Bird spotting is not a typical activity for us next nature explorers, yet occasionally we bump into some birds worth mentioning (remember the amazing copy-paste bird, rubber duck XL, the wild birds illegally immigrating into city Zoo, or the plastic flamingos that almost became extinct?)
Undoubtedly these ‘plastic’ birds spotted by photographer Chris Jordan are the most macabre thus far. One wonders what Darwin would have thought of these Albatross babies fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. According to the photographer thousands of chicks a year, kick the bucket from starvation, toxicity, and choking from their diet of human trash.
Feeding your babies plastic is definitely not a good survival strategy for these poor birds. On the other hand, plastic seems to be thriving as a new material all over our planet, with no living organism able to break it down or consume it. Nietzsche already learned us that every second nature typically stresses a first nature, which in effect deteriorates, after which the victorious second nature becomes the first.
Are we ready for a plastic planet? Surely that bit of mindful recycling you are urging yourself to turn into a habit, won’t undo the effect. How long should we wait for the microbes to evolve that are able to digest plastic? Certainly there is more than enough ‘food’ for them available within the ecosystem by now. Somebody please call one of these synthetic biologists to fix us a microbe that eats plastic.
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Will we in the future still buy several needs according food in shops, or will we grow M&M’s ourselves? There is a lot happening on in the field of food technology, think for example of special cloned cow species or ‘extremely tasteful’ designers vegetables. We are radically intervening with Darwin’s survival of the fittest, since society strives to select and process the ‘best’ and ‘strongest’ species and types themselves – often based on commercial values.
According the magazine cover of Food & Wine in October 2105 the process of ‘creating’ food in factories will be outdated; next nature will grow the hyperfood itself. With a little help of technology the food/culture that society created will be combined with what we traditionally consider as nature. Think for example of the extensive use of photosynthesis to increase production of food, as they will become little factories. But also about processing design food via a biological way that for the present can only happen via complex chemical processes, e.g. the production of M&M’s through the genetic manipulating of beans. Furthermore, the special 22nd-century edition of Food & Wine explains that food will become more effective, healthy and ‘powerful’ by the integration of new developed vitamins and medicines. These will not only give us extra energy but will also power the electronic devices we use, since these will become a part of our body we’ll have to feed them as well.
Will in 2105 all factories where they produce food become redundant? And how will the physical status of future humans react upon the extra healthy food they will consume, shall it improve lifestyle in a way illness can be prevented? Fortunately or not, this cover is still merely a fantasy, hence we still have some degrees of freedom in what direction we want food design to develop. 
Related: Food design in the 21th century, The meat of tomorrow, a square fishstick, dinosaur nuggets, organic coca-cola, hyper fruit, cloned meat, potato-free potato chips, frankenwein, vegetarian hamburgers, hypernatural tomatoes, Who designed the banana?, How to grow an Orangina Bottle.
Houston, Texas, the fourth-largest city in the U.S., has always been vulnerable to severe weather and heat. A 2 million-square-meter dome should protect downtown from hurricanes and regulate the climate, though only covering 0,33% of the total Houston area.
Scientists made up plans to cover a part of the city with a polymer structure manufactured in Germany. Compared to glass, the light and durable material (ETFE) that withstands winds up to 290 km/h, is only 1% the weight.
A video at Discovery Channel shows how maybe one day this giant structure will save Houston from a terrible natural disaster.
On a different note, what will the weather be like inside the bubble? Will artificial rain still evoke the same reactions?
Related: Space Station | Biosphere 2 | Romantic Sunsets
Written by KEVIN KELLY. Published in The Technium.
I remember the smoke the most. That pungent smell permeating the camps of tribal people. Everything they touch is infused with the lingering perfume of smoke — their food, shelter, tools, and art. Everything. Even the skin of the youngest tribal child emits smokiness when they pass by. I can hold a memento from my visits decades later and still get a whiff of that primeval scent. Anywhere in the world, no matter the tribe, steady wafts of smoke drift in from the central fire. If things are done properly, the flame never goes out. It smolders to roast bits of meat, and its embers warm bodies at night. The fire’s ever-billowing clouds of smoke dry out sleeping mats overhead, preserve hanging strips of meat, and drive away bugs at night. Fire is a universal tool, good for so many things, and it leaves an indelible mark of smoke on a society with scant other technology.
Besides the smoke I remember the immediacy of experience that opens up when the mediation of technology is removed in a rough camp. Living close to the land as hunter-gatherers do, I got colder often, hotter more frequently, soaking wet a lot, bitten by insects faster, more synchronized to rhythm of the day and seasons. Time seemed abundant. I was shocked at how quickly I could dump the cloud of technology in my modern life for a cloud of smoke.
But I was only visiting. Living in a world without technology was a refreshing vacation, but the idea of spending my whole life there was, and is, unappealing. Like you, or almost anyone else with a job today, I could sell my car this morning and with the sale proceeds instantly buy a plane ticket to a remote point on earth in the afternoon. A string of very bumpy bus rides from the airport would take me to a drop-off where within a day or two of hiking I could settle in with a technologically simple tribe. I could choose a hundred sanctuaries of hunter-gatherer tribes that still quietly thrive all around the world. At first a visitor would be completely useless, but within three months even a novice could at least pull their own weight and survive. No electricity, no woven clothes, no money, no farm crops, no media of any type — only a handful of hand-made tools. Every adult living on earth today has the resources to relocate to such a world in less than 48 hours. But no one does.
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Reliable data on economic growth is hard to come by in many parts of the world, especially in developing countries. Yet according to scientists, outer space offers a new perspective for measuring economic growth.
Using satellite images of nighttime lights, J. Vernon Henderson, Adam Storeygard, and David N. Weil from Brown University have created a new framework for estimating a country or region’s gross domestic product, or GDP by observing the changes in a country’s “night lights” as seen from outer space.
“Consumption of nearly all goods in the evening requires lights,” they write in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper. “As income rises, so does light usage per person, in both consumption activities and many investment activities.”
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Old nature provided us with a wide variety of food: fresh milk, crispy vegetables, nutritious meat. Yet this is not enough, we want more:
We want a printed steak, square fishsticks, dinosaur nuggets, organic coca-cola, hyper fruit, cloned meat, potato-free potato chips, frankenwein, vegetarian hamburgers and hypernatural tomatoes. We want vitamine+Q10 yoghurt that makes you loose weight. We want to hear the sound of a sausage when we bite it – we want notice how well designed that sausage sound really is.
Already for thousands of years people have been food designers. How will food technology develop itself into the 21th century? The Philips Food Design Probes investigate how we will eat and source our food in the future, like in 15 to 20 years. There are 3 products we might have in our homes by then:
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Tags:
Bionics,
Design for debate,
Designed by Evolution,
Feed Back,
Food Technology,
Hypernature,
Image Consumption,
Made to debate,
manipulating growth,
Officegarden,
supermarket
Looking at a banana from a design perspective, one immediately notices the fruit is highly ergonomic and sophisticated: Bananas fit perfectly in the human hand, they come with a non-slip surface, a bio-degradable packaging that is easy to open, and they have an advanced informative skin that turns yellow when the product is ready for consumption – green means not yet, brown means too late.
The design of the banana is so good, some evangelists – like the one in the video – present it as evidence that an ‘intelligent designer’ must have created the fruit. These evangelists however, makes a quintessential mistake on the static origins of ‘nature’, as they ignore that the bananas we eat today are hardly products of old nature. Rather, they are the result of thousands of years of domestication by people.
Archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence suggests that banana cultivation goes back to at least 5000 BCE. The design banana’s we eat cannot even reproduce without the hand of man, as they have no seeds – they are all clones, which makes the species highly vulnerable to diseases.
Wild bananas are still around, yet they are much less ergonomically adjusted for human consumption as they have have numerous large, hard seeds. Perhaps in the far future evangelists will present coke bottles as evidence for their ‘intelligent designer’ argument?
Related: A designers take on intelligent design, Banana Juice box, Banana inspired harddisk casing. Thanks Billy.
Have you heard the buzz on virtual money in online games? Some years ago the first virtual millionaire was announced, yet there have also been reports on people being practically enslaved to farm virtual gold. The Chinese government recently announced to limit the use of ‘virtual’ currencies. An essay on the virtuality of money.
By KOERT VAN MENSVOORT
First of all we should realize the term virtual money is a pleonasm, a superfluous expression. Money is, by definition, virtual. And it always has been. Well, perhaps not in the time when people used cows and goats as barter. A cow is a living creature, and useful as well. You can drink its milk and when the creature no longer gives any milk you can always kill it and eat it. We may not think about, but it is actually a miracle that I can now at the butcher on the corner exchange a piece of paper for a rump steak.
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No this is not some stellar system far away. What is it then? Lets make another picture, this time with the flashlight on…
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We’ve written earlier about man–made bacteria that eat waste & shit petrol. How about a genetically modified bacteria that can eat CO2 and excrete methane that could power our cars and homes? Abundant carbon dioxide, which is considered a pollutant, could be a nearly unlimited source of fuel. Will you one day be driving your car to fight global warming?
At first you think it sounds too good be true and quickly categorize the idea in the hoax section along with the cheap solar panels made from human hairs. But once you hear Craig Venter – yes, that researcher that sequenced the human genome – is involved, you know you have to take things more seriously.
Dr. Venter with his new firm, Synthetic Genomics, has turned his attentions to creating synthetic biological organisms for environmental change. What is particularly interesting about the company’s approach is the digitizing of existing organisms, which are then remodeled to new ones that do things that serve us well, such as eating pollution and excreting fuel. It’s high science today, but could be a genetic Photoshop within our lifetime.
A leading candidate to be the desired ‘CO2 eating, energy excreting bacteria’ that changes the game of climate change is Methanococcus jannaschii – depicted at the top of this post –, an ancient, single-cell organism that is found in the seafloor in the vicinity of hydrothermal vents. The organism produces methane by combining carbon dioxide with hydrogen rising through the vents. Incorporated into the air pollution control systems of power plants, the organism could turn CO2 into methane.
Although it will be difficult to apply the technique on a large scale anytime soon, president Obama already decided to honor Craig Venter with the National Medal of Science for his life time achievements.
Sources: Lab News, Popular Mechanics. Related: Crash course on synthetic genomics, Bacteria that eat waste & shit petrol, Driving on Algue, Arnolds hybrid hummer, Green Blues.
