With our attempts to cultivate nature, humankind causes the rising of a next nature, which is wild and unpredictable as ever. Wild systems, genetic surprises, autonomous machinery and splendidly beautiful black flowers. Nature changes along with us.
From Dinosaur to primitive bird to supermarket discount. Although chickens thrive as a species – in the sense that billions of them roam the earth bio-industry – we doubt if the decision of the chicken-species to involve itself in a co-evolutionary relation with people, was a wise one. Lesson learned: always be very concise on what or who you get into a co-evolutionary relationship with. Chickens have limited abilities in this regard, but people should do better.
Via NRC charity Awards. Thanks René Pare.
The Anthropocene is the recently proposed epoch of Earth history that, proponents say, has begun with the rise of the human species as a globally potent biogeophysical force, capable of leaving a durable imprint in the geological record.
Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute, lays out the basic idea in the familiar TED-talk format.
Corporate logos constantly have to adapt to survive. With the lion of the Peugeot car brand this resulted in a parade of poses over time. Peculiar image of the week.
Human design brings us ‘natural’ experiences that could not exist without the human hand, but can be appreciated nevertheless. Perhaps we are intuitively faked to believe rainbow-dyed flowers are evolutionary more advanced than the original version? Nature never goes out of style, yet it can easily be turned into kitsch.
Geo-engineering avant la lettre. This is what 19th century people thought a 21th century weather machine would look like. This retro-futuristic postcard was produced around 1900 by Hildebrands – a leading German chocolate company of that time. Unsure whether the device was envisioned to run on steam. Via Paleo Future.
You may think it’s a cliché, but deep down inside robots want to be birds and fly high in the sky. Hooray for the good people of Festo, that demonstrate at TED how they turn the dream into a reality.
Some people like berries, some like tomato’s. So what do you get when you get when the two mate? Indeed, the latest hyperfruit spotted on the selves is the Tomberry. This unusually small cultivar of tomatoes, which weight only 1-2 grams and are less than a centimeter in size, is produced by the Dutch company Eminent Food BV and distributed throughout Europe. Unsurprisingly the name Tomberry has been trademarked.
The All Streets map visualizes of all the 240 million individual road segments in the United States. Although no other features — outlines, cities, or types of terrain — are marked, canyons and mountains emerge as the roads are layed around them.
What do you think of lab-grown meat? “Yuck” might be your first reaction. One day, however, it could become the environmentally friendly alternative for breeding cows and pigs for meat consumption. Professor Mark Post argues in his talk at TEDxBrainport that it is relatively simple to take stem cells from an animal and grow them to produce new muscle tissue. Simply add sugar, proteins and fat and get it into shape with a bit of exercise to created edible meat. The only problem then is to find a new role for our livestock…
This disposable aluminum barbecue on top of an original Weber barbecue nicely illustrates how people – time after time – employ technology to make life more convenient while trying to preserving essential qualities. Successfully or not. Judge for yourself.
This peculiar image of the week was made with the Next Nature spotter for iPhone.
Another step in the fusion of the made & the born: Surgeons in Sweden have successfully transplanted a fully synthetic, tissue-engineered organ – a trachea– into a man with late-stage tracheal cancer.
The synthetic trachea was grown in a bioreactor, using a scaffold built out of a porous polymer, and tissue grown from the patient’s own stem cells. The surgery was performed last month by Paolo Macchiarini at Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge, Stockholm. The patient has now made a full recovery and has been discharged from the hospital.
The transplant of the lab grown organ is a significant moment for regenerative medicine, although a trachea is much simpler than a lung, kidney or a heart, which are still far more challenging for the scientists.
Lab grown organs are expected to be superior to ordinary donor organs in several ways. They can be made to order more quickly than a donor organ can often be found; being grown from a patient’s own cells, they also do not require dangerous immunosuppressant drugs to prevent rejection.
Source: Technologyreview.
Growing meat in the lab, rather than slaughtering animals, could become a viable alternative for people who want to cut the environmental impact of their food consumption, but cannot bear a vegetarian lifestyle.
According to scientists from Oxford University and Amsterdam University, lab-grown meat could help feed the world, while reducing the impact on the environment. It would generate only a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with conventional livestock production.
The procedure of growing meat without an animal would require between 7% and 45% less energy than the same volume of conventionally produced meat such as pork, beef, or lamb. The meat labs would use only 1% of the land and 4% of the water associated with conventional meat and Greenhouse gases would be reduced by up to 96% in comparison to raising animals.
The scientists predict that if more resources are directed towards their research, the first lab-grown burger could be available in five years. It is their plan to start with mincemeat, while hoping to be able to produce steaks in ten years time.
Presumably the only place on Earth where burkas & protein supplements coincide in jolly harmony. Peculiar image of the week. Photo by me.
Traditionally, technology is seen as a force that diminishes our instincts and puts us at a distance of nature. Increasingly however, we realize technology can also energize and amplify our deepest human sensibilities – even some we had forgotten about. Propelling us not so much back to, but rather forward to nature.
By VAN MENSVOORT
Almost two decades ago, Brian Eno – artist, composer, inventor, thinker – gave an interview in which he stated the problem with computers was that there is not enough Africa in them [1]. “Africa is everything that something like classical music isn’t. Classical – perhaps I should say ‘orchestral’ – music is so digital, so cut up, rhythmically, pitch wise and in terms of the roles of the musicians. It’s all in little boxes.”… “Do you know what a nerd is? A nerd is a human being without enough Africa in him or her. I know this sounds sort of inversely racist to say, but I think the African connection is so important. I want so desperately for that sensibility to flood into these other areas, like computers.” … “It uses so little of my body. You’re just sitting there, and it’s quite boring. You’ve got this stupid little mouse that requires one hand, and your eyes. That’s it. What about the rest of you? No African would stand for a computer like that. It’s imprisoning.”
There’s nothing quite like peeling a piece of fruit, but if you end up with a bottle of Vodka after peeling, you know you have been caught in a biomimicmarketing fantasy. I guess the people of Smirnoff felt this was the most logical packaging for their fruit flavored drinks.
Our proposal to study the financial system as an ecosystem is sometimes criticized as ‘abuse of vegetational concepts’. Interestingly enough BBC documentary maker Adam Curtis now argues the whole notion of the ecosystem is in fact a boomeranged metaphor.
In his documentary ‘All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’, Curtis claims that the notion of the ‘ecosystem’ was, from the very beginning, based upon technological metaphors: the idea of nature as a complex machine. I hurry to emphasize that the next nature view goes exactly the other way around: the idea of complex machines as nature.
Thanks Ruben van Leer.
Want to live a greener life? Eat less meat. Recently the UN appealed for a radical shift in diet, to improve individual health and ease conditions affecting the global environment. Reducing meat consumption by 10% reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
Unfortunately, humans are omnivores. Our teeth are designed to eat both meat and plants. Susana Soares and her colleagues designers and engineers of the Material Beliefs program propose to alter human teeth structures into those of herbivores, in order to become a better vegetarian.
Teeth are an essential tool for nutrition and their shape is related to diet. Herbivore animals have developed teeth structures suited to the consumption of plant material. Can our teeth structure be replaced to encourage dietary shifts that reflect social concerns?
Soon at a local dentist near you? Perhaps your government will even give you a tax cut for adopting a more sustainable veggy lifestyle? No seriously, this is bio play.
See also: Phone Tooth, Orthorexia Nervosa: the healty eating disorder.
What happens if your childhood experience of your environment has been solely through video games? According to artist Shawn Smith, “pixels became a sort of map from which to experience”. Hence he introduces old nature into next nature by transforming its imagery into 8-bit sculptures using hundreds of tiny wooden blocks.
In an interview with Wired Smith says “I have been around the depiction of objects and nature on screens all my life and I found myself wondering what these things look like in three dimensions.” Peculiar image of the week.