lyrichammersmith.bsky.social. Meera Syal, Declan Conlon and Kerry Fox as retired nuclear engineers in the aftermath of a Fukushima-style disaster.

110

Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Pod of pilot whales in the Thames - hope they get out soon or this could go very bad www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Whales spotted in Thames in Tilbury in rare sighting

People are urged not to crowd the whales or make a lot of noise.

170

Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Oh god the Anthropic “it could kill us all” guy is a climate denier

264

Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Good grief. The This Charming Man Rickenbacker just went for £360k. Also, fittingly, What difference does it make?

000

Reposted by Rowan Hooper

Penny Sarchet @pennysarchet.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Also: THE FOURTH TRIMESTER ISN'T REAL

011

Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I found this new work incredible. To superpower the uterus ahead of labour, the body delivers mitochondria in microtubules to muscle cells. With @pennysarchet.bsky.social youtu.be/V_4rNRMI4IA

youtu.be

We Finally Know What Triggers Childbirth

Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

063

Bunnymen on Front Row: Macca’s speaking voice is so ragged but his singing voice still beautiful

030

Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This is lovely to see! (And I would love to see a Swedish translation of my book!)

140

Reposted by Rowan Hooper

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I resigned from ExxonMobil today. I spent the last three years doing fossil fuel extraction research at both BP and ExxonMobil. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing to maximize extraction while the window to act closes, and gambling with our lives. More below.

145136954892

Reposted by Rowan Hooper

The TLS Podcast · Episode

The brilliant @keggiec.bsky.social talking about Togetherness on @thetls.bsky.social podcast: “It’s incredible how little people understand the world, especially politicians who understand so little about the natural world. Sack economists and employ ecologists!” 👏 open.spotify.com/episode/2iF3...

open.spotify.com

Who's in Charge

033

The TLS Podcast · Episode

open.spotify.com

Who's in Charge

033

I look forward to an email from GRRM: “I’ve taken time out from writing The Winds of Winter after reading your book Togetherness…”

010

I’m getting AI-generated phishing spam every day about my book. This one purportedly from SALLY ROONEY made me laugh!

241

What a fun night at the Chiswick Book Festival! And sold lots of copies of Togetherness 😍

030

Nestling together in the @royalsociety.org - my book and @wanderinggaia.bsky.social’s award winner!

351

Journalist friend in Nagoya tells me there is exceptional rain at the moment, a record 104.5 millimeters fell in an HOUR yesterday afternoon. Japan Meteorological Agency issued highest-level emergency warning for flooding

122

Peter Stott @stottpeter.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

haha just come across this POETRY FOR NEANDERTHALS game. (Contrary to this grunting caveman stereotype, most scientists believe Neanderthals had greater cognitive capacity)

000

Reposted by Rowan Hooper

oh gosh - I really really enjoyed your book, learnt masses and it really got me thinking - thank you for writing it!

011

It’s been called the biggest day in mathematics since Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997.

021

Jita funi: The hidden power of cooperation

I wrote about the Japanese Buddhist concept of jita funi (自他不二) ‘non-dualism of self and other’ - and how biology is FULL of examples of this. www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2...

japantimes.co.jp

Look around you. Whatever living things you see are there because of symbiosis: flowers, mushrooms, fish, birds, trees, pets and other people.

052

Happy Star Trek day! *No idea* who these people in the New Scientist office could be

1102