Category Archives: reference

Bicycle Line: Repeating Mistakes?

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As a person who has spent about ten years living in The Netherlands, and as a believer in all the goodness of a bicycle, I got intrigued when an acquaintance posted a link at Twitter to a YouTube video about How The Dutch Got Their Cycle Path.

The video tells the history about how, in the early 70s, The Netherlands was full of cars. Buildings had to be demolished to make ways for cars. A lot of people rode their bikes, but since there’s no proper paths, road accidents bound to happen. It’s similar to our current condition here, where cars and other vehicles are kings, roads and highways are being made and getting wider, with very few considerations toward pedestrians and bicycles.

[Read also the blog: How the Dutch got their cycling infrastructure]

The remarkable lesson from this history is the struggle of the people to fulfill their demand: having proper bicycle lanes, which was also backed by political willingness. Authorities joined in the voice of the people in their demand, and therefore appropriate bicycle lanes could be provided. They started by having car-free days, then gradually changed the road plans (widening the lines for pedestrians and bicycles). As the result, city centers became entirely car-free up to today, and The Netherlands becomes among the most bicycle-friendly countries. Numbers of road accidents have been greatly declining within the decades, and roads become a safe space for children and elderly people.

Watching this video has brought to mind a comment from an exchange student from Germany who currently joins my Design & Sustainability class. We were discussing strategies for eco-design, when he said that Indonesia, as a developing country with a lot of resources, should be able to skip all the mistakes that advanced industrial countries made. The industrial countries are now ‘paying for their mistakes’ by ‘cleaning up the mess they’ve made’ in an expensive way, such as restructuring their infrastructures and facilities to become more humane.

Concerning the bicycle line, cars and roads. We are indeed going to the direction where cars are considered as having more rights to the roads, compared to pedestrians and cyclists. There’s no policy limiting the use and purchase of motored vehicles, not to mention the loose regulations and practices concerning driving licenses. Although people (including children and elderly people) keep using the roads as pedestrians, there’s no guarantee about their safety even in crossing the street or walking at the sidewalk (which, if available at all, are mostly occupied by street vendors). Bicycle paths, if any, are almost impossible to ride on, since they’re merely (fading) blue paints over existing paving block sidewalks, which are lined by electricity poles, etc. – and also are often blocked by parking cars and motorbikes.

Are we really going to repeat the mistakes of the developed countries, or even making worse mistakes? Do we really want to live in a world where human beings worth less than automobiles and motorbikes? Aren’t we concerned about the safety of our young children and our elderly parents?

Whatever the answers are, I’d refer to the lessons from the video: public demands can only be fulfilled if the authorities have the strong political will to change. Like Al Gore once said, during The Climate Project Asia Pacific Summit (January 2011):

“You can always change your light bulbs with the energy-saving ones, but it takes the government’s commitment to change the energy policy, to create significant impacts”

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P.S. I should also mention about the availability and improvement of public transportation facilities, since it is among the crucial factors of successful, well-planned mobility, especially within a dense urban area. But I’m sure you’ve got the point.

Peneliti Indonesia pada ke mana?

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Kamis 12 Mei 2011 malam saya datang ke Goethe Institut Jakarta, untuk acara Akber Akbar-nya Akademi Berbagi. Pembicaranya adalah Yanuar Nugroho, dimoderatori oleh Onno W Purbo, dengan topik Citizens in @ctions yang merupakan penelitian doktoralnya di Manchester University. Sebelum acara dimulai, para peserta yang telah menunggu dapat menonton Linimas(s)a, atau Timeliner(s), sebuah film dokumenter mengenai fenomena masyarakat sipil di Indonesia dalam memanfaatkan teknologi Internet dan social media untuk mencapai tujuan bersama, dengan hasil yang amat signifikan.

Tautan terkait:

Presentasinya sendiri sangat menarik, dapat dijelaskan dengan bahasa sehari-hari meskipun mestinya mengandung perhitungan-perhitungan dan analisa yang tidak sederhana. Sesi tanya-jawabnya tentunya juga sangat menarik karena adanya interaksi yang ekspresif dan spontan, tapi sayangnya saya harus meninggalkan tempat ketika tanya-jawab masuk ke sesi kedua, karena harus mengejar travel terakhir menuju Bandung. Berikut ini hal-hal menarik dan menyentil yang terus-menerus terpikir sejak keluar dari auditorium itu…

– Bagaimana caranya agar teknologi Internet dapat merata, menjangkau seluruh wilayah Indonesia? “Kalau saya bisa menjawab pertanyaan ini, saya sudah jadi presiden”. Akses teknologi ini memang urusannya adalah kebijakan.

– Bagaimana caranya agar gerakan masyarakat sipil melalui internet dan media sosial ini dapat diimplementasikan secara menyeluruh dan dirasakan manfaat positifnya di Indonesia? Berbagi. Berbagi apa pun: informasi, urgensi, berita baik, dan sebagainya.

– Kegiatan online dan offline harus imbang agar ‘ajakan’ atau gerakan-gerakan di media sosial dapat berdampak signifikan. Ini ada hubungannya juga dengan fenomena sebuah gerakan yang berdampak

– Gerakan online sifatnya hanya sementara, berusia pendek, atau ketika tujuan sudah tercapai. Euforia pasti suatu saat akan reda. (Situs-situs Koin Prita, Bibit-Candra, dan sejenisnya kini telah berisi tautan-tautan berjualan yang makin tak jelas. Seharusnya pembuat akun atau moderatornya bisa menutup situs-situs tersebut?)

– ‘Click activist’ adalah mereka yang mengira bahwa hanya sekedar meng-click saja berarti sudah berbuat sesuatu. Ini tidak salah, karena memang berdampak, tapi ini tidak cukup.

– Bagaimana agar gerakan-gerakan semacam ini di Indonesia dapat diliput oleh media internasional, supaya dapat diketahui secara global? Sebenarnya kita bisa menulis tentang kita sendiri, dan ini yang sebenarnya sangat kurang di kita. Biasakanlah mencatat, merekam, menulis hal-hal yang dekat dengan kita dulu. Karena seharusnya kita yang paling tahu tentang diri kita sendiri. Bayangkan, beberapa waktu setelah meletusnya Merapi, peneliti-peneliti asing yang terlihat di wilayah sekitar gunung Merapi. Setelah bencana tsunami di Mentawai, peneliti-peneliti asing pula yang berdatangan ke sana. Seorang peneliti asing, di berbagai jenjang pendidikannya, tekun meneliti tentang makhluk halus di Indonesia. Peneliti Indonesia pada ke mana? Mari kita buat catatan dan publikasi tentang diri kita sendiri, sehingga kita tidak perlu mendatangkan atau bergantung pada media asing untuk meliput kita.

– Hampir semua di negri ini masih mengandalkan ‘strategi darurat’ dalam mengatasi permasalahan (komunikasi).

Kesimpulan utama yang dapat saya tarik dari acara malam itu adalah: Betapa besarnya sesungguhnya potensi masyarakat Indonesia dalam memanfaatkan media sosial ini, mengingat bahwa jumlah pengguna Internet di Indonesia = jumlah penduduk Kanada, jumlah pemilik akun Twitter di Indonesia = jumlah penduduk Singapura. Seharusnya bisa lebih kita optimalkan lagi.

Pasti masih banyak point yang belum saya tuliskan, sebab acaranya seru sekali. Mungkin saya akan kembali ke post ini dan menambahkan hal-hal yang saya ingat kemudian. Terima kasih untuk Akademi Berbagi dan Akber Akbar atas acaranya yang bagus sekali, dan yang telah memberikan kesempatan untuk berjejaring dengan orang-orang Indonesia yang hebat, yang membuat saya makin optimis bahwa masa depan Indonesia bisa menjadi jauh lebih baik!

*sketsa di atas saya buat sambil mendengarkan presentasi

Imagination, Creativity, Innovation

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Sir Ken Robinson takes on Creativity in interdisciplinary settings (Summit on Science, Entertainment and Education, February 2011):

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/22441226]

I’m learning a lot from his talk, also by connecting the following excerpts with my own experiences from working in a so-called ‘creative’ field.

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Most people go through the whole of their education and never discover what they’re good at or what their talents are.

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And I’ve met all kinds of people who only discovered purpose in their lives and who they really are once they’re recovered from their education.

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It’s not true of everybody. Some people do wonderfully well from education. But many don’t. And even the people who you think are being favored by the current education system, I believe, are experiencing a lot of diminishing returns.

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When politicians talk about “reshaping education” these days, they almost always talk about the stem disciplines as if, on their own, science and technology, engineering and math will deliver us safely into the future. And they won’t. To me it’s fundamentally important to recognize. I think this preoccupation isn’t even good for science, honestly.

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We cannot afford to focus on just one group of disciplines in isolation.  I think it fundamentally misrepresents how creativity and innovation work in all disciplines.

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The scientists on the group were absolutely worried that the obsession in most of our education systems, which standardized testing, with the narrowing of the curriculum to a particularly prescriptive set of objectives, which leeching the lifeblood from their own disciplines. And they know, as you know, that creativity is the pulse of science. And if you steal that, then you’ll lose another generation.

If you make science arid, you make another generation lose interest in it.

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Science, engineering and technology are essential. They are necessary, but not sufficient to the kind of culture of education we need to develop in the future in that science will benefit by making common courses and synergies with the humanities and with the arts.

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There was a study done a while ago of cultural differences in visual perception. It was published in Science Magazine. Essentially they took two groups of people: people from South East Asia, and people from Western European countries, including America. Students then sat them down for several hours and showed them hundreds of pictures, for a few second for each slide, asking “What’s that?” And all they had to do was say what’s that. That was it. They noticed a difference as indeed they expected to, because that’s how science is. You start with hypothesis and then you check it out. It’s not you go blindly into the open and hope you discover something. One of the finding was this: that people from Western European countries, when shown an image like that, said that it’s a tiger, as indeed most of you do. People from South East Asian cultures typically didn’t say that. They more often said something like “It’s a tiger in a jungle”, or “It’s a jungle with a tiger”, or sometimes “It’s a jungle” and they didn’t mention the tiger at all.

Now it’s interesting, isn’t it, because we take that for granted that we can see clearly what that is. And yet some other cultures don’t. And the reason is that in the West we are imbued in a culture of individualism and our eyes are naturally drowned toward what we think as a subject of the picture. Some other cultures look at the broader context. Now I’m not saying that they’re right and we’re wrong, and that’s good and this is bad, but it is different, and it’s important to recognize that there is a difference: that even things that seem too obvious to us may not seem obvious to other people at all. And that’s the great quest of science and of discovery in every field. We begin by challenging what we think is obvious and what we take for granted.

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If we lived always with the burden of common sense, we’d still be living in caves, and wouldn’t have progressed. And indeed that’s the case for most of the species.

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In one respect we are very different from other creatures. We have imaginations. And imagination is everything. The power of imagination is what distinguishes us from other forms of life on earth.

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We mediate our expressions to the world through conceptual structures of ourselves.

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Imagination is the phantom head of this process, the ability to bring to mind the things that aren’t present to our senses, to conjure up conceptions of alternative possibilities, to step outside our own frame of seeing and to enter somebody else’s consciousness through empathetic connection, to revisit the past or to anticipate the future.

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Creativity is a step on from that. People could imagine all day long and not do anything. But you’d never call somebody “creative” for not doing anything. To be creative you have to do something. It’s a very material and practical process.

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I define creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value.

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These are misconceptions about Creativity:

  1. That only special people are creative. This is not true. If you’re a human being you are born with immense natural creative capacities. The trick is to develop them.
  2. It’s about special things. It is not. People always think it’s about the Art. It’s not. The Art is desperately important, but not because they’re creative, but also because they’re creative. But Science is creative, Physics and Chemistry and Mathematics are extraordinary manifestations of the creative capacities of human mind.
  3. There’s nothing you can do about it. You’re creative enough and that’s the end of it. Actually there’s a huge amount of what you can do to teach people to be more creative.

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Innovation is a step on. I think of that as putting good ideas into practice. To be creative you have to apply yourself to things. There’s a myth that being creative is about freedom. It isn’t. It is much about constraints, it’s about discipline, and application. You cannot be creative as a scientist if you don’t understand the disciplines that you’re working within.

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Creativity is essentially about making new connections. It’s therefore something that really thrives wonderfully well in interdisciplinary settings. And that’s why we need a broad-based education in which science is central, co-equal with the arts, where the creative impulse is cross-fertilizing the disciplines in creating new sense of possibility.

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And I think that’s where the true dynamic of the future lies. And if we can get that right, we can find the best interests, best creative judgments of those who work in entertainment, those who work in the media, those who work as scientists and I hope the arts, too.  I think that’s the creative future we all want to live in.

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Similar post: Passion, Creativity, Element, Energy

The Other Ninety Percent

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This semester I teach an “Eco-Design” class at the Master Program of Industrial Engineering at Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung. Among our main references is Design for Sustainability (D4S) published by UNEP and TU Delft, especially when we were discussing the subject of Design for Sustainability in Developing Countries. I couldn’t help but also included another reference: Design for the Other 90% that was actually an exhibition and is now also a book. What does “The Other Ninety Percent” refer to? According to Dr. Paul Polak from the International Development Enterprises who initiated the exhibition:

“The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%”

This statement is similar to the critics of Victor Papanek in his book Design for The Real World (1972), that (industrial/product) designers tend to make products for less than 10% of the world’s population who can afford to buy them, and rarely work for the rest, whose main concerns are the fulfillment of basic human needs: clean water, food, shelter. In this book, he also provided examples of how designed products shouldn’t alienate themselves from people who use them.

An attempt of designers and engineers to make design available for as many people as possible is the site Demotech: Design for Self Reliance where people can freely access information about daily products, tools and machinery: how to build them out of various local resources and materials. Next to those who might need the information, people can also contribute to this site by submitting their designs, suggestions and tips for improvement. The concept of democratic-technology (hence the site name Demotech) indeed aims to reach the majority of people with limited resources, for them to be able to assist themselves.

Having this previous examples in mind, I asked the student of that class to bring an example of a product that is intended for “The Other 90%” and they came up with interesting ones, which I will put in later posts. But, for now, here’s a video about Design for The Other 90% as a prologue:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g37QUl6RPI]

Here’s another link worth checking: a review of the Copper-Hewitt exhibition at Core 77

Passion, Creativity, Element, Energy

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I was instantly amazed by the first ever Sir Ken Robinson’s presentation I watched on the Internet, which was his TED talk about whether school kills creativity. Although the talk was probably happened in 2006, I watch it only recently, in early 2010 or so. Since then, I have been paying attention to links mentioning his talks/books/whatever, since I feel that he says the right things. Oh, and he’s funny, too.

Following is an embedded video of his talk at The School of Life in March 2011, and some excerpts worth pondering about.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/21195297]

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We should know the limit of our knowledge and understand what we don’t know. And be willing to explore what we don’t know without the feeling of embarrassment for not knowing about it.

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“To be born at all is a miracle.” So what are you going to do with your life now that you have it? This is where the idea of Passion came in.

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Very many people spend their lives doing things they don’t really care for. I think of this as The Other Climate Crisis. You’re become used to the idea that there is crisis in the world’s natural resources. There is. Geologists reported about two years ago: “The past two hundred years, geologically, the planet is in a new period called the Anthroposcene. For the first time in history, a geological age which is being caused by activities of human being. You can see that in carbon deposits, the extinction of species, the changing constitution of the oceans and the atmosphere. Human beings have made an indelible geological imprint on the planet.” But I think there is another Climate Crisis, which is a CC connected to Human Resources.

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Most people have no idea of what they’re capable of. No real sense of their tasks or their abilities. Very many people therefore conclude that they don’t have any.

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The most distinctive feature of human life is the power of Imagination. More than the power of Imagination, we also have the power of Creativity.

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Some people find their unique ability and some don’t. Those who don’t often conclude that they don’t have any. There are people who have absolutely found what they think as their natural place, their natural talents, and they love what they do, and their lives flow from it. They are, to use an expression, in their Elements.

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We are being brought up with this idea that life is linear. [As in a] CV: you set up your life in a series of dates and events, in a linear way, as if your whole existence has progressed in an ordered, structured, way to bring you to the current individual at the moment. And it all gives the impression that we’re in control of what we’re doing.

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You take opportunities and you respond to them. But you take them more willingly if they correspond to your own aptitude and your sensibilities.

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When you follow your interest, when you connect with your own true energy, your life takes a different path. New people come into it. New opportunities are created.

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The reason is that we create our own lives for ourselves. It’s the gift of human life that you’re not committed into a single course. You can change course. You can create and recreate your life. And you’re more likely to do that if you tap in the thing that you find motivating and fulfilling than not. Because in the end it’s simply that, it’s about energy.

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That’s why I argue so hard in reforming education. Because:

Our education system is based on a linear mode of production. It’s why so many people end up feeling detached from their own talents, because their being in an education system that prioritizes a certain type of talents and marginalizes the majority of the other ones. And if you’re not good at certain things, like if you’re not good at mathematics, you’re assumed not to be good generally. It’s why we have to argue to have a transformation of education system. And not just that, but also in our work places. But it begins with transformations with ourselves.

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You can’t promote things to which you are insensitive. It’s why so many teachers are having problems promoting creativity because they themselves aren’t in touch with their own creative possibilities.

Young Readers Edition

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I got my first Al Gore book, The Inconvenient Truth, as a present on the day I defended my dissertation, January 2007. I wasn’t really in touch directly with the climate change issues, or Gore’s Climate Project, but more with the phenomena of appropriate & intermediate technology, community development through design and design development projects, the impacts of (industrial) products to ecological, economic and social-cultural systems, and such. It was much later that I acquired Our Choice, bought at a book shop at Jakarta international airport, I think. By then I was already exposed to a whole lot of things concerning The Climate Project and a variety of campaigns concerning climate change. These two books provide comprehensive explanation about the subject in a pleasant way: clear, very informative, and are rich of images and graphic information. I thought the books couldn’t be much ‘readers-friendlier’, until I found the Young Readers Edition of both.

 

Here are the books, An Inconvenient Truth and Our Choice, along with their Young Readers versions

Although I’ve read only a few pages, these versions are obviously written in a conversational style, in simple words without decreasing the messages, and have the feel of a picture book, also due to the easy font types and sizes.

Pages from the Young Readers Editions

All in all, I’m sure these books will assist me significantly in preparing materials concerning climate change, especially to young audience. To end this post, following is a quote from the Conclusion of Our Choice – Young Readers Edition, that gives the feeling of intimacy, like an uncle telling you a story:

The choices we make now will decide what the world will look like 20 or 30 years from now. Twenty years from now, if I’m still alive, I’ll be an old man. But you’ll be a young adult. […] I know that a lot of information in this book can be frightening. But I still have hope that the world can come together to end the climate crisis, and I really believe it will – when all of us insist on it. I hope that when you’re an adult, you’ll be able to tell the great story of how you saw the world change for the better.

Small Balls, Big Balls

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I think the first time I saw this image was during The Climate Project Asia Pacific Summit 2011 in Jakarta, early January 2011. But then I saw this again recently, while watching Janine Benyus’ TED talk 2009 online and I am still amazed by it.

Global water and air volume

Image credits: Dr. Adam Neiman and The Science Photo Library

The balls on the left shows the comparison of the earth volume and the volume of water; while the small ball on the right show the volume of air. These images show how obviously finite our water and air supplies are. To quote Benyus,

Living organisms that have lived and evolved for billions of years have figured out ways to have their genetic materials remain without destroying the place that gives them life. We, human beings, are among the youngest species on earth – we should learn from them, firstly by quieting our cleverness and starting to be their apprentices.

Now, think about how we would conduct our daily lives and produce things without taking away the rights of our next generations to live on a life-giving earth.

7 Prinsip Keberlanjutan untuk Komunitas Interaktif

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Limpahan informasi, terutama tautan ke berbagai situs, salah satunya telah membawa saya ke sebuah tulisan berjudul Designing a Movement: Seven Principles for Sustainable Action (Valerie Casey), di mana Valerie Casey, pendiri Designers Accord, menyimpulkan prinsip-prinsip “keberlanjutan” yang dapat ia tawarkan ke komunitas desainer interaktif – sekelompok orang yang secara mendarah-daging selalu menganggap bahwa keberlanjutan adalah suatu desain sistem. Selengkapnya tentu saja bisa dibaca langsung di situs tersebut; di sini saya hanya merunut ke-tujuh prinsip tindakan berkelanjutan yang disampaikan Valerie.

1. Sebuah sistem bukanlah hanya sebuah gabungan dari bagian-bagian dari sistem tersebut. Satu bagian sistem pasti berpengaruh pada yang lain; tidak ada yang berada di luar sistem.

Tindakan: Memahami konsep sistem. Di sebuah bentangan benang yang ujung-ujungnya telah tertanam pasti/fixed (diagram Bruce Mau), tarikan pada satu bagian pasti akan mengulur bagian-bagian yang lain. Petakanlah proyek, sumber daya dan dampaknya dengan cara ini.

2. Masukan yang tertunda menyebabkan “jebakan desain”. Desainer bisa membuat keputusan buruk bila masukan/tanggapan terlambat datang.

Tindakan: Jangan mendesain untuk gejala tertentu saja. Banyak proyek desain terfokus hanya pada pemecahan masalah yang mudah untuk dicerna, daripada mengatasi sumber permasalahannya. Contohnya, orang lebih dianjurkan untuk mendaur ulang, tapi tidak pernah benar-benar dianjurkan untuk mengurangi belanjaan atau membeli produk-produk lokal.

3. Tidak ada yang namanya efek samping. Kita sering menentukan batasan-batasan artifisial di sekitar proyek kita bukan saja untuk memfokuskan diri pada permasalahan, tapi juga untuk menghindari tanggung-jawab terhadap hal-hal di luar batasan tersebut.

Tindakan: Alamilah produk-sampinganmu sendiri. Cobalah membawa-bawa sampahmu sendiri selama seminggu. Jangan buang benda-benda non-organik yang kamu pakai: botol plastik, kemasan, tisu, peralatan makan, semuanya. Ini akan jadi sebuah pelajaran kilat untuk mengetahui ‘efek samping’ dari semua konsumsi kita.

4. Tetapkan ukuran-ukuran kesuksesan yang tepat. Kurang buruk tidak berarti baik.

Tindakan: Buka sebuah jejaring sosial dengan sebuah tujuan sosial. Kita suka menciptakan jejaring, tapi bagaimana kalau kita menciptakan sebuah alasan untuk berjejaring? Kalkulator jejak karbon jadi kurang laku karena keabstrakan data hasilnya, berbeda dengan situs-situs di mana orang berbagi kasus-kasus nyata, perkembangan-perkembangan dan usaha-usahanya.

5. Pilih tingkatan yang tepat untuk perubahan.

Tindakan: Jadilah seorang mentor. Luangkan enam minggu bekerja dengan seorang siswa tingkat menengah atas, dan pelajari dirimu sendiri sambil membantu orang lain memakai pemikiran desain untuk mengubah lingkungan mereka (misalkan, sebuah sekolah).

Peta perjalanan bahan pembuat sebuah taco, menempuh hingga 64,000 mil (sumber: http://www.fastcompany.com/1567625/the-anatomy-of-a-taco)

6. Kenali hubungan antara struktur dan perilaku. Struktur sebuah kelompok, organisasi, komunitas, industri secara keseluruhan menentukan perilakunya.

Tindakan: Lakukan investigasi terhadap sebuah sistem. Telitilah sistem makanan dalam segala kejayaan politisnya yang korup. Mengertilah bahwa yang kau masukkan ke mulut adalah sebuah aksi politis. Cari berbagai referensi yang membuat kita tahu bagaimana pasar makanan global membuat lapar pihak-pihak yang miskin. Bayangkan dan berbagilah sumber-sumber mengenai hal-hal yang kau sukai, dan tambahkan sedikit data dalam investigasimu, mungkin kau bisa mempertentangkan berbagai asumsi tentang keberlanjutan, dan meluncurkan cara baru dalam berpikir.

7. Perhatian publik seringkali tidak mencerminkan perubahan dalam kondisi sebenarnya. Jangan terbuai oleh efek memabukkan dari isu-isu yang beredar tentang keberlanjutan – kamu juga harus melakukan sesuatu!

Tindakan: Kontribusi, distribusi. Bertindaklah sekarang!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=805-HI8Jx2I]

12 sustainable ideas from nature

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An inspiring talk by Janine Benyus

The author of BIOMIMICRY : Innovation Inspired by Nature talks about 12 Big Ideas learned from nature:

1. Self-assembly. Take a lesson from how life shapes itself: by adding information to matters. Imagine, for example, spraying a PVC with an organic substance that can  create a layer of solar harvesting material.

2. CO2 as a feed stock

3. Solar transformations

4. The power of shape

5. Quenching thirst. Learn how certain animals pull water out of fog, or out of air.

6. Metals without mining

7. Green chemistry. Replace industrial chemicals with life’s ‘recipe book’.

8. Timed degradation

9. Resilience & healing. Create vaccine that lasts without refrigeration.

10. Sensing & responding. Learn how to avoid collisions when speeding from fish and bats.

11. Growing fertility. Producing food like a prairie is different from industrial farming.

12. Life creates conditions conducive to life.

Organisms that have been evolving for billions of years have figured out ways to pass their genetic materials on without destroying their living space. We, human beings, one of the youngest species on earth, should learn from them.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n77BfxnVlyc&feature=related]