APPLIED theories in SUSTAIN ABILITY SUST_704
Charisse Bennett Spring_2010
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Powers of Ten - Charles and Ray Eames Fish Banks Simulation Manufactured Landscapes (Movie) The New York Times Magazine. “Building a Green Economy” - Paul Krugman www.TED.com “The Hidden Influence of Social Networks” - Nicholas Christakis www.core77.com “Afrerlife: An Essential Guide to Design for Disassembly - Alex Diener SCAD Working Class Studio No Impact Man (Movie) Food, Inc. (Movie) www.TED.com “How I fell in love with a fish” - Dan Barber
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ADDITIONAL SOURCES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
The Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design and Design Studies - Victor Margolin Expansion or Sustainability: Two Models of Development . Design for a Sustainable World . Stanford Social Innovation Review Winter 2010 “Design Thinking for Social Innovation� - Tim Brown & Jocelyn Wyatt Design, Ethics and Sustainability. Guidelines for a transition phase. - Ezio Manzini The Systems View of the World - Ervin Laszlo 1 The Atomistic View and the Systems View . Cradle-to-Cradle - William McDonough & Michael Braungart Natural Capitalism Creating the Next Industrial Revolution - Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins 1 The Next Industrial Revolution 6 Tunneling Through the Cost Barrier 7 Muda, Service, and Flow 8 Capital Gains Where is Creativity? - Csikszentmihalyi Community Based Social Marketing - CBSM.com The Hidden Connections - Fritjof Capra 4 Life and Leadership in Organizations 5 The Networks of Global Capitalism Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature - Janine M. Benyus 7 How Will We Conduct Business?
CLASS READINGS/ ARTICLES A B C D E F G H J K 3
LIVING SYSTEMS
UNBALANCED
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION CONVENTIONAL CAPITALISM CRADLE-TO-GRAVE
INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY
EXPANSION MODEL
CONSUMPTION PRODUCT-BASED WELL-BEING
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES ATOMISTIC VIEW
WICKED PROBLEMS MAN-MADE
ECONOMICS
WICKED SOLUTIONS 4 DOMAINS
4
DESIGNERS
DANGEROUS BREED
ETHICS OF RESPONSIBILITY
RETHINKING DESIGN
DESIGN THINKING
POSITIVE DEVIANCE
SUSTAINABILITY MODEL
ALTERING CONSUMPTION SUSTAINABLE WELL-BEING
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES SYSTEMS VIEW
THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION NATURAL CAPITALISM
CRADLE-TO-CRADLE
LIVING SYSTEMS BALANCED
5
aware: having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge.
6
AWARENESS Awareness is the state or ability to perceive, to fell, or to be conscious of events, objects or sensory patterns. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something. Once you become aware of an issue it is hard to ignore its existence. Even if you disagree you will be more likely to notice instances to support or disprove your stance.
IT ALL STARTED WHEN
what you believe is not important...
THE POWER OF TEN PROJECT / VIDEO BY CHARLES AND RAY EAMES from CELLS to PEOPLE/ ORGANISMS to LIVING SYSTEMS/ EARTH
...as long as you understand the basic building blocks of life.
WASTE EQUALS FOOD Cradle-to-Cradle - William McDonough & Michael Braungart
LIVING SYSTEMS:
open self-organizing systems with special characteristics of life and they interact with their environment through information and material-energy exchanges.
So what are living systems and why should you care? Living Systems, such as grasslands, wetlands, estuaries, oceans, coral reefs, rainforests, etc., provide services as well as materials. These services are more important to human prosperity than the materials. As an example, a forest can provide water storage, flood management, clean air and water, fertile soil, waste processing buffer to extreme weather, and regeneration of atmosphere. All vital elements of life. F
LIFE IS WHAT WORKS. NATURE DOES NOT COMPROMISE; NATURE OPTIMIZES. F
NATURAL CAPITAL: includes all the familiar resources used by humankind but it also encompasses living systems F
ENTROPY: measure of the disorder of a system. Systems tend to go from a state of order (low entropy) to a state of maximum disorder (high entropy).
AUTOPOEISIS: A living organism is understood as a circular, autocatalytic-like process which has its own survival as its main goal.
DISSIPATIVE STRUCTURE: an open system that maintains itself in a state far from equilibrium, yet is nevertheless stable: the same overall structure is maintained in spite of an ongoing flow & change of components
BIFURCATION POINT: when the flow of energy increases, the system may encounter a point of instability at which it can branch off into an entirely new state where new structures & new forms of order may emerge
LIVING SYSTEMS choose what to
are
NOTICE
OPEN
and how to
SELF-ORGANIZING
RESPOND
systems that
J
INTERACT with their ENVIRONMENT through the FLOW of ENERGY MATERIALS INFORMATION F
should NOT be viewed as FREE
can be broken down to the
NATURAL CAPITAL
SIMPLEST PART
E
that all BIOLOGICAL LIFE
provide
can only be
MATERIALS
DISTURBED
&
J
SERVICES
are more important to HUMAN PROSPERITY
consists of CELLS
example
consist of METABOLISM internal exchanges INPUT and MEMBRANES external exchanges OUTPUT allowing the SYSTEM to be OPEN as a
allow for AUTOPOEISIS SELF-MAKING MAINTENANCE provide ENERGY to slow
A FOREST PROVIDES: water storage flood management clean air & water fertile soil waste processing buffer extreme weather regeneration of atmosphere F
ENTROPY
DISSIPATIVE STRUCTURE
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Ecology as a Metaphor BIOSPHERE TECHNOSPHERE Environment Organism Natural Product Natural Selection Ecosystem Ecological Niche Anabolism/Catabolism Mutation and Selection Succession Adaptation FOOD WEB
TYPE I SYSTEMS: weeds the Industrial Revolution
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which led to the development of the Expansion Model
Market Company Industrial Product Competition Eco-Industrial Park Market Niche Manufacturing/Waste Management Design for Environment Economic Growth Innovation PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE
TYPE II SYSTEMS: perrenial berry bushes present industrial flows
through rethinking design can lead to the implementation of the Sustainability Model
TYPE III SYSTEMS: redwoods the NEXT industrial revolution
Industrial Ecology Attainable: 1 Use waste as a resource 2 Diversify & cooperate to fully use the habitat
How do we encourage the steps towards Industrial Ecology?
3 Gather & use energy efficiently 4 Optimize rather than maximize 5 Use materials sparingly 6 Don’t foul your own nest 7 Don’t draw down resources
CLASS NOTES
How do we create the awareness necessary?
8 Remain in balance with the biosphere 9 Run on information 10 Shop locally
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DO WE KNOW THE LIMITS
Fish Banks Simulation Fish Banks “Game” The actual goal of the simulation was to achieve the greatest possible assets by the end of the game. The term “game” instantly promoted a sense of competitiveness. That and the “game” started immediately with an auction of six ships. While we knew we needed to be aware of the fish populations and try to keep tabs on how many ships were out fishing, the competition aspect got the better of most of us and within the fourth or fifth season there were already more ships than the fish population could withstand.
ACTIVITY
Understanding the bell curve chart in regards to fish populations and safe levels of harvesting are critical. The industries need to learn to work together rather than against each other. Finding the equilibrium point will lead to success for everyone, most importantly the fish. An interesting perspective is understanding the population of boats reached its maximum and therefore the fish populations collapsed. For x% of the world population we have reached and exceeded our maximum for the amount of resources we “harvest”. The collapse is happening now and will continue exponentially if a change does not occur.
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WASTE AND NOISE ARE SIGNS OF INEFFICIENCY Natural Capitalism Creating the Next Industrial Revolution Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION:
a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transport had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions. a major turning point in human history; almost every aspect of daily life was eventually influenced in some way.
So what’s the problem and how did it become a problem? As the cottage industry declined the values of industry focused on standardization and centralization of production. It was about producing more, faster. This directly led to the Expansion Model that is in place today.
WHEN BICEPS AND BACK MUSCLES RAN THE SHOVELS, OUR RATE OF DESTRUCTION MORE CLOSELY MATCHED NATURE’S RATE OF RENEWAL. IT WASN’T UNTIL THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION PUT US ON THE WINNING SIDE OF A VERY LARGE LEVER THAT WE BEGAN VAULTING PAST NATURE. K
PARADIGM SHIFT: a fundamental change in approach or assumptions E
COTTAGE INDUSTRY: any small-scale, loosely organized industry E
WASTE (MUDA): any human activity which absorbs resources but creates no value; every measurable input that does not create customer value, every input has to be presumed waste until shown otherwise F
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION caused a
motive was
creates
creation of
PARADIGM SHIFT
ECONOMIC REVOLUTION
WASTE (MUDA)
WASTE (MUDA)
&
through
&
ACQUISITION of CAPITAL
MISTAKES which require RECTIFICATION
NOISE
from traditional COTTAGE INDUSTRY with resistance E
through
are signs of
PRODUCTION of items NO ONE WANTS
INEFFICIENCY
PRODUCTION
PROCESSING STEPS that aren’t needed
LOST MONEY
to meet the design goals of
TRANSPORT without any purpose
PRACTICAL
WORKERS wasted time
STANDARDIZED & CENTRALIZED
PROFITABLE
LINEAR
goods & services that DON’T meet the NEEDS of the CUSTOMER
E
F
EFFICIENT
&
F
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EXPANSION MODEL:
the world consists of markets in which products function first & foremost as tokens of economic exchange. A
CONSUMPTION: the using up of goods and services by consumer purchasing or in the production of other goods. A
CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION: the lavish spending on goods and services acquired mainly for the purpose of displaying income or wealth, such display serves as a means of attaining or maintaining social status. A
This model of economic development relies on consumption and the belief that happiness and well-being are only possible through the minimization of personal involvement. In other words the more a device or product can do for you the happier you will be. But what you might not be aware of is how this trend has reduced our skills, abilities and general knowledge. The simple skill of being able to fix anything has been lost in just the last couple of generations. Even I have to admit I can’t sew a hew or change the oil in my car. Not to mention my dependence on technology to operate on a daily basis.
DISABLING SOLUTIONS: systems of products and services that, seek to reduce user involvement & sequester formerly widespread knowledge & skills to integrate them into technical devices C
PRODUCT-BASED WELL-BEING: based solely on the belief that products that promise reduced fatigue, more free time, and the opportunity for individual choice can provide well-being C
While most of those living in saturated economies like ours pity people in emerging economies that don’t have the simple luxuries we have, it is very likely they will be a leading example of how to shift our energies towards a ore sustainable model of living. As new trends develop successfully in these emerging economies, such as microfinancing, the developed countries will latch on to these ideas and spread their implementation.
RADICAL MONOPOLY: a term from Ivan Illich for a system that leaves people no choice but to use it A
EXPANSION MODEL system of MARKETS
relies on in which
believes
CONSUMPTION
PRODUCTS
lead to
has become a
DYNAMIC GROWTH
are
HUMAN BETTERMENT
SOCIAL TREND
of
TOKENS OF ECONOMIC EXCHANGE
HAPPINESS
of the
WELL-BEING product based
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES saturated economies
driven by
PRODUCTION & TRADE leads to
that
encourages more
WICKED PROBLEMS
need to REPAY DEBT of POLLUTED RIVERS BAD AIR DEPLETED SOILS
that influences the Reduce Fatigue More Free Time Individual Choice Individual Freedom minimization of PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT leads to DISABLING SOLUTIONS leads to REDUCED SKILLS, ABILITIES, KNOWLEDGE
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES emerging economies might not have ESTABLISHED NORMS
need to SHIFT ENERGY towards SUSTAINABILITY MODEL
see COMMUNITY BASED SOCIAL MARKETING can then influence DEVELOPED COUNTRIES ex: micro-financing
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HOW DID WE GET TO THIS POINT
Manufactured Landscapes “... is the striking documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris. The film follows him through China, as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. With breathtaking sequences, such as the opening tracking shot through an almost endless factory, the filmmakers also extend the narratives of Burtynsky’s photographs, allowing us to meditate on our impact on the planet and witness both the epicenters of industrial endeavor and the dumping grounds of its waste. MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES powerfully shifts our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it, without simplistic judgments or reductive resolutions.” -www.zeitgeistfilms.com
MOVIE
The movie opens casually passing through a factory in China. We are shown row after endless row of identically dressed people assembling parts and pieces. The next scene shows these same identical workers assembled outside the factory in highly organizes groups, resembling an army. This army of human machines is what the Industrial Revolution has led to. No identity. No thought. Just perform a highly specific task and repeat. Over and over again. This makes me look at objects I own and truly wonder how and who put it together. Did they even have a choice to be a factory worker or not? Another series of scenes that truly struck me begin at a ship construction yard in China. We meet a young girl that tells how her grandfather was a welder, her mother is a welder, and so now she is a welder because she wasn’t able to get into high school. Next the film shows tanker ships being deconstructed in India. With little to no machinery the work is all done by hand by young men and boys. The tankers still have oil sludge in them that must be scooped out and collected. This work is dirty and dangerous with most dying before they are thirty. And for what? Oil. Oil that runs our world. Looking at a complex series of highway, bridges, on and off ramps everything relies on oil in one way or another. The roads are made of asphalt, the cars run on gasoline, nearly every component of the car has an oil by-product or used oil as an energy source. How did we get to this point, this absolute dependence on a single substance? As the leak in the gulf continues, will we wake up to the realization of what we are doing? Or do we continue to dump our trash in someone else’s “waters” and pretend it isn’t there? While Burtynsky’s photographs are beautiful, are they able to open more people’s eyes to the destruction happening around the world? 23
PROBLEMS CAN’T BE SOLVED WITHIN THE MIND-SET THAT CREATED THEM. ALBERT EINSTEIN
WICKED PROBLEMS:
a class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing. A Richard Buchanan and Horst Rittel A
The Expansion Model has led to a system of markets driven by dynamic, sometimes uncontrolled, growth of production and trade which has led to what Buchanan and Rittel term Wicked Problems. Examples of Wicked Problems include: traffic congestion, parking problems, road accidents, airport congestion, airport and traffic noise, urban decay as well as shortages in mass education, medical treatment and crime detention. Wicked Problems have been created through the design of man-made things and their inevitable cradle-to-grave lifecycle. Designers have played a role in dramatically intensifying this problem through the promotion of consumerism, materialism and forced obsolescence.
THE SYSTEM AS A WHOLE IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL J
SOLUTION: systems of tangible and intangible elements that, thanks to a specific action strategy, permits to a given result C
CRADLE-TO-GRAVE: product design based on a linear, one-way system E
FORCED OBSOLESCENCE: products designed to last only for a certain period of time to encourage the customer to get rid of the product and buy a new model E
MATERIALISM: encourages bad behavior and discourages positive behavior, a doctrine that the only or the highest values or objectives lie in material well-being and in the furtherance of material progress
WICKED PROBLEMS are
when
can’t be
example:
MASSIVE
SOCIAL CONVENTIONS
SOLVED
TECHNOLOGIES
within the
that produce
MIND-SET
BYPRODUCTS
that
INDETERMINATE
&
MESSY
TECHNOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS
UNSOLVED DESIGN PROBLEMS created by using MAN-MADE THINGS
requires
such as
WICKED SOLUTIONS
traffic congestion parking problems road accidents airport congestion airport & traffic noise urban decay as well as shortages in mass education medical treatment crime detention
through a RETHINKING of DESIGN
dictate the
CREATED THEM
SOCIETY cannot ABSORB
SOLUTION
from Einstein F
are
there is
FAILED TECHNOLOGIES
NO DESIGN THINKING Manzini C
PEOPLE know the WHAT is PAID
Buchanan A
PRICE of EVERYTHING but the
WHAT SOCIETY PAYS now, elsewhere, future
TRUE COST of NOTHING K
A
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WE CAN AFFORD TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE. The New York Times Magazine. “Building a Green Economy” - Paul Krugman
ECONOMICS:
a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services 3
ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS:
Value: abstract notion of value F Value the abstract - leads to manipulations others define value for us. to make others value the natural capital - apply value to it. Cheap - what is cheap? Fixing one thing fixes many things Supplies are cheap due to collapsed economies, global trade, ‘cheap’ transport, market imbalances consequences pollution, natural habitat destruction, culture disruption not factored into cost
theoretical or empirical studies of the economic effects of national or local environmental policies around the world such as the costs & benefits of alternative environmental policies to deal with air pollution, water quality, toxic substances, solid waste, & global warming 3
THE NEW ECONOMY HAS SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED OUR HARMFUL IMPACT ON THE BIOSPHERE J
FREE MARKETS: an economic market operating by free competition 3 NEGATIVE EXTERNALITIES: costs that economic actors impose on others without paying a price for their actions 3
CAP AND TRADE: an environmental policy tool with a mandatory cap on emissions while providing flexibility in compliance. Successful programs reward innovation, efficiency, & early action & provide strict environmental accountability without inhibiting growth. 3
CAPITAL: accumulated wealth in the form of investments, factories, and equipment F
HUMAN CAPITAL: in the form of labor and intelligence, culture and organization F
FINANCIAL CAPITAL: consisting of cash, investments and monetary instruments F
MANUFACTURED CAPITAL: including infrastructure, machines, tools and factories F
NATURAL CAPITAL: includes all the familiar resources used by humankind (water, minerals, oil, trees, fish, soil, air, etc.) but it also encompasses living systems (grasslands, savannas, wetlands, estuaries, oceans, coral reefs, riparian corridors, tundras, rainforests) F
ECONOMICS forms a
FREE MARKETS
are
between
SOCIAL CONTRACT
nobody can be
“EFFICIENT”
is
CAPITAL
dismantled thru
BETTER OFF
GLOBAL
&
without making
is
LABOR
DEREGULATION & RESTRUCTURING
LOCAL
NEW CAPITALISM
&
SOMEONE ELSE
not part of the
WORSE OFF
EXCHANGE but reaps the
is
HUMAN
EFFECTS: NEGATIVE EXTERNALITIES
UNSTABLE
COLLECTIVE IDENTITY
and has
VALUES CHOICE (DESIGN)
led to
RESOURCES move from POOR to
4
ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS & SOCIAL COSTS J
LOST BARGAINING POWER
RICH
4th WORLD
moves from
EXCLUSION
POLLUTION
LOSS OF IDENTITY
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LEAD BY EXAMPLE
Green Economy Paul Krugman: Building a Green Economy This article explains the basics of environmental economics in a way I was actually able to understand. While the topic is overwhelming and highly complex Paul Krugman explains the benefits and possible consequences of a new cap-and-trade system and carbon tariffs to help limit pollution. However, he also highlights the importance of a global commitment. “Emissions limits in America won’t accomplish much, they argue, if China and others don’t match our effort.” While this is obviously a true statement, that shouldn’t stop us from changing whether the rest of the world follows or not. Germany and Denmark are already some of the most environmentally conscious countries in the world and they didn’t choose to be that way in hopes everyone would follow their example. They knew it was the correct way to respect the limited resources they had available to them.
ARTICLE
Another disturbing fact is knowing people don’t make the right choices. Everyday “consumers fail to take measures to conserve energy even when they could save money by doing so.” Perhaps it is lack of education or time or money. The key is to demonstrate to consumers and manufactures the benefits of change in the long term. “Action will have costs, and these must be compared with the costs of not acting.” Climate change isn’t going to wait around for us to get our “chickens in a row.” Actions can be taken now to make a difference in the future.
lookgreenfirst.com
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DO THE RIGHT THINGS IN THE RIGHT ORDER Natural Capitalism Creating the Next Industrial Revolution Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins
SOLUTION:
systems of tangible and intangible elements that, thanks to a specific action strategy, permits to a given result C
The need for Wicked Solutions is now. While dematerialization of products has been taking place the true goal is a reduction of consumption and reliance on products. According to Manzini this can be accomplished through a three step process. First we need to extend the lifespan of products and develop a strong relationship of attachment and care to these products. The second step will be shifting our attention to service models rather than acquisition. Such as Zip Car or appliance and tool rentals. The third and final step will be a decrease in the need for products and therefore less consumption. Just because we can make products to do every little task imaginable doesn’t mean we should. It’s time to put our creativity and intelligence to more practical matters.
DEMATERIALIZATION: doing more with less materials
NEW RADICALISM: Manzini’s argument that the redesign of existing products was insufficient and that a drastic change in sonsumption patterns was required. Proposed 3 scenarios A
ALL THE REALLY IMPORTANT MISTAKES ARE MADE ON THE FIRST DAY. F
WICKED SOLUTIONS 3 steps having
establish
must
require
require
PRODUCT PRICES
FEEDBACK LINKS
FORESIGHT:
EVERYONE
truly reflect
among and within
CONNECT INTEGRATE
the ability to
to
COSTS to the EARTH
BUSINESSES
DO NOW
and to
as well as
THINK BACKWARDS
FUTURE GENERATIONS
FEEDBACK
K
from the ENVIRONMENT to BUSINESS K
the 4 DOMAINS 2D Symbolic & Visual Communication 3D Materials Objects
to achieve RESULTS LATER F
from DOWNSTREAM to
Activities & Services
UPSTREAM
Systems & Environments
F
Richard Buchanan A
EXPAND LIFESPAN of PRODUCTS & DEVELOP RELATIONSHIP Attachment & Care SHIFT from ACQUISITION to SERVICE DECREASE CONSUMPTION/NEED of PRODUCTS leads to SUSTAINABILITY MODEL A
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SOCIAL NETWORK AS CHANGE AGENT
Nicholas Christakis Nicholas Christakis: The Hidden Influence of Social Networks “We’re all embedded in vast social networks of friends, family, co-workers and more. Nicholas Christakis tracks how a wide variety of traits -- from happiness to obesity -- can spread from person to person, showing how your location in the network might impact your life in ways you don’t even know.” Perhaps one of the strongest influencing agent of change will be found through our social networks. Nicholas Christakis discusses how social networks can impact your life through such issues as obesity and happiness. I believe social networking will provide a key platform for disseminating and influencing others towards the Next Industrial Revolution. Ideas spread like wildfire across networks. The key is getting the right ideas out there.
TED TALK
A similar theory is discussed in Capra’s Hidden Connections by theorist Etienne Wenger. Wenger refers to “self-generating social networks” as ‘communities of practice,’ “referring to the common context of meaning rather than to the pattern of organization through which the meaning is generated.” His study looks more at how a common practice of doing things a specific way leads to stronger bonds within networks of individuals. He also looks at the different levels and kinds of communities. Wenger defines “a community of practice as characterized by three features: mutual engagement of its members, a joint enterprise, and over time, a shared repertoire of routines, tacit rules of conduct, and knowledge.” J With the popularity of online social networking, the multiple networks, perhaps with vastly different interests, become more and more closely tied, with information able to spread quickly from one to another. This globalization of knowledge transfer could be the answer to social and environmental changes.
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NETWORK INTERACTIONS
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Darren Tepe Cmon Charisse, climate change is now a Facebook | Charisse http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/magazine/11Economy-t.html religion. Theres no fact behind it Bennett only green millionaires. Yesterday at 8:31pm Delete look at the long term trends, she s dead on right. From: Wes Charisse Bennett I hope there's some sarcasm in that 11 hours ago Delete comment Yesterday at 9:16pm Delete Charisse Bennett Not that I expect to change your mind but here is an excellent illustration of the argument... http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations Mohd Bilbeisi I hope so too! Create a Profile Badge /climate-change-deniers-vs-the-consensus/ Yesterday at 9:27pm Delete 11 hours ago Delete
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Tom Ames This is a new conservative tactic- they claim that (either, or both sometimes) climate change or evolution is a "religion". I sure hope he's using this fact for a laugh! Yesterday at 9:53pm Delete
Neal Evers Scientific debate or bar fight-- choose your forum. 9 hours ago Delete
Darren Tepe Im all for no pollution and keeping this planet as cleen as possible but its not getting warmer. Why not ask the ques. what can we do to get away from burning fossil fuel? Not omg, the sky is falling, er its getting hot in Rio. Yesterday at 10:33pm Delete
JAMES PARIZEK Whether or not you believe that the world is warming because of us is irrelevant This does not change the fact that completely using up a nonrenewable resource is a bad thing!!! There are better ways to do things, why do people have to have something to blame it on before they will do something!!! 8 hours ago Delete
Darren Tepe Sorry Tom, I'm not conservative, just an American. Yesterday at 10:37pm Delete Tom Ames ... regardless of your opinions on the issue, it's just NOT a religion, man!!! It does not concern belief in the supernatural, which is the definition of religious belief: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion Yesterday at 10:55pm Delete
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Gaylynn Jameson-Tepe Great call Tom. How's the glaciers over there? Are they getting smaller like you? Yesterday at 11:26pm Delete
Savannah. so far.. Updated about 3 weeks ago
Charisse Bennett "The first is that the planet is indeed warming. Weather fluctuates, and as a consequence it’s easy enough to point to an unusually warm year in the recent past, note that it’s cooler now and claim, “See, the planet is getting cooler, not warmer!” But if you look at the evidence the right way — taking averages over periods long enough to smooth out the fluctuations — the upward trend is unmistakable: each successive decade since the 1970s has been warmer than the one before." Yesterday at 11:58pm Delete
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Darren Tepe Ive never heard it that way. You're right, it has to be getting warmer cause you said so... 12 hours ago Delete Joe Collins not because she said so, but because if you look at the long term trends, she's dead on right.
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April 12th, 2010 - The New York Times Magazine article on building a green economy focuses on the economics involved and how a cap and trade system 4/13/10 can lead to innovation and change. I 7:44 PM posted this story on my Facebook page and the following is the discussion that occurred. Started by a negative comment from my uncle. They frustrating part is I’m pretty sure only one other person actually read the article.
DISCUSS
While my example might not have convinced my uncle of anything, it was reassuring to see the response from people I know and some people from my “network” that I don’t know. The more positive information can be passed around and encouraged the greater chance for change.
Vitor Lopes Ribeiro The Earth is warmer because we are living in an Interglacial (read glacials, interglacials) period. It is a natural process of the planet to get warmer and colder in different times. The Earth had these cycles long before we got here and there is no way to determine if this time it is worse than last time. The same we had the Snowball Earth ( Earth was completely covered in snow) there were also periods were Snow was VERY hard to find. The change in temperature cannot be the argument for a bigger push towards environmentally friendly technology. If that was the case than we should all be fighting for injections of sulfur in the atmosphere (Geoengineering). The real problem is that we are damaging things that could be of use to us in the future. In order to raise cattle we destroy a forest. In order to produce a good we pollute a river. That is something that could be done more efficiently. Now, should the emission of certain gases (haha) be controlled? Of course, if we can find an alternative to something that is damaging to the environment than we should change our preferences. Another thing is that it is economically impossible to use up a nonrenewable resource because it becomes too expensive to use it at one point. The challenge should be... how do we find a balance (some degree of pollution is always necessary) and how do we make things more efficient than they are now. That should be an ongoing struggle not only because it improves our quality of life but also because it will result in great changes in the environment. 7 hours ago Delete Write a comment...
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DESIGNERS MUST BE LEADERS. LEADERS MUST BE DESIGNERS. Cradle-to-Cradle - William McDonough & Michael Braungart
DESIGN:
a creative activity whose aim is to establish the multi-faceted qualities of objects, processes, services and their systems in whole life-cycles C
This is where the designers will be most important. If as a profession we chose to take on the challenge. As Margolin puts it “If the will exists among designers, it will surely be possible to reinvent design. If it doesn’t, designers will simply remain part of the problem whose solution other professions will be to invent.” Designers have the ability to choose between good or bad, right or wrong. They must consider all the intentions, implications and results. The designer needs to shift focus on developing their empathy and depth. Their ability to think intuitively, recognize patterns, demonstrate ideas with emotional and functional meaning and express these ideas through a diverse media. The designer needs to generalize, be able to communicate across disciplines and know how to ask the right questions. Are we a profession or are we a business? Must be able to demonstrate to make the change from expansion to sustainability. Design needs to move away from the tangible Designer as demonstrator, planner, innovator, services Co-designer/Co-creator (user) - social innovation, ecological citizenship Profit Motivators- working within the framework client defines
DESIGN COMMUNITY: professional designers, design-related experts & design-related organizations considered a whole C
DESIGNING COMMUNITIES: emerging, interwoven networks of individual people, enterprises, nonprofit organizations, local & global institutions that are using their creativity & entrepreneurship to take some concrete steps towards sustainability C
ETHICS: the discipline concerned with what is orally good and bad, right and wrong C
SOLUTION: systems of tangible and intangible elements that, thanks to a specific action strategy, permits to a given result C
GOOD DESIGNERS POSSESS HONED SKILLS OF OBSERVATION, ANALYSIS, INVENTION, SHAPING OR GIVING FORM, AND COMMUNICATION. A PROBLEMATIQUE: problem statement, which could be changed and developed over time to incorporate new data. Similar to Brief. A
BRIEF: set of mental constraints that gives the project team a framework from which to begin, benchmarks by which they can measure progress, & a set of objectives to be realized - such as price point, available technology, & market segment. B
DESIGN(ERS) may be the most
have the ability
must go through a
must be
if
POWERFUL FULCRUM
TO CHOOSE
CRISIS OF WILL
EDUCATORS
GOOD
and then a
PROFESSIONALS
CRISIS OF IMAGINATION
PLANNERS
possess honed skills of
to move the ECONOMY and
GOOD RIGHT ETHICS of RESPONSIBILITY C
BAD WRONG
ETHICAL CHOICE
to
CULTURE
must consider
DISENGAGE
toward a
INTENTIONS IMPLICATIONS RESULTS
from the CONSUMER CULTURE
to get to
A
SUSTAINABLE WELL-BEING K
SUSTAINABILITY MODEL A
ACTORS SOCIAL AGENTS PROBLEM FINDERS
OBSERVATION ANALYSIS INVENTION
PROBLEM SOLVERS
SHAPING/GIVING FORM
T-SHAPED
COMMUNICATION
B
A requires
EMPATHY & DEPTH
45
LESS IS MORE
Design for Disassembly www.core77.com “Afrerlife: An Essential Guide to Design for Disassembly Alex Diener Design for Disassembly (DfD): a design strategy considering the future need for a product to be disassembled for repair, reuse or recycling to increase the effectiveness of a product during and after it’s life cycle. The designer is directly responsible for understanding the inherent waste contained within the products they design. By fully exploring and tracking the life of a product designed the designer can better understand the end-of-life outcomes and design for a better solution. This strategy directly relates to the Sustainability Model and doing more with less. A key part of Design for Disassembly includes minimizing the types of materials, fasteners, processes, and chemicals used. Less parts automatically leads to cost savings and minimizes the errors possible when products become less complicated to assemble.
ARTICLE
In reality this isn’t a new strategy, but as our technology increased so did the complexity of our products. Something as simple as a bag for chips can have over 9 layers of 7 different materials. When did this become necessary? While ‘Less is More’ was a movement in art and architecture during the 60’s and 70’s, it is certainly an important moto for the present and future of design. Key benefits include: Reduction of Labor Costs - easy to disassemble means it’s also easy to assemble. Reduction of Material Costs - simplification of amount of different materials Open New Markets - conscientious customers Systems Thinking - understanding the production cycle as a closed loop system
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DESIGN IS REALLY JUST APPLIED FORESIGHT... Natural Capitalism Creating the Next Industrial Revolution Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins
DESIGN THINKING:
inherently optimistic, constructive, and experiential - addresses the needs of the people who will consume a product or service and the infrastructure that enables it. B
Whole systems thinking. Moving away from products to designing solutions. Considering all the stakeholders and entire life cycle. Social innovation: enable people, educate, social responsibility, culture awareness, positive deviance, collaboration, transparency. Everyone is involved. Communication key.
CBSM H changing behavior person by person resistance commitments, prompts, norms, incentives, convenience
3P’s PEOPLE, PLANET, PROFIT.
F
EDUCATION, EQUITY, ECONOMY, ECOLOGY.
CREATIVE COMMUNITY: groups of people who cooperatively invent, enhance & manage innovation solutions for new ways of living C
HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN TOOLKIT: a methodology organizations can use to undertake the design thinking process themselves B
LOCAL RADICAL DISCONTINUITIES: systemic changes with regard to a given context, in the sense that they challenge traditional ways of doing and introduce a new set of different ones. C
...IT’S WHAT YOU DO NOW CAREFULLY & RESPONSIBLY TO ACHIEVE WHAT YOU WANT LATER.
POSITIVE DEVIANCE: looks for solutions among individuals & families in the community who are already doing well. B
PROMISING CASES: examples of initiatives where some people have reoriented their behaviour & expectations in a direction that appears to be coherent with the principles of sustainable development. Sim to Positive Deviance. C
SOCIAL INNOVATION: strategies, concepts, ideas & organizations that meet social needs of all kinds - from working conditions & education to community development & health - & that extend & strengthen civil society. B
RETHINKING DESIGN requires INTUITIVE THINKING PATTERN RECOGNITION IDEAS w/EMOTIONAL & FUNCTIONAL MEANING DIVERSE MEDIA EXPRESSION
looking to examples of POSITIVE DEVIANCE for relevant SOLUTIONS for a unique CULTURAL CONTEXT
SOCIAL INNOVATION B
DESIGN(ER)
should
4 steps
starts with a
CONNECT INTEGRATE
EXPAND LIFESPAN of PRODUCTS
the 4 DOMAINS
DEVELOP RELATIONSHIP Attachment & Care
2D Symbolic & Visual Communication
SHIFT from ACQUISITION to SERVICE
PROBLEMATIQUE problem statement brief must be able to CHANGE DEVELOP ADAPT and STOP maintaining the same OLD IDEAS F
3D Materials Objects Activities & Services
DECREASE CONSUMPTION/NEED of PRODUCTS
Systems & Environments
leads to
Richard Buchanan A
SUSTAINABILITY MODEL A
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CONFLICTING OBJECTIVES
Working Class Studio Working Class Studio - workingclassstudio.com “Working Class Studio is a product development venture of the Savannah College of Art and Design that cultivates and promotes the work of talented SCAD student, alumni and faculty artists. An innovative concept for an educational institution, Working Class Studio marries function with fine art to deliver a well curated, ever expanding mix of original stationery and home decor lines sold in retail stores across the United States and internationally.” A personal struggle I’m dealing with right now is being involved with Working Class Studio this quarter. I’m seeing first hand how much waste can be developed from something as simple as a pillow. My involvement has the ability to make me feel guilty and powerless. I would love to have an influence over their system but in one quarter I have little power to make any changes.
PERSONAL
Working Class Studios throws a lot of plastic away. The pillow shells come from China and India wrapped in plastic bags. They are taken out of these bags, stuffed with a pillow form and then individually repackaged in new plastic bags to be shipped out. The pillow forms come in a plastic bag inside a cardboard box. There has to be a better way. Another task I’ve had to do this quarter that amazed me involved re-tagging gift bags. A very large order of gift bags from their re-gift line came back with the template border printed on the hang-tags. This was essentially just a dashed line around the whole thing. Sure it wasn’t what the wanted, but it didn’t look horrible. We had to cut and remove all the hang-tags and reattach new hang-tags. An amazing amount of waste. On the days I did this task, I collected the plastic ties that were cut off. I’ve done a few experiments and plan to make an interesting necklace out of these pieces.
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Project One: Open-ended project selection. Four weeks. By utilizing reclaimed wood from Southern Pine Company I tried to create a product that was modern and fit into the Working Class family of products. However, in the end it turned out to be more complex than I truly intended. My original idea was to use just the wood and paint, burn or carve a design onto the face. However, through the critiques I was given the impression that was too “rustic� of an approach. At the final presentation another member of Working Class actually suggested this design option. I still have plans to try this approach and perhaps screen print a bright design onto the wood and use a simple clip to attach a photo or postcard. As the first project for Working Class Studio I tried to meld my interest of reclaimed materials with their goals of bold contemporary, yet practical and simple products. Unfortunately it wasn’t nearly as successful as I had hoped. I believe with just a little more design time the project can reach a better conclusion. If a product like this were to become a part of the Working Class Studio line, a larger audience could be reached and perhaps educated in the importance of material reuse.
Working Class Studio Project Two: Product for a Showtime series (Dexter) Three weeks. This project was for a television show called Dexter. I chose to work with waste plastic collected at Working Class. This connects to the show as the character Dexter will hold his victims down to a table with saran wrap before he kills them. While I was told the project didn’t relate closely enough to the show, I believe it turned out to be a successful project demonstrating the ability to use waste materials and there is a lot of plastic in this project.
PERSONAL
Unfortunately the frame was made from new plexiglas cut on the laser and superglued together. Ideally the frame would be made from some other found material, but due to time constraints I had to use a method I was already familiar with.
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A DRASTIC CHANGE IN CONSUMPTION PATTERNS IS REQUIRED. The Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design and Design Studies - Victor Margolin
SUSTAINABILITY MODEL:
the world is a system of ecological checks & balances consisting of finite resources. If elements of the system are damaged/thrown out of balance or if essential resources are depleted, the system will suffer severe damage & possible collapse. A Club of Rome, World Commission on Environment & Development A
So what’s the solution look like? The Sustainability Model is based on a system of checks and balances of finite resources. If elements of the system are damaged or thrown out of balance or if essential resources are depleted, the system will suffer severe damage and possible collapse. The biological and technical products must be designed in closed-loop cycles to obtain a cradle-to-cradle production cycle rather than the current cradle-to-grave cycle.
NOT SO MUCH HAVING A NEW IDEA AS STOPPING HAVING AN OLD IDEA F
SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION: a solution the result of which, and the strategy to get it, are coherent with the criteria of sustainability D
SUSTAINABILITY MODEL system of CHECKS & BALANCES
based on
of
ETHICS of RESPONSIBILITY
FINITE RESOURCES if DAMAGED or OUT of BALANCE the entire system will suffer SEVERE DAMAGE or POSSIBLE COLLAPSE
towards
requires a reigning in of
SUSTAINABLE WELL-BEING
CONSUMPTION
consuming fewer ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES
through RETHINKING of DESIGN
while improving
requires A RADICAL CHANGE
through
as argued by Ezio Manzini as a
such as
through a DRASTIC CHANGE in CONSUMPTION PATTERNS
Quality of Life Efficient use of Natural Resources Protecting Global Commons Managing Human Settlements
LIVING CONTEXTS
NEW RADICALISM
sustainable living divided into 6 themes
1 longer lasting products and develop a relationship of ATTACHMENT & CARE
Chemical Use Waste Management Foster Sustainable Economic Growth each theme has its own extensive list of tasks A
2 shift from acquisition to SERVICE & LEASE 3 engage with fewer objects through DECREASED CONSUMPTION Manzini A 59
WHAT IF WE ALL BIKED MORE
No Impact Man No Impact Man - www.noimpactdoc.com While the example of No Impact Man is to the extreme, he successfully provided a sense of awareness and proved it is possible to live with less. Even if you feel it was just a publicity stunt, it was a stunt that made many more people question their waste and lifestyle. “Colin Beavan decides to completely eliminate his personal impact on the environment for the next year.
MOVIE
It means eating vegetarian, buying only local food, and turning off the refrigerator. It also means no elevators, no television, no cars, busses, or airplanes, no toxic cleaning products, no electricity, no material consumption, and no garbage. No problem – at least for Colin – but he and his family live in Manhattan. So when his espresso-guzzling, retail-worshipping wife Michelle and their two-year-old daughter are dragged into the fray, the No Impact Project has an unforeseen impact of its own. Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein’s film provides an intriguing inside look into the experiment that became a national fascination and media sensation, while examining the familial strains and strengthened bonds that result from Colin and Michelle’s struggle with their radical lifestyle change.”
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ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE, SOCIALLY HEALTHY AND PLEASURABLE WAY TO LIVE. Design, Ethics and Sustainability. Guidelines for a transition phase. - Ezio Manzini
SUSTAINABLE WELL-BEING:
an ecologically sustainable, socially healthy and pleasurable way to live while being fully aware of environmental impacts one’s actions have C
WELL-BEING:
the state of being happy, healthy, or prosperous C
Designers must focus on promoting the shift to sustainable well-being from product based well-being. The tools of Community Based Social Marketing can be utilized to assist in changing behaviors. While there are examples of positive deviance and creative communities living sustainably, the current norms are based on consumption and materialism. This means developing enabling solutions that regenerate context qualities while being eco-efficient.
PEOPLE DO NOT RESIST CHANGE; THEY RESIST HAVING CHANGE IMPOSED ON THEM J
ENABLING SOLUTIONS: systems of tangible & intangible elements that enable individuals or communities to use their skills & abilities to best advantage and, at the same time, make a proposed solution more effective, more accessible & therefore more likely to spread. C
SUSTAINABLE WELL-BEING requires
solution must
needs
through
SUPPORT
REGENERATE CONTEXT QUALITIES
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES
ENABLING SOLUTIONS
&
of
BE ECO-EFFICIENT
INVOLVEMENT
from DESIGNERS
&
of the INDIVIDUAL & COLLECTIVE
FAIR DISTRIBUTION
of
&
WEALTH & POWER
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
by developing the RELATIONSHIP between TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEMS & WELL-BEING
relating to
enables people to live
PEOPLE & SOCIETY
AS THEY LIKE
relationship with
SUSTAINABLE WAY
NATURE & ENVIRONMENT
C
& in a
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WHAT WILL YOU GIVE UP
Graham Hill Graham Hill: Why I’m a Weekday Vegetarian “We all know the arguments that being vegetarian is better for the environment and for the animals -- but in a carnivorous culture, it can be hard to make the change. Graham Hill has a powerful, pragmatic suggestion: Be a weekday veg.” Graham Hill presents the true costs of that hamburger you might of had for lunch. Animals treated cruelly, more emissions than all transportation combined and up to 100 times the amount of water required for vegetables.
TED TALK
While these are obvious reasons not to eat meat most of us have grown up eating some amount of meat at least once a day and for many Americans as much as three times a day. Making the shift to a vegetarian lifestyle is difficult if not near impossible. Graham Hill completely understands that and instead encourages everyone to think about the amount of meat being consumed and decidedly cutting that amount down. His suggestion is only eat meat on the weekends and I know for many people even that would be difficult. The point is to be aware of what and how much you are consuming and ask yourself if you can make a change. Even a small change can make a difference.
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WE MUST LOOK AT THINGS AS SYSTEMS, WITH PROPERTIES AND STRUCTURES OF THEIR OWN. T h e S y s t e m s Vi e w o f t h e Wo r l d - E r v i n Laszlo
ATOMISTIC VIEW:
the study of fragments in isolation and their affect on one other thing D
Not only do we need to make changes to the world of design and consumption, the world of scientific thought has equally allowed itself to fall into a bubble of disconnect and isolation. Solving single problems in isolation without understanding their full implications.
SYSTEMS VIEW:
the study of many things and their affect on many other things D
Specialization of skills. Positives and Negatives. Making sure to see the connections and know when to reach out and ask for help and knowing the right questions to ask. Looking for the big picture. “specialization in generalization” Divergent to convergent thinking Buchannan’s doctrine of placements. The liberal arts have become specialized. The next liberal arts - design. Transcending the details by understanding the general.
EUROCENTRIC: considering Europe and Europeans as focal to world culture, history, economics, etc. D
ANTHROPOCENTRIC: regarding the human being as the central fact of the universe D
SCIENCES OF ORGANIZED COMPLEXITY. D
HUMAN MIND several similar forms
ATOMISTIC VIEW study of FRAGMENTS
TEAM within a CLOSED BUBBLE of
in ISOLATION
has a LIMITED CAPACITY of STORING & PROCESSING
several different forms TEAM with IDEAL SHARING of
and the affect on
MANY OTHER THINGS
cannot be reduced to
requires FLEXIBLE METHOD
ATOMISTIC
ANTHROPOCENTRIC STRUGGLE for SURVIVAL / PROFIT of the INDIVIDUAL
MIND-BODY SEPARATION
MANY THINGS
organized complexity
ONE OTHER THING
EUROCENTRIC
study of
and the affect on
INFORMATION cannot explain
SYSTEMS VIEW
GIANT MACHINE with REPLACEABLE PARTS SEPARATE ELEMENTS DISTINCT & MEASURABLE COMPETE-TO-WIN SOCIOECONOMIC PROGRESS
VIEWS the WORLD AS: we need to SHIFT our energy towards a HEALTHY VIEW URGENT through RETHINKING of DESIGN
SYSTEMS
ORGANISM with IRREPLACEABLE ELEMENTS INTEGRATED ELEMENTS
DIVERSITY of CULTURES & SOCIETIES ORGANIC
UNPREDICTABLE ENERGY FLOWS & INTERACTS
COOPERATION DIVERSITY EXPERIMENTATION ADAPTATION & HARMONY
INFORMATION SHARING
MIND-BODY WHOLE
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 71
WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE EATING
Food, Inc. Food, Inc. - www.foodincmovie.com The movie Food, Inc. highlights the affect science, technology and economics has had on our agriculture and food production. The problems that have arisen due to not looking at the big picture, such as more and more food infected with the e. coli bacteria due to modern agriculture practices. “In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.
MOVIE
Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.”
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ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY, ECOLOGICAL CONSERVATION & SOCIAL EQUITY. Natural Capitalism Creating the Next Industrial Revolution Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins
THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: the emerging transformation of human industry from a system that takes, makes, and wastes to one that celebrates natural, economic, and cultural abundance. E
But there is hope and change is possible.
ONE OF THE KEYS TO LEAN THINKING IS SIMPLIFICATION F
CRADLE-TO-CRADLE: product design based on a closed loop, continuous cycle E
LEAN THINKING: the continuous flow of value, as defined by the customer, at the pull of the customer, in search of perfection (which is in the end the eliminatoin of Muda) F
THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION will utilize a rich
will utilize
reduces the use of
FEEDBACK SYSTEM
requires
LEAN THINKING
reduces
SUBSTANCES
SIMPLIFICATION
WASTE
that
to allow
F
a method that has four interlinked elements:
at the
NATURE
FIRM LEVEL
would not
and of the
RECOGNIZE
WHOLE SOCIETY
K
CHANGES in one component to REVERBERATE through the WHOLE COMMUNITY allowing for ADAPTATION K
the CONTINUOUS FLOW of VALUE as DEFINED by the CUSTOMER at the PULL of the CUSTOMER
F
in search of PERFECTION (elimination of MUDA) AKA: nothing is PRODUCED until SOMEONE REQUESTS IT F
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CLOSING THE LOOP
Dan Barber Dan Barber: How I fell in love with a fish An example of the Next Industrial Revolution’s possibility can be witnessed first hand through a fish farm in southern Spain. A true example of a closed loop waste equals food cycle. No food is provided to the fish, especially not the chicken pellets many fish farms are known to use, the environment feeds the fish and the fish feed the birds and yet there is still enough fish for controlled harvesting. An eco-system as it should be, as all eco-systems used to be, before the norms dictated more, faster and efficient. Let’s work towards returning the balance and achieving the next industrial revolution.
TED TALK
“Chef Dan Barber squares off with a dilemma facing many chefs today: how to keep fish on the menu. With impeccable research and deadpan humor, he chronicles his pursuit of a sustainable fish he could love, and the foodie’s honeymoon he’s enjoyed since discovering an outrageously delicious fish raised using a revolutionary farming method in Spain.”
79
80
APPENDIX KEY TERMS / VOCABULARY
81
Aftermarket Ancient Sunlight Anthropocentric Atomistic View Autopoeisis
the market for parts and accessories used in the repair or enhancement of a product oil, coal and natural gas regarding the human being as the central fact of the universe. the study of fragments in isolation and their affect on one other thing A living organism is understood as a circular, autocatalytic-like process which has its own survival as its main goal. The phenomenon of self-organization is sometimes seen as an autopoeitic phenomenon. This theory with its emphasis on the closure of the living organism has been an appropriate remedy for the overemphasis on openness in open systems theory Bifurcation Point when the flow of energy increases, the system may encounter a point of instability at which it can branch off into an entirely new state where new structures & new forms of order may emerge Biosphere the layer of air, land and water that supports life Brief a set of mental constraints that gives the project team a framework from which to begin, benchmarks by which they can measure progress, and a set of objectives to be realized such as price point, available technology, and market segment. Cap and Trade an environmental policy tool that delivers results with a mandatory cap on emissions while providing sources flexibility in how they comply. Successful cap and trade programs reward innovation, efficiency, and early action and provide strict environmental accountability without inhibiting economic growth. Capability the possibility of a person to achieve a result using his/her own personal resources and the set of solutions he/she has access to Capital accumulated wealth in the form of investments, factories, and equipment Community of Practice characterized by three features: mutual engagement of its members, a joint enterprise, and over time, a shared repertoire of routines, tacit rules of conduct, and knowledge. Conspicuous the lavish spending on goods and services acquired mainly for the purpose of displaying Consumption income or wealth, such display serves as a means of attaining or maintaining social status.
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Consumption the using up of goods and services by consumer purchasing or in the production of other goods. Cottage Industry any small-scale, loosely organized industry Cradle-to-Cradle product design based on a closed loop, continuous cycle Cradle-to-Grave product design based on a linear, one-way system
4 K D D
merriam-webster dictionary.com
encyclopedia of science
class lecture K B
4
epa.gov
C F J A
wikipedia.com
A
dictionary.com
E E E
dictionary.com
KEY TERMS /VOCABULARY Creative Community groups of people who cooperatively invent, enhance and manage innovation solutions for new ways of living Current Sunlight solar, wind, tidal and biodiesel Dematerialization doing more with less materials Design a creative activity whose aim is to establish the multi-faceted qualities of objects, processes, services and their systems in whole life-cycles Design Community professional designers, design-related experts and design-related organisations considered as a whole Design Thinking inherently optimistic, constructive, and experiential - addresses the needs of the people who will consume a product or service and the infrastructure that enables it. Designing Communities the emerging, interwoven networks of individual people, enterprises, non-profit organizations, local and global institutions that are using their creativity and entrepreneurship to take some concrete steps towards sustainability Disabling Solutions systems of products and services that, seek to reduce user involvement and sequester formerly widespread knowledge and skills to integrate them into technical devices Dissipative Structure an open system that maintains itself in a state far from equilibrium, yet is nevertheless stable: the same overall structure is maintained in spite of an ongoing flow & change of components Eco-efficient based on the concept of creating more goods and services while using fewer resources and creating less waste and pollution Economics a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services Efficient productive of desired effects Enabling Solutions systems of tangible and intangible elements that enable individuals or communities to use their skills and abilities to best advantage and, at the same time, make a proposed solution more effective, more accessible and therefore more likely to spread Entropy A measure of the disorder of a system. Systems tend to go from a state of order (low entropy) to a state of maximum disorder (high entropy). Environmental undertakes theoretical or empirical studies of the economic effects of national or local Economics environmental policies around the world such as the costs and benefits of alternative environmental policies to deal with air pollution, water quality, toxic substances, solid waste, and global warming Ethics the discipline concerned with what is orally good and bad, right and wrong
C K C C B C C class lecture C
wikipedia.com
4
merriam-webster
4
merriam-webster
C
4 C
nber.com
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Eurocentric considering Europe and Europeans as focal to world culture, history, economics, etc Expansion Model the world consists of markets in which products function first and foremost as tokens of economic exchange. Financial Capital consisting of cash, investments and monetary instruments Forced Obsolescence products designed to last only for a certain period of time to encourage the customer to get rid of the product and buy a new model Forms of Waste (Muda) mistakes which require rectification, production of items no one wants so that inventories and remaindered goods pile up, processing steps which aren't actually needed, movements of employees and transport of goods from one place to another without any purpose, groups of people in a downstream activity standing around waiting because an upstream activity had not delivered on time, and goods and services which don't meet the needs of the customer Free Markets an economic market operating by free competition Globalization the term used to summarize the extraordinary changes and the seemingly irresistible momentum felt by millions of people Human Capital in the form of labor and intelligence, culture and organization Human Centered a methodology organizations can use to undertake the design thinking process themselves Design Toolkit Industrial Revolution a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transport had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions. a major turning point in human history; almost every aspect of daily life was eventually influenced in some way. Information Technology the resut of a complex dynamic of technological and human interactions, which produced Revolution synergistic effects in three major areas of electronics (computers, microelectronics, telecommunications Lean Thinking the continuous flow of value, as defined by the customer, at the pull of the customer, in search of perfection (which is in the end the eliminatoin of Muda) Living Social Systems self-generating networks of communications Living Systems open self-organizing systems with special characteristics of life & interact with their environment through information & material-energy exchanges. Local Radical systemic changes with regard to a given context, in the sense that they challenge Discontinuities traditional ways of doing and introduce a new set of different ones. Management steering an organization in a direction consistent with its goals and purposes
D
dictionary.com
A F E
F
4
merriam-webster
J F B wikipedia.com
J F J F C J
wikipedia.com
KEY TERMS /VOCABULARY Manufactured Capital including infrastructure, machines, tools and factories Materialism encourages bad behavior and discourages positive behavior, a doctrine that the only or the highest values or objectives lie in material well-being and in the furtherance of material progress Mindware assets that, unlike physical ones, don't depreciate but, rather, ripen with age and experience Muda waste, futility, ouroiselessness Natural Capital includes all the familiar resources used by humankind (water, minerals, oil, trees, fish, soil, air, etc.) but it also encompasses living systems (grasslands, savannas, wetlands, estuaries, oceans, coral reefs, riparian corridors, tundras, rainforests) Negative Externalities costs that economic actors impose on others without paying a price for their actions Network Society a new social structure of organization of human activity New Radicalism Manzini's argument that the redesign of existing products was insufficient and that a drastic change in sonsumption patterns was required. Proposed 3 scenarios. Nonrenewables oil, gas, coal, metals and minerals Paradigm Shift a fundamental change in approach or assumptions Positive Deviance looks for solutions among individuals and families in the community who are already doing well. Problematique problem statement, which could be changed and developed over time to incorporate new data. Similar to Brief. Product-based Well- based solely on the belief that products that promise reduced fatigue, more free time, and being the opportunity for individual choice can provide well-being Promising Cases examples of initiatives where, in different ways and for different motivations, some people have reoriented their behaviour and their expectations in a direction that appears to be coherent with the principles of sustainable development. Similar to Positive Deviance. Radical Monopoly a term from Ivan Illich for a system that leaves people no choice but to use it Social Innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social needs of all kinds - from working conditions and education to community development and health - and that extend and strengthen civil society. Solution systems of tangible and intangible elements that, thanks to a specific action strategy, permits to a given result
F merriam-webster F F F 4 J A K E
dictionary.com
B A C C A B
wikipedia.com
C
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Sustainability Model the world is a system of ecological checks and balances that consists of finite resources. If the elements of this system are damaged or thrown out of balance or if essential resources are depleted, the system will suffer severe damage and will possibly collapse. Sustainable Solution a solution the result of which, and the strategy to get it, are coherent with the criteria of sustainability Sustainable Well-Being an ecologically sustainable, socially healthy and pleasurable way to live while being fully aware of environmental impacts one's actions have Systems View the study of many things and their affect on many other things the Next Industrial the emerging transformation of human industry from a system that takes, makes, and Revolution wastes to one that celebrates natural, economic, and cultural abundance. Waste any human activity which absorbs resources but creates no value; every measurable input that does not create customer value, every input has to be presumed waste until shown otherwise Well-Being the state of being happy, healthy, or prosperous Wicked Problems a class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing.
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A C C D E F C A
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KEY TERMS /VOCABULARY
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APPENDIX QUOTES / NOTES
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Industrial Revolution / Expansion Model “According to this model, the world consists of markets in which products function first and foremost as tokens of economic exchange.” p. 82 A “Those who operate according to the expansion model believe that product development and innovation are the engines that drive global economy.” p. 83 A “dominated by a belief in the power of technological innovation to enhance human experience, a relation predicated on the claim that the satisfaction materials goods can provide is without limits. Furthermore, materialism has become so integral to notions of happiness that product development is now almost inextricably bound to the striving for human betterment.” p. 84 A “wasteful and unnecessary versions of existing ones [products]” p. 84 A “the creation of markets for new products where none had previously existed.” p. 84 A
“The so-called ‘global market’ is not a market at all but a network of machines programmed according to a single value – money-making for the sake of making money – to the exclusion of all other values.” J “The central enterprise of current economic theory and practice – the striving for continuing, undifferentiated economic growth – is clearly unsustainable, since unlimited expansion on a finite planet can only lead to catastrophe.” J “the new economy has significantly increased our harmful impact on the biosphere.” J “competitiveness in the global economy is so extreme that environmental regulations are eliminated rather than strengthened in order to lower the costs of industrial production.” J “networking has emerged as a critical form of organization in all sections of society.” J
“stimulate user expectations in order to create new product demands.” p. 85 A
“the current form of global capitalism is ecologically and socially unsustainable, and hence not viable in the long run.” J
“Since design’s beginning, when it was conceived as an art of giving form to products for mass production, it has been firmly embedded in consumer culture.” p. 93 A
“nearly all environmental and social harm is an artifact of the uneconomically wasteful use of human and natural resources.” F
“In today’s economy, our definition of success is rapid growth – if you grow faster than your competitor, you win. In tomorrow’s world, winning will mean being more competitive, doing more with less, and being more efficient than your competitor.” K
“The waste and the noise are signs of inefficiency, and they represent money being thrown away.” F
“Economies are like ecosystems, both systems take in energy and materials and transform them into products. The problem is that our economy performs a linear transformation whereas nature’s is cyclic.” K “when biceps and back muscles ran the shovels, our rate of destruction more closely matched nature’s rate of renewal. It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution put us on the winning side of a very large lever that we began vaulting past nature.” K “Because the economy put no price tag on resource draw downs or on pollution, it gave no incentive to extract sustainably, process cleanly, or optimize use.” K “The way we’ve been operating is illogical from a sustainability point of view.” K “According to classical economic theory, the key sources of wealth are natural resources (land in particular), capital and labor.” J “Productivity essentially stems from innovation, competitiveness from flexibility… Information technology, and the cultural capacity to use it, are essential [for both].” J
“the new network economy has profoundly transformed the social relationships between capital and labor.” J “Capital is global, while labor, as a rule, is local.” J “resources move from the poor to the rich, and pollution moves from the rich to the poor.” J “environmental destruction is not only a side effect, but is also an integral part, of the design of global capitalism.” J “the concept of power is not appropriate, because non-human species do not force individuals to act in accordance with preconceived goals.” J “the social, cultural, and political rejection by large numbers of people around the world of an Automaton whose logic either ignores or devalues their humanity. As we shall see, this rejection may already have begun.” J “people have become an abundant resource, while nature is becoming disturbingly scarce.” F “The atmosphere is not ‘free’ when there are 6 billion other people who have to share it in the near term, and untold generations after them.” F
Wicked Problems “Perhaps the most obvious sign that we need better methods of designing and planning is the existence, in industrial countries, of massive unsolved problems that have been created by the use of man-made things. e.g., traffic congestion, parking problems, road accidents, airport congestion, airport noise, urban decay and chronic shortages of such services as medical treatment, mass education and crime detection.” p. 80 A
“One gets the impression that design has drawn apart to simply keep watch while the world grapples with numerous serious problems including the environment, welfare, natural disasters and traffic. .. In order to make a commitment to the main flow of the times and succeed in playing an important role, it appears that the necessity has arisen for design to redefine its purposes and devise a new organizational structure for itself.” p. 97 A
“The upheaval in design is a response to a world situation that itself is in turmoil.” p. 80 A
“pollution was not the root cause of our environmental crisis; fantasy was.” K
“the Club of Rome undertook an exceptionally ambitious project ‘to examine the complex of problems troubling men of all nations: poverty in the midst of plenty; degradation of the environment; loss of faith in institutions; uncontrolled urban spread; insecurity of employment; alienation of youth; rejection of traditional values; and inflation and other monetary and economic disruptions.’ The premise for approaching this project was to view the world as a system and analyze it as a whole.” p. 81 A “This is evident in the widening gaps between rich and poor in both global and local terms, the development of an information infrastructure that privileges some and excludes others, and an array of precarious environmental situations that are beginning to permanently damage the planet.” p. 83 A
“technologies that produce byproducts society cannot absorb are essentially failed technologies.” K “We haven’t been including costs to the Earth or to future generations in our accounting.” K “companies may look powerful from outside, but they themselves feel pushed around by global market forces and insecure in the face of turbulence hey can neither predict nor fully comprehend.” J “people do not resist change; they resist having change imposed on them.” J “the whole world is organized around a largely common set of economic rules.” J
“In seeking a normative approach to future world development at this moment of turbulence and change, it is vital to discover whether the present levels of material prosperity in the rich industrialized countries are compatible with global sustainability or, better perhaps, whether a world economy driven by stimulated consumer demand can continue for long.” p. 83 A
“The stakes are simply too high to let speculative capital and currency swings determine the fate of the real economy.” J
“the solution to this problem is in new forms of democratic citizenship, which are particularly difficult to institute if they clash too severely with notions of happiness held by the majority of citizens. So long as the costs and benefits of projects are not measured against what is needed to address the global economic and environmental problems that continue to plague us, they will continue to gain support from manufactures eager to create new product and markets at all costs and from politicians who see in such projects the opportunity to bring jobs to their districts.” p. 86 A
“the idea of wellbeing that we contributed to promote and diffuse worldwide has had catastrophic consequences.” C
“industrial design has put murder on a mass-production basis. By designing criminally unsafe automobiles that kill or maim nearly one million people around the world each year, by creating whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that pollute the air we breath, designers have become a dangerous breed.” p. 93 A “As it stands now, durables manufacturers have a love-hate relationship with durability. But when they become service providers, their long- and short-term incentives become perfectly attuned to what customers want, the environment deserves, labor needs, and the economy can support.” F
QUOTES /NOTES
“People now know the price of everything but the true cost of nothing. Price is what the person pays. Cost is what society pays, here, now, elsewhere, and into the future.” F
“too ready to assume that changing people’s financial incentives fixes every problem.” 4 “There is also reason to doubt the assumption that people actually make the right choices: many studies have found that consumers fail to take measures to conserve energy, like improving insulation, even when they could save money by doing so.” 4 “Emissions limits in America won’t accomplish much if China and others don’t match our effort.” 4 “emerging economies feel that they have a right to emit freely without worrying about the consequences” 4 “Keeping world markets open is important, but avoiding planetary catastrophe is a lot more important.” 4
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Wicked Solutions “There are three reasons for greening up your act: It’s the right thing to do. It’s the competitive thing to do, and you’ll go to jail if you don’t.” K “One way or another, corporate American and consuming America are starting to get the picture.” K “The natural environment is a brilliantly ingenious and adaptive system, but there are undoubtedly limits to its ability to absorb vastly increased flows of even naturally abundant chemicals and remain the friendly place we call home.” K “To me it doesn’t really matter why industry wants to change its colors. The important point, though it’s not always public knowledge, is that many companies do want to change.” K “The closed-loop dream of industrial ecology won’t be complete until all products that are sent out into the world are folded back into the system.” K “The more pathways we have for feeding off each other in the industrial ecosystem, the more loops will be closed and the less waste will be lost from the system.” K “We need to establish feedback links among and within businesses, as well as feedback from the environment to business.” K “that means having products’ prices truly reflect costs to the Earth and to future generations.” K
“Understanding human organizations in terms of living systems, i.e. in terms of complex nonlinear networks, is likely to lead to new insights into the nature of complexity, and thus help us deal with the complexities of today’s business environment.” J “creation of knowledge in social networks is a key characteristic of the dynamics of culture.” J “explicit knowledge can be communicated and documented through language, tacit knowledge is acquired through experience and often remains intangible.” J “Knowledge [is not] the asset or capital. People are.” J “Natural capitalism provides a practical agenda for development wherein the actions of both developed and developing nations are mutually supportive.” F “The minimization of materials use, the maximization of product durability, and enhanced ease of maintenance not only improve the customer’s experience and value but also protect the manufacturer’s investment and hence its bottom line.” F “Tunneling through the cost barrier requires not a change in what we know but a shift of what we already know into new patterns – patterns that can lead to innovations as rich and diverse as the Hypercar, the superefficient passive building, the New Urbanist neighborhood.” F “requires a change of design mentality. Once that change happens, it tends to be irreversible.” F “’think backwards,’ from downstream to upstream in a system.” F
“Instead of taxing good things like income, Paul Hawken would like to see government tax bad things like pollution or excessive use of energy or virgin materials.” K
“Using less material means there is less to go wrong, less work involved, less cost, and better performance.” F
“industrial ecology has the capacity to change not only the way we make things but the way the world works.” K
“To hell with your competitors; compete against perfection by identifying all activities that are muda and eliminating them.” F
“our economy is fertile ground for making the inside-out changes that need to occur if we are going to mesh gears with the Earth and manage a soft landing.” K
“they should not (try to) impose their ideas of what they think should be done, but they should actively and positively participate in the social processes where these new and promising ideas are emerging.” C
“to have an adequate grasp of reality we must look at things as systems, with properties and structures of their own.” D “our complex industrial systems are the main driving force of global environmental destruction, and the main threat to the long-term survival of humanity. To build a sustainable society for our children and future generations, we need to fundamentally redesign many of our technologies and social institutions so as to bridge the wide gap between human design and the ecologically sustainable systems of nature.” J “shift their priorities, from managing companies to optimize capital to managing companies to optimize people.” J
“economic activities that impose unrequited costs on other people should not always be banned, but they should be discouraged. And the right way to curb an activity, in most cases, is to put a price on it.” 4 “we should have policies to discourage activities that generate negative externalities and that it is generally best to rely on a market-based approach.” 4 “The results, it would seem, demonstrated that we can deal with environmental problems when we have to.” 4
Rethinking Design / Designers “design ‘is an attitude which everyone should have; namely the attitude of the planner ... This is planning, organizing, designing.’” p. 79 A
“Traditionally, designers focused their attention on improving the look and functionality of products.” p. 32 B
“they will be ‘more and more concerned with exploring the role of design in sustaining, developing, and integrating human beings into broader ecological and cultural environments, shaping these environments when desirable and possible or adapting to them when necessary.’ This does not mean abandoning product design. It means connecting it to a larger situation of production and use.” p. 80 A
“positive deviance and design thinking relies on local expertise to uncover local solutions. Design thinkers look for work-arounds and improvise solutions and they find ways to incorporate those into the offerings they create. They consider what we call the edges, the places where ‘extreme’ people live differently, think differently, and consume differently.” p. 32 B
“Hans Kung calls for an ‘ethics of responsibility’ that is oriented to the consequences of decisions and actions as they are manifest in concrete situations. ... Without a dispositional ethics, the ethics of responsibility would decline into an ethics of success regardless of disposition, for which the end justifies the means. Without an ethics of responsibility, dispositional ethics would decline into the fostering of self-righteous inwardness.” p. 87 A
“Both positive deviance and design thinking are human-centered approaches. Their solutions are relevant to a unique cultural context and will not necessarily work outside that specific situation.” p. 32 B
“Good designers possess honed skills of observation, analysis, invention, shaping or giving form, and communication.” p. 88 A “Designers have not been able to imagine a professional practice outside mainstream consumer culture.” p.96 A “what design can and must do is the proposal of a new life image and lifestyle that is compatible with the environment in daily life, home life, global life and life in the workplace.” p. 97 A “aimed at reforming consumer culture rather than at contributing to a new vision of professional practice. Design must disengage itself from consumer culture as the primary shaper of its identity and find a terrain where it can begin to rethink its role in the world.” p. 99 A “Designers have the ability to envision and give form to material and immaterial products that can address human problems on a broad scale and contribute to social well-being.” p. 101 A “Designers must rethink their practice both individually and collectively in order to find ways of engaging with the massive problems that confront humankind.” p. 102 A
QUOTES /NOTES
“Design thinking relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, to construct ideas that have emotional meaning as well as being functional, and to express ourselves in media other than words or symbols.” p. 33 B “designing may be the most powerful fulcrum from which we can move the economy and the culture toward a more sustainable place.” K “the design of sustainable products may actually precede the sustainability revolution and help bring it into being.” K “Design requires the ability to form mental images, and since this ability, as far as we know, is limited to humans and the other great apes, there is no design in nature at large.” J “Design structures provide stability.” J “Facilitating emergence means facilitating creativity.” J “design is really just applied foresight. It’s what you do now carefully and responsibly to achieve what you want later.” F “Don’t study it, just do it, keep trying. If you’ve fixed it, fix it again.” F “not so much having a new idea as stopping having an old idea.” F
“If the will exists among designers, it will surely be possible to reinvent design. If it doesn’t, designers will simply remain part of the problem whose solution other professions will be to invent.” p. 102 A “social challenges require systemic solutions that are grounded in the client’s or customer’s needs and have never been prototyped to solicit feedback.” p. 32 B
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Sustainability Model “The premise of this model is that the world is a system of ecological checks and balances that consists of finite resources. If the elements of this system are damaged or thrown out of balance or if essential resources are depleted, the system will suffer severe damage and will possible collapse.” p. 82 A “the inability of this model to accommodate the dynamic growth of production and trade that is driving the development of an emerging global economy has caused many in the business community as well as large segments of the public in industrialized countries to either pay lip service to it or ignore it altogether.” p. 82 A “The sustainability model is the more sensible of the two, but it requires a reigning in of consumption that poses a direct challenge to the expansion model.” p. 83 A “a drastic change in consumption patterns was required.” 3 consumption scenarios p. 83 A “an emergent culture of sustainability. Individuals and groups around the world now have a set of principles to work with a basis on which to develop strategies for change that might be effective despite the powerful grip that the expansion model still has on world economics and trade policies.” p. 96 A “The challenge of creating a sustainable world has moved from the realm of idealism to that of necessity. The understanding of sustainability as an essential value will result from a coming to consciousness in the field of design similar to that which many social groups have gone through since the mid-1960s.” p.98 A “Achieving a sustainable standard of living for all people requires a bold new approach - an environmentally responsible global approach to confront these problems. ... Greater efficiency in the use of the Earth’s limited resources, minimization of waste and fundamental changes in production processes are some methods that can be employed.” p. 101 A
Living Systems / The Next Industrial Revolution “the best tools are those that nature has already invented.” K “industrial ecology will conduct business the way a sun-soaked hickory forest recycles its leaves.” K “we should try, wherever possible, to work only with substances that nature would recognize and be able to assimilate.” K “This is what’s so amazing to me. In the most unlikely and promising cross-ferilization of our time, the Birkenstocks are teaching the suits.” K “the natural world is full of models for a more sustainable economic system… These mature ecosystems do everything we want to do.” K
“resilient, long-lived companies are those that exhibit the behavior and certain characteristics of living entities. … One is a strong sense of community and collective identity around a set of common values; a community in which all members know that they will be supported in their endeavors to achieve their own goals. The other set of characteristics is openness to the outside world, tolerance for the entry of new individuals and ideas, and consequently a manifest ability to learn and adapt to new circumstances.” J “Living social systems are self-generating networks of communications.” J “A machine can be controlled; a living system, according to the systemic understanding of life, can only be disturbed.” J “Living systems always choose what to notice and how to respond.” J
“life creating conditions conducive to life.” K
“The initial openness to disturbances from the environment is a basic property of all life.” J
“life does more than simply keep its nest clean; it actually creates the conditions necessary for life.” K
“Throughout the living world, the creativity of life expresses itself through the process of emergence. The structures that are created in this process – the biological structures of living organisms as well as social structures in human communities – may appropriately be called ‘emergent structures.’ Before the evolution of humans, all living structures on the planet were emergent structures.” J
“All waste is food, and everybody winds up reincarnated inside somebody else. The only thing the community imports in any appreciable amount is energy in the form of sunlight, and the only thing it exports is the byproduct of its energy use, heat.” K “The pyramid of life is quite literally an energy distribution chart, a record of the sun’s movement through the system.” K “those who overuse or squander energy are eventually edited out of the gene pool.” K “Organisms build for durability, but they don’t overbuild. They fit form to function, building exactly what is needed, with the bare minimum of materials and fuss.” K “A rich feedback system allows changes in one component of the community to reverberate through the whole, allowing for adaptation when the environment changes.” K “The idea of an economy that suits the land and takes advantage of its local attributes would bring us closer to mirroring organisms that have evolved to be local experts.” K “living systems continually create, or re-create, themselves by transforming or replacing their components. They undergo continual structural changes while preserving their weblike patterns of organization. Understanding life means understanding its inherent change processes.” J
QUOTES /NOTES
“Emergent structures provide novelty, creativity, and flexibility. They are adaptive, capable of changing and evolving.” J “The new economy consists of a global metanetwork of complex technological and human interactions, involving multiple feedback loops operating far from equilibrium, which produce a never-ending variety of emergent phenomena. Its creativity, adaptability, and cognitive capabilities are certainly reminiscent of living networks, but it does not display the stability that is also a key property of life.” J “human beings cannot be directed but can only be disturbed. As we have seen, choosing what to notice and how to respond is the very essence of being alive.” J “In an economy of service and flow, an entire company may end up owning little or nothing but accomplishing more, while being located nowhere to sell everywhere.” F “Linear must go; cyclical must replace it. That’s natures’ way. In nature, there is no waste; one organism’s waste is another’s food.” F
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APPENDIX ADDITIONAL REFERENCES
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For me, this story begins about 15 years ago, when I was a hospice doctor at the University of Chicago. And I was taking care of people who were dying, and their families, in the South Side of Chicago. And I was observing what happened to people and their families over the course of their terminal illness. And in my lab, I was studying the widower effect, which is a very old idea in the social sciences, going back 150 years, known as “dying of a broken heart.” So, when I die, my wife’s risk of death can double, for instance, in the first year. And I had gone to take care of one particular patient, a woman who was dying of dementia. And, in this case, unlike this couple, she was being cared for by her daughter. And the daughter was exhausted from caring for her mother. And the daughter’s husband, he also was sick from his wife’s exhaustion. And I was driving home one day, and I get a phone call from the husband’s friend, calling me because he was depressed about what was happening to his friend. So here I get this call from this random guy that’s having an experience, that’s being influenced by people at some social distance. And so I suddenly realized two very simple things. First, the widowhood effect was not restricted to husbands and wives. And second, it was not restricted to pairs of people. And I started to see the world in a whole new way, like pairs of people connected to each other. And then I that these individuals would be connected into foursomes with other pairs of people nearby. And then, in fact, these people were embedded in other sorts of relationships, marriage and spousal and friendship and other sorts of ties. And that, in fact, these connections were vast, and that we were all embedded in this broad set of connections with each other. So I started to see the world in a completely new way, and I became obsessed with this. I became obsessed with how it might be that we’re embedded in these social networks, and how they effect our lives. So, social networks are these intricate things of beauty, and they’re so elaborate and so complex and so ubiquitous, in fact, that one has to ask what purpose they serve. Why are we embedded in social networks? I mean, how do they form? How do they operate? And how do they effect us? And so my first topic, with respect to this, was not death, but obesity. And suddenly, it had become trendy to speak about the obesity epidemic. And, along with my collaborator, James Fowler, we began to wonder whether obesity really was epidemic, and could it spread from person to person like the four people I discussed earlier. So this is a slide of some of our initial results. It’s 2,200 people in the year 2000. Every dot is a person. We make the dot size proportional to people’s body size. So bigger dots are bigger people. So, in addition, if your body size, if your BMI, your body mass index is above 30, if you’re clinically obese, we also colored the dots yellow. So, if you look at this image right away, you might be able to see that there are clusters of obese and non-obese people in the image. But the visual complexity is still very high. It’s not obvious exactly what’s going on. In addition, some questions are immediately raised. How much clustering is there? Is there more clustering than would be due to chance alone? How big are the clusters? How far do they reach? And, most importantly, what causes the clusters? So we did some mathematics to study the size of these clusters. This here shows, on the Y-axis, the increase in the probability that a person is obese, given that a social contact of theirs is obese. And on the X-axis, the degrees of separation between the two people. And on the far left, you see the purple line. It says that, if your friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 45 percent higher. And the next bar over, the orange line, says that, if your friend’s friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 25 percent higher. And then the next line over says that, if your friend’s friend’s friend, someone you probably don’t even know, is obese, your risk of obesity is 10 percent higher. And it’s only when you get to your friend’s friend’s friend’s friends, that there’s no longer a relationship between that person’s body size and your own body size. Well, what might be causing this clustering? There are at least three possibilities. One, possibility is that, as I gain weight, it causes you to gain weight, a kind of induction, a kind of spread for person to person. Another possibility, very obvious, is homophily, or birds of a feather flock together. Here, I form my tie to you because you and I share a similar body size. And the last possibility’s what as know as confounding, because it confounds our ability to figure out what’s going
on. And here, the idea is not that my weight gain is causing your weight gain, nor that I preferentially form tie with you because you and I share the same body size, but rather that we share a common exposure to something like a health club that makes us both lose weight at the same time. And when we studied these data, we found evidence for all of these things, including for induction. And we found that, if your friend becomes obese, it increases your risk of obesity by about 57 percent in the same given time period. And there can be many mechanisms for this effect. One possibility is that your friends say to you something like -- you know, they adopt a behavior that spreads to you, like, they say, “Let’s go have muffins and beer,” which is a terrible combination, but you adopt that combination, and then you start gaining weight like them. And another more subtle possibility is that they start gaining weight, and it changes your ideas of what an acceptable body size is. And, here, what’s spreading from person to person is not a behavior, but rather a norm. An idea is spreading. Now, headline writers had a field day with our studies. I think the headline in the New York Times was, “Are you packing it on? Blame your fat friends.” What was interesting to us is the European headline writers had a different take, they said, “Are your friends gaining weight? Perhaps you are to blame.” (Laughter) And we thought this was a very interesting comment on America, and kind of self-serving, kind of, “not-my-responsibility” kind of phenomena. Now I want to be very clear, we do not think our work should or could justify prejudice against people of one or another body size at all. Now, our next questions was: Could we actually visualize this spread? Was weight gain in one person actually spreading to weight gain in another person? And this was complicated because we needed to take into account the fact that the network structure, the architecture of the ties, was changing across time. And in addition, because obesity is not a unicentric epidemic, there’s not a “patient zero” of the obesity epidemic -- if we find that guy, there was a spread of obesity out from him. It’s a multicentric epidemic. lots of people are doing things at the same time. And I’m about to show you a 30 second video animation that took me and James five years of our lives to do. And so, again, every dot is a person. Every tie between them is a relationship. And we’re going to put this into motion now, taking daily cuts to the network for about 30 years. The dot sizes are going to grow. You’re going to see a sea of yellow take over. You’re going to see people be born and die; dots will appear and disappear. Ties will form and break. Marriages and divorces, friendings and defriendings, a lot of complexity, a lot is happening just in this thirty year period, that includes the obesity epidemic. And by the end, you’re going to see clusters of obese and non-obese individuals within the network. Now, when looked at this, it changed the way I see things, because this thing, this network, that’s changing across time, has a memory, it moves, things flow within it, it has a kind of consistency; people can die, but it doesn’t die; it’s still persists. And it has a kind of resilience that allows it to persist across time. And so, I came to see these signs of social networks as living things, as living things that we could put under a kind of microscope and study and analyze and understand. And we use a variety of techniques to do this. And we started exploring all kinds of other phenomena. So we looked at smoking and drinking behavior, and voting behavior, and divorce, which can spread, and altruism. And, eventually, we became interested in emotions. Now, when we have emotions, we show them. Why do we show our emotions? I mean, there would be an advantage to experiencing our emotions inside, you know, anger or happiness, but we don’t just experience them, we show them. And not only do we show them, but others can read them. And, not only can they read them, but they copy them. There’s emotional contagion that takes place in human populations. And so this function of emotions suggest that, in addition to any other purpose they serve, they’re a kind of primitive form of communication. And that, in fact, if we really want to understand human emotions, we need to think about them in this way. Now, we’re accustomed to thinking about emotions in this way, in simple, sort of, brief periods of time. So, for example, I was giving this talk recently in New York City, and I said, “You know, like how when you’re on the subway, and the other person across the subway car smiles at
Nicholas Christakis you, and you just instinctively smile back.” And they looked at me, said, “We don’t do that in New York City.” And I said, “Everywhere else in the world, that’s normal human behavior.” And so there’s a very instinctive way in which we briefly transmit emotions to each other. And, in fact, emotional contagion can be broader still, like we could have punctuated expressions of anger, as in riots. The question that we wanted to ask was: Could emotion spread, in a more sustained way that riots, across time and involve large numbers of people, not just this pair of individuals smiling at each other in the subway car? Maybe there’s a kind of belowthe-surface quiet riot that animates us all the time. Maybe there are emotional stampedes that ripple through social networks. Maybe, in fact, emotions have a collective existence, not just an individual existence. And this is one of the first images we made to study this phenomenon. Again, a social network, but now we color the people yellow if they’re happy and blue if they’re sad and green in-between. And if you look at this image, you can right away see clusters of happy and unhappy people, again, spreading to three degrees of separation. And you might form the intuition that the unhappy people occupy a different structural location within the network. So there’s a middle and an edge to this network, and the unhappy seem to be located at the edges. So to invoke another metaphor, if you imagine social networks as a kind of vast fabric of humanity -- I’m connected to you and you to her, on out endlessly into the distance -- this fabric is actually like an old-fashioned American quilt, and it has patches on it, happy and unhappy patches. And whether you become happy or not depends in part on whether you occupy a happy patch. So, this work with emotions, which are so fundamental, then got us to thinking about, maybe the fundamental causes of human social networks are somehow encoded in our genes. Because human social networks, whenever they are mapped, always kind of look like this, the picture of the network, but they never look like this. Why do they not look like this? Why don’t we form human social networks that look like a regular lattice? Well, the striking patterns of human social networks, their ubiquity, and their apparent purpose beg questions about whether we evolved to have human social networks in the first place, and whether we evolved to form networks with a particular structure. And notice first of all ... And so, to understand this, though, we need to dissect network structure a little bit first. And notice that every person in this network has exactly the same structural location as every other person. But that’s not the case with real networks. So, for example, here is a real network of college students at an elite northeastern university. And now I’m highlighting a few dots. and if you look here at the dots, compare node B, in the upper left, to node D in the far right. And B has four friends coming out from him. And D has six friends coming out from him. And so, those two individuals have different numbers of friends -- that’s very obvious, we all know that. But certain other aspects of social network structure are not so obvious. Compare node B in the upper left to node A in the lower left. And now those people both have four friends, but A’s friends all know each other, and B’s friends do not. So the friend of a friend of A’s, is back again a friend of A’s, whereas a friend of a friend of B’s is not a friend of B’s, is farther away in the network. This is known as transitivity in networks. And, finally, compare nodes C and D. C and D both have 6 friends. If you talk to them, and you said, “What is your social life like?” they would say, “I’ve got six friends. that’s my social experience.” But now we with a bird’s eye view, looking at this network, can see that they occupy very different social worlds, and I can cultivate that intuition in you by just asking you: Who would you rather be if a deadly germ was spreading through the network? Would you rather be C or D? You’d rather be D, on the edge of the network. And now who would you rather be if a juicy piece of gossip, not about you, was spreading through the network? Now, you would rather be C.
So different structural locations have different implications for you life. And, in fact, when we did some experiments looking at this, what we found is that 46 percent of the variation in how many friends you have is explained by your genes. And this is not surprising. We know, some people are born shy and some are born gregarious. That’s obvious. But we also found some non-obvious things. For instance, 47 percent in the variation in whether your friends know each other is attributable to your genes. Whether your friends know each other has not just to do with their genes, but with yours. And we think the reason for this is that some people like to introduce their friends to each other, you know who you are, and others of you keep them apart and don’t introduce your friends to each other. And so some people knit together the networks around them, creating a kind of dense web of ties in which they’re comfortably embedded. And finally, we even found that 30 percent of the variation in whether or not people are in the middle or on the edge of the network can also be attributed to their genes. So whether you find your self in the middle or on the edge, is also partially heritable. Now, what is the point of this? How does this help us understand? How does this help us figure out some of the problems that are effecting us these days? Well, the argument I’d like to make is that networks have value. They are a kind of social capital. New properties emerge because of our embeddedness in social networks, and these properties in here, in the structure of the networks, not just in the individuals within them. So think about these two common objects. They’re both made of carbon, and yet one of them has carbon atoms in it that are arranged in one particular way, on the left, and you get graphite, which is soft and dark. But if you take the same carbon atoms and interconnect them a different way, you get a diamond, which is clear and hard. And those properties of softness and hardness and darkness and clearness do not reside in the carbon atoms. They reside in the interconnections between the carbon atoms, or at least arise because of the interconnections between the carbon atoms. So, similarly, the pattern of connections among people confers upon the groups of people different properties. It is the ties between people that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. And so it is not just what’s happening to these people, whether they’re losing weight or gaining weight, or becoming rich or becoming poor, or becoming happy or not becoming happy, that effects us. It’s also the actual architecture of the ties around us. Our experience of the world depends on the actual structure of the networks in which we’re residing and on the kinds of things that ripple and flow through the network. Now, the reason, I think, that this is the case is that human beings assemble themselves and form a kind of superorganism. Now, superorganism is a kind of collection of individuals which show or evince behaviors or phenomena that are not reducible to the study of individuals and must be understood by reference to, and by studying the collective, like, for example, a hive of bees that’s finding a new nesting sight, or a flock of birds that’s evading a predator, or a flock of birds that’s able to pool their wisdom and navigate and find a tiny speck of an island in the middle of the Pacific, or a pack of wolves that able to bring down larger prey. Super organisms have properties that cannot be understood just by studying the individuals. I think understanding social networks and how they form and operate, can help us understand, not just health and emotions, but all kinds of phenomena like crime and warfare and economic phenomena like bank runs and market crashes and the adoption of innovation and the spread of product adoption. Now, look at this. I think we form social networks because the benefits of a connected life outweigh the costs. If I was always violent towards you or gave you misinformation, or mad you sad, or infected you with deadly germs, you would cut the ties to me, and the network would disintegrate. So the spread of good and valuable things is required to sustain and nourish social networks. Similarly, social networks are required for the spread of good and valuable things like love and kindness and happiness and altruism and ideas. I think, in fact, that if we realized how valuable social networks are, we’d spend a lot more time nourishing them and sustaining them because I think social networks are fundamentally related to goodness, and what I think the world needs now is more connections.
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Graham Hill About a year ago, I asked myself a question: “Knowing what I know, why am I not a vegetarian?” After all, I’m one of the green guys. I grew up with hippie parents in a log cabin. I started a site called Treehugger. I care about this stuff. I knew that eating a mere hamburger a day can increase my risk of dying by a third. Cruelty, I knew that the 10 billion animals we raise each year for meat, are raised in factory farm conditions that we, hypocritically, wouldn’t even consider for our own cats, dogs and other pets. Environmentally, meat, amazingly, causes more emissions than all of transportation combined, cars, trains, planes, buses, boats, all of it. And beef production uses 100 times the water that most vegetables do.
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I also knew that I’m not alone. We as a society are eating twice as much meat as we did in the 50s. So what was once the special, little side treat, now is the main, much more regular. So really, any of these angles should have been enough to go vegetarian. Yet, there I was, chk, chk,, chk, tucking into a big, old steak. So why was I stalling? I realized that what I was being pitched was a binary solution. It was either you’re a meat eater, or you’re a vegetarian. And I guess I just wasn’t quite ready. Imagine your last hamburger. (Laughter) So my common sense, my good intentions, were in conflict with my taste buds. And I’d commit to doing it later. And not surprisingly, later never came. Sound familiar? So I wondered, might there be a third solution? And I thought about it. And I came up with one. And I’ve been doing it for the last year, and it’s great. It’s called weekday veg. The name says it all. Nothing with a face Monday through Friday. On the weekend, your choice. Simple. If you want to take it to the next level, remember, the major culprits, in terms of environmental damage and health, are red and processed meats. So you want to swap those out with some good, sustainably harvested fish. It’s structured, so it ends up being simple to remember. And it’s okay to break it here and there. After all, cutting five days a week is cutting 70 percent of your meat intake. The program has been great, weekday veg. My footprint’s smaller I’m lessening pollution. I feel better about the animals. I’m even saving money. Best of all, I’m healthier, I know that I’m going to live longer, and I’ve even lost a little weight. So please, ask yourselves, for your health, for your pocketbook, for the environment, for the animals, what’s stopping you from giving weekday veg a shot? After all, if all of us ate half as much meat, it would be like half of us were vegetarians. 101
So, I’ve known a lot of fish in my life. I’ve loved only two. That first one, it was more like a passionate affair. It was a beautiful fish, flavorful, textured, meaty, a bestseller on the menu. What a fish. Even better, it was farm-raised to the supposed highest standards of sustainability. So you could feel good about selling it. I was in a relationship with this beauty for several months. One day, the head of the company called and asked if I’d speak at an event about the farm’s sustainability. “Absolutely,” I said. Here was a company trying to solve what’s become this unimaginable problem for our chefs. How do we keep fish on our menus? For the past 50 years, we’ve been fishing the seas like we clear-cut forests. It’s hard to overstate the destruction. 90 percent of large fish, the ones we love, the tunas, the halibuts, the salmons, swordfish, they’ve collapsed. There’s almost nothing left. So, for better or for worse, aquaculture, fish farming, is going to be a part of our future. A lot of arguments against it. Fish farms pollute, most of them do anyway, and they’re inefficient, take tuna. A major drawback. It’s got a feed conversion ratio of 15 to one. That means it takes fifteen pounds of wild fish to get you one pound of farm tuna. Not very sustainable. Doesn’t taste very good either. So here, finally, was a company trying to do it right. I wanted to support them. The day before the event I called the head of PR for the company. Let’s call him Don. “Don,” I said, “just to get the facts straight, you guys are famous for farming so far out to sea, you don’t pollute.” “That’s right,” he said. “We’re so far out, the waste from our fish gets distributed, not concentrated.” And then he added, “We’re basically a world unto ourselves. That feed conversion ratio? 2.5 to one,” he said. “Best in the business.” 2.5 to one, great. “2.5 to one what? What are you feeding?” “Sustainable proteins,” he said. “Great,” I said. Got off the phone. And that night, I was lying in bed, and I thought: What the hell is a sustainable protein? So the next day, just before the event, I called Don. I said, “Don, what are some examples of sustainable proteins?” He said he didn’t know. He would ask around. Well, I got on the phone with a few people in the company. No one could give me a straight answer. Until finally, I got on the phone with the head biologist. Let’s call him Don too. “Don,” I said, “what are some examples of sustainable proteins?” Well, he mentioned some algaes and some fish meals, and then he said chicken pellets. I said, “Chicken pellets?” He said, “Yeah, feathers, skin, bone meal, scraps, dried and processed into feed.” I said, “What percentage of your feed is chicken?” thinking, you know, two percent. “Well, it’s about 30 percent,” he said. I said, “Don, what’s sustainable about feeding chicken to fish?” There was a long pause on the line, and he said, “there’s just too much chicken in the world.” I fell out of love with this fish. No, not because I’m some self-righteous, goodytwo shoes foodie. I actually am. No, I actually fell out of love with this fish because, I swear to God, after that conversation, the fish tasted like chicken.
This second fish, it’s a different kind of love story. It’s the romantic kind, the kind where the more you get to know your fish, you love the fish. I first ate it at a restaurant in southern Spain. A journalist friend had been talking about this fish for a long time. She kind of set us up. It came to the table a bright, almost shimmering, white color. The chef had overcooked it. Like twice over. Amazingly, it was still delicious. Who can make a fish taste good after it’s been overcooked? I can’t, but this guy can. Let’s call him Miguel. Actually his name is Miguel. And no, he didn’t cook the fish, and he’s not a chef. At least in the way that you and I understand it. He’s a biologist at Veta La Palma. It’s a fish farm in the southwestern corner of Spain. It’s at the tip of the Guadalquivir river. Until the 1980s, the farm was in the hands of the Argentinians. They raised beef cattle on what was essentially wetlands. They did it by draining the land. They built this intricate series of canals, and they pushed water off the land and out into the river. Well, they couldn’t make it work, not economically. And ecologically, it was a disaster. It killed like 90 percent of the birds, which, for this place, is a lot of birds. And so in 1982, a Spanish company with an environmental conscience purchased the land. What did they do? They reversed the flow of water. They literally flipped the switch. Instead of pushing water out, they used the channels to pull water back in. They flooded the canals. They created a 27,000 acre fish farm -- bass, mullet, shrimp, eel -- and in the process, Miguel, and this company, completely reversed the ecological destruction. The farm’s incredible. I mean, you’ve never seen anything like this. You stare out at a horizon that is a million miles away, and all you see are flooded canals and this thick, rich marshland. I was there not long ago with Miguel. He’s an amazing guy, three parts Charles Darwin and one part Crocodile Dundee. Okay? There we are slogging through the wetlands, and I’m panting and sweating, got mud up to my knees, and Miguel’s calmly conducting a biology lecture. Here, he’s pointing out a rare Black-Shouldered Kite. Now, he’s mentioning the mineral needs of phytoplankton. And here, here he sees a grouping pattern that reminds him of the Tanzanian Giraffe. It turns out, Miguel spent the better part of his career in the Mikumi National Park in Africa. I asked him how he became such an expert on fish. He said, “Fish? I didn’t know anything about fish. I’m an expert in relationships.” And then he’s off launching into more talk about rare birds and algaes and strange aquatic plants. And don’t get me wrong, that was really fascinating, you know, the biotic community unplugged, kind of thing. It’s great, but I was in love. And my head was swooning over that overcooked piece of delicious fish I had the night before. So I interrupted him. I said, “Miguel, what makes your fish taste so good?” He pointed at the algae. “I know, dude, the algae, the phytoplankton, the relationships, it’s amazing. But what are your fish eating? What’s the feed conversion ratio?” Well, he goes on to tell me it’s such a rich system, that the fish are eating what they’d be eating in the wild. The plant biomass, the phytoplankton, the zooplankton, it’s what feeds the fish. The system is so healthy, it’s totally self-renewing. There is no feed.
Dan Barber Ever heard of a farm that doesn’t feed its animals? Later that day, I was driving around this property with Miguel, and I asked him, I said, “For a place that seems so natural,” unlike like any farm I’d ever been at, “how do you measure success?” At that moment, it was as if a film director called for a set change. And we rounded the corner and saw the most amazing sight, thousands and thousands of pink flamingos, a literal pink carpet for as far as you could see. “That’s success,” he said. “Look at their bellies, pink. They’re feasting.” Feasting? I was totally confused. I said, “Miguel, aren’t they feasting on your fish?” “Yes,” he said. “We lose 20 percent of our fish and fish eggs to birds. Well, last year, this property had 600,000 birds on it, more than 250 different species. It’s become, today, the largest and one of the most important private bird sanctuaries in all of Europe.” I said, “Miguel, isn’t a thriving bird population like the last thing you want on a fish farm?” He shook his head, no. He said, “We farm extensively, not intensively. This is an ecological network. The flamingos eat the shrimp. The shrimp eat the phytoplankton. So the pinker the belly, the better the system.” Okay, so let’s review. A farm that doesn’t feed its animals, and a farm that measures its success on the health of its predators. A fish farm, but also a bird sanctuary. Oh, and by the way, those flamingos, they shouldn’t even be there in the first place. They brood in a town 150 miles away, where the soil conditions are better for building nests. Every morning, they fly 150 miles into the farm. And every evening, they fly 150 miles back. They do that because they’re able to follow the broken white line of highway A92. No kidding. I was imagining a march of the penguins thing, so I looked at Miguel. I said, “Miguel, do they fly 150 miles to the farm, and then do they fly 150 miles back at night? Do they do that for the children?” He looked at me like I had just quoted a Whitney Houston song. He said, “No. They do it because the food’s better.” I didn’t mention the skin of my beloved fish, which was delicious, and I don’t like fish skin. I don’t like it seared. I don’t like it crispy. It’s that acrid, tarlike flavor. I almost never cook with it. Yet, when I tasted it at that restaurant in southern Spain, it tasted not at all like fish skin. It tasted sweet and clean like you were taking a bite of the ocean. I mentioned that to Miguel, and he nodded. He said, “The skin acts like a sponge. It’s the last defense before anything enters the body. It evolved to soak up impurities.” And then he added, “But our water has no impurities.” Okay. A farm that doesn’t feed its fish. A farm that measures its success by the success of its predators. And then I realized when he says, a farm that has no impurities, he made a big understatement, because the water that flows through that farm comes in from the Guadalquivir river. It’s a river that carries with it all the things that rivers tend to carry these days, chemical contaminants, pesticide runoff.
And when it works its way through the system and leaves, the water is cleaner than when it entered. The system is so healthy, it purifies the water. So, not just a farm that doesn’t feed its animals, not just a farm that measures its success by the health of its predators, but a farm that’s literally a water purification plant, and not just for those fish, but for you and me as well. Because when that water leaves, it dumps out into the Atlantic. A drop in the ocean, I know, but I’ll take it, and so should you, because this love story, however romantic, is also instructive. You might say it’s a recipe for the future of good food, whether we’re talking about bass or beef cattle. What we need now is a radically new conception of agriculture, one in which the food actually tastes good. (Applause) But for a lot people, that’s a bit too radical. We’re not realists, us foodies. We’re lovers. We love farmers’ markets. We love small family farms. We talk about local food. We eat organic. And when you suggest these are the things that will insure the future of good food, someone somewhere stands up and says, “Hey guy, I love pink flamingos, but how are you going to feed the world? How are you going to feed the world?” Can I be honest? I don’t love that question. No, not because we already produce enough calories to more than feed the world. One billion people will go hungry today. One billion -- that’s more than ever before -- because of gross inequalities in distribution, not tonnage. Now, I don’t love this question because it’s determined the logic of our food system for the last 50 years. Feed grain to herbivores, pesticides to monocultures, chemicals to soil, chicken to fish, and all along agribusiness has simply asked, “If we’re feeding more people more cheaply, how terrible could that be?” That’s been the motivation. It’s been the justification. It’s been the business plan of American agriculture. We should call it what it is, a business in liquidation, a business that’s quickly eroding ecological capital that makes that very production possible. That’s not a business, and it isn’t agriculture. Our bread basket is threatened today, not because of diminishing supply, but because of diminishing resources, not by the latest combine and tractor invention, but by fertile land, not by pumps, but by fresh water, not by chainsaws, but by forests, and not by fishing boats and nets, but by fish in the sea. Want to feed the world? Let’s start by asking: How are we going to feed ourselves? Or better, How can we create conditions that enable every community to feed itself? (Applause) To do that, don’t look at the agribusiness model for the future. It’s really old, and it’s tired. It’s high on capital, chemistry, and machines, and it’s never produced anything really good to eat. Instead, let’s look to the ecological model. That’s the one that relies on two billion years of on-the-job experience. Look to Miguel, farmers like Miguel, farms that aren’t worlds unto themselves, farms that restore instead of deplete, farms that farm extensively instead of just intensively, farmers that are not just producers, but experts in relationships, because they’re the ones that are experts in flavor too. And if I’m going to be really honest, they’re a better chef than I’ll ever be. You know, I’m okay with that, because if that’s the future of good food, it’s going to be delicious.
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Through my presentation this afternoon I hope to provide a sense of awareness of the current issues affecting sustainability, what it means to you, and why you should care. _ I will accomplish this through the connections I have made from the following readings, movies, talks and websites. _ This is just to give a quick overview of the path we will take. _ Again the focus is awareness. Awareness is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects or sensory patterns. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something. Once you become aware of an issue it is hard to ignore its existence. Even if you disagree, you will be more likely to notice instances to support or disprove your stance. _ It doesn’t matter what you believe in… _ As long as you understand the basics. From the single cell to an entire living eco-system to the combination of all these systems, everything is connected and affecting the other. _ So what are living systems and why should you care? Living systems are open self-organizing systems with special characteristics of life and they interact with their environment through information and material-energy exchanges. Living systems, such as grasslands, wetlands, estuaries, oceans, coral reefs, rainforests, etc., provide services as well as materials. These services are more important to human prosperity than the materials. As an example, a forest can provide water storage, flood management, clean air and water, fertile soil, waste processing, buffer to extreme weather, and regeneration of atmosphere. All vital elements of life. So what’s the problem and how did it become a problem? During the 18th and 19th century there was a major paradigm shift in agriculture, manufacturing, mining and transport. This shift affected nearly every aspect of daily life, economy and cultural conditions. As the cottage industry declined the values of industry focused on standardization and centralization of production. It was about producing more, faster. _ This directly led to the Expansion Model that is in place today. The Expansion Model has guided the world into markets in which products function
first and foremost as tokens of economic exchange. This Model of economic development relies on consumption and the belief that happiness and well-being are only possible through the minimization of personal involvement. In other words the more a device or product can do for you the happier you will be. But what you might not be aware of is how this trend has reduced our skills, abilities and general knowledge. The simple skill of being able to fix anything has been lost in just the last couple of generations. Even I have to admit I can’t sew a hem or change the oil in my car. Not to mention my dependence on technology to operate on a daily basis. While most of those living in saturated economies like ours pity people in emerging economies that don’t have the simple luxuries we have, it is very likely they will be a leading example of how to shift our energies towards a more sustainable model of living. As new trends develop successfully in these emerging economies, such as microfinancing, the developed countries will latch on to these ideas and spread their implementation. The Expansion Model has led to a system of markets driven by dynamic, sometimes uncontrolled, growth of production and trade which has led to what Buchanan and Rittel term wicked problems Examples of wicked problems include traffic congestion, parking problems, road accidents, airport congestion, airport and traffic noise, urban decay as well as shortages in mass education, medical treatment and crime detention. Wicked Problems have been created through the design of man-made things and their inevitable cradle-to-grave lifecycle. Designers have played a role in dramatically intensifying this problem through the promotion of consumerism, materialism and forced obsolescence. _ The need for Wicked Solutions is now. While dematerialization of products has been taking place the true goal is a reduction of consumption and reliance on products. According to Manzini this can be accomplished through a 3 step process. First we need to extend the lifespan of products and develop a strong relationship of attachment and care to these products. The second step will be shifting our attention to service models rather than acquisition. Such as Zip Car or appliance and tool rentals. The third and final step will be a decrease in the need of products and therefore less consumption. Just because we can make products to do every little task imaginable doesn’t mean
Mid-Term we should. It’s time to put our creativity and intelligence to more practical matters. _ This is where the designers will be most important. If as a profession we chose to take on the challenge. As Margolin puts it “If the will exists among designers, it will surely be possible to reinvent design. If it doesn’t, designers will simply remain part of the problem whose solution other professions will be to invent.” Designers have the ability to choose between good or bad, right or wrong. They must consider all the intentions, implications and results. _ The designer needs to shift focus on developing their empathy and depth. Their ability to think intuitively, recognize patterns, demonstrate ideas with emotional and functional meaning and express these ideas through a diverse media. The designer needs to generalize, be able to communicate across disciplines and know how to ask the right questions. _ So what’s the solution look like? The Sustainability Model is based on a system of checks and balances of finite resources. If elements of the system are damaged or thrown out of balance or if essential resources are depleted, the system will suffer severe damage and possible collapse. The biological and technical products must be designed in closed-loop cycles to obtain a cradle-to-cradle production cycle rather than the current cradle-tograve cycle. _ Designers must focus on promoting the shift to sustainable well-being from product based well-being. The tools of Community Based Social Marketing can be utilized to assist in changing behaviors. While there are examples of positive deviance and creative communities living sustainably, the current norms are based on consumption and materialism. This means developing enabling solutions that regenerate context qualities while being eco-efficient. _ While the example of No Impact Man is to the extreme, he successfully provided a sense of awareness and proved it is possible to live with less. Even if you feel it was just a publicity stunt, it was a stunt that made many more
people question their waste and lifestyle. _ Not only do we need to make changes to the world of design and consumption, the world of scientific thought has equally allowed itself to fall into a bubble of disconnect and isolation. Solving single problems in isolation without understanding their full implications _ The movie Food, Inc. highlights the affect science, technology and economics has had on our agriculture and food production. The problems that have arisen due to not looking at the big picture, such as more and more food infected with the e. coli bacteria due to modern agriculture practices. _ But there is hope and change is possible. An example of the Next Industrial Revolution’s possibility can be witnessed first hand through a fish farm in southern Spain. A true example of a closed loop waste equals food cycle. No food is provided to the fish, especially not the chicken pellets many fish farms are known to use, the environment feeds the fish and the fish feed the birds and yet there is still enough fish for controlled harvesting. An eco-system as it should be, as all eco-systems used to be, before the norms dictated more, faster and efficient. Let’s work towards returning the balance and achieving the next industrial revolution.
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Good afternoon. Today I would like to present my thoughts on sustainability, how it is and will affect your future as well as what you can do to help. The following represents the primary books, articles, movies and websites I used to formulate my presentation and journal. This is the general outline and steps I wish to walk you through. While I set up this basic structure pretty early in the process I was able to adjust it as more key elements came up in the readings. This structure was valuable in keeping my journal and thoughts organized. Waste equals food. I want to share a quote from the Biomimicry book “All waste is food, and everybody winds up reincarnated inside somebody else. The only thing the community imports in any appreciable amount is energy in the form of sunlight, and the only thing it exports is the byproduct of its energy use, heat.” So if you think about it we are all really just made up of molecules that have been circulating through the system for billions of years. Living systems are open self-organizing systems with special characteristics of life that interact with their environment through information and material-energy exchanges. Living systems can only be disturbed, not controlled, and have the ability to choose what to notice and how to respond. Through the Fish Banks Simulation we experienced how quickly an ecosystem can be destroyed. Understanding the bell curve chart in regards to fish populations and safe levels of harvesting are critical. The industries need to learn to work together rather than against each other. Finding the equilibrium point will lead to success for everyone, most importantly the fish. An interesting perspective is to understand the population limits of boats that led to the collapse. As we exceed the population limit on Earth more and more systems will begin to collapse. Waste and Noise are signs of inefficiency. The industrial revolution is the primary cause of our current situation. By producing more, faster; we have been able to far exceed nature’s ability to reabsorb the waste we are producing. The industrial revolution led to our current economic expansion model. This model of development relies on consumption and the belief that happiness and well-being are only possible through the minimization of personal involvement. How did we get to this point? The movie Manufactured Landscapes opens casually passing through a factory in China. We are shown row after endless row of identically dressed people assembling parts and pieces. The next scene shows these same workers assembled outside the factory in highly organized groups, resembling an army. This army of human machines is what the Industrial Revolution has led to. No identity. No thought. Just perform a highly specific task and repeat. Over and over again. This makes me look at objects I own and truly wonder how and who put it together. Did they even have a choice to be a factory worker or not? Another series of scenes that truly struck me begin at a ship construction yard in China. We meet a young girl that tells how her grandfather was a welder, her mother is a welder, and so now she is a welder because she wasn’t able to get into high school. Next the film shows tanker ships being deconstructed in India. With little to no machinery the work
is all done by hand by young men and boys. The tankers still have oil sludge in them that must be scooped out and collected. This work is dirty and dangerous with most dying before they are thirty. And for what? Oil. Oil that runs our world. Looking at a complex series of highway, bridges, on and off ramps everything relies on oil in one way or another. The roads are made of asphalt, the cars run on gasoline, nearly every component of the car has an oil by-product or used oil as an energy source for manufacturing. How did we get to this point, this absolute dependence on a single substance? As the leak in the gulf continues, will we wake up to the realization of what we are doing? Or do we continue to dump our trash in someone else’s “waters” and pretend it isn’t there? While Burtynsky’s photographs are beautiful, are they able to open more people’s eyes to the destruction happening around the world? These problems, these wicked problems as Buchanan would call them, can’t be solved within the mind-set that created them. Designers have played a role in dramatically intensifying these problems through the promotion of consumerism, materialism, forced obsolescence, and cradle-to-grave systems. We can afford to do something about climate change and must do something. The current economy increases our harmful impact on the biosphere everyday. Paul Krugman points out that “emission limits in America won’t accomplish much if China and others don’t match our efforts.” While this is obviously a true statement, it shouldn’t stop us from changing whether the rest of the world follows or not. Germany and Denmark are already some of the most environmentally conscious countries in the world and they didn’t choose to be that way in hopes everyone would follow their example. They knew it was the correct way to respect the limited resources they had available to them. Another disturbing fact is knowing people don’t make the right choices. Everyday “consumers fail to take measures to conserve energy even when they could save money by doing so.” Perhaps it is lack of education or time or money. The key is to demonstrate to consumers and manufactures the benefits of change in the long term. “Action will have costs, and these must be compared with the costs of not acting.” Climate change isn’t going to wait around for us to get our “chickens in a row.” Actions can be taken now to make a difference in the future. The key is to perform the right actions in the right order to reach solutions. According to Manzini this can be accomplished through a three-step process. First we need to extend the lifespan of products and develop a strong relationship of attachment and care to these products. The second step will be shifting our attention to service models rather than acquisition. Such as Zip Car or appliance and tool rentals. The third and final step will be a decrease in the need for products and therefore less consumption. Just because we can make products to do every little task imaginable doesn’t mean we should. It’s time to put our creativity and intelligence to more practical matters and make changes. Perhaps one of the strongest influencing agents of change will be found through our social networks. Nicholas Christakis discusses how social networks can impact your life through such issues as obesity and happiness. I believe social networking will provide a key platform for disseminating and influencing others towards the Next Industrial Revolution. Ideas spread like wildfire across networks. The key is getting the right ideas out there. A similar theory is discussed in Capra’s Hidden Connections by theorist Etienne Wenger. Wenger
Final refers to “self-generating social networks” as ‘communities of practice,’ “referring to the common context of meaning rather than to the pattern of organization through which the meaning is generated.” His study looks more at how a common practice of doing things a specific way leads to stronger bonds within networks of individuals. He also looks at the different levels and kinds of communities. Wenger defines “a community of practice as characterized by three features: mutual engagement of its members, a joint enterprise, and over time, a shared repertoire of routines, tacit rules of conduct, and knowledge.” With the popularity of online social networking, the multiple networks, perhaps with vastly different interests, become more and more closely tied, with information able to spread quickly from one to another. This globalization of knowledge transfer could be the answer to social and environmental changes. Designers must be leaders. Leaders must be designers. Designers need to step-up to the challenge at hand. As Margolin puts it “If the will exists among designers, it will surely be possible to reinvent design. If it doesn’t, designers will simply remain part of the problem whose solution other professions will be to invent.” Designers have the ability to choose between good or bad, right or wrong. They must consider all the intentions, implications and results. Through Design for Disassembly the designer is directly responsible for understanding the inherent waste contained within the products they design. By fully exploring and tracking the life of a product designed the designer can better understand the end-of-life outcomes and design for a better solution. This strategy directly relates to the Sustainability Model and doing more with less. A key part of Design for Disassembly includes minimizing the types of materials, fasteners, processes, and chemicals used. Less parts automatically leads to cost savings and minimizes the errors possible when products become less complicated to assemble. In reality this isn’t a new strategy, but as our technology increased so did the complexity of our products. Something as simple as a bag for chips can have over 9 layers of 7 different materials. When did this become necessary? While ‘Less is More’ was a movement in art and architecture during the 60’s and 70’s, it is certainly an important moto for the present and future of design. Design is really just applied foresight… It’s what you do now carefully & responsibly to achieve what you want later. But Designers aren’t the only ones responsible. A drastic change in consumption patterns is required. The Sustainability Model is based on a system of checks and balances of finite resources. If elements of the system are damaged or thrown out of balance or if essential resources are depleted, the system will suffer severe damage and possible collapse. Biological and technical products must be designed in closed-loop cycles to obtain a cradle-to-cradle production cycle rather than the current cradle-to-grave cycle. Designers must focus on promoting the shift to sustainable well-being from product based well-being. The tools of Community Based Social Marketing can be utilized to assist in changing behaviors. While there are examples of positive deviance and creative communities living sustainably, the current norms are based on consumption and materialism.
This means developing enabling solutions that regenerate context qualities while being eco-efficient. While the example of No Impact Man is to the extreme, he successfully provided a sense of awareness and proved it is possible to live with less. Even if you feel it was just a publicity stunt, it was a stunt that made many more people question their waste and lifestyle. What can you change? Graham Hill presents the true costs of that hamburger you might of had for lunch. Animals treated cruelly, more emissions than all transportation combined and up to 100 times the amount of water required for vegetables. While these are obvious reasons not to eat meat most of us have grown up eating some amount of meat at least once a day and for many Americans as much as three times a day. Making the shift to a vegetarian lifestyle is difficult if not near impossible. Graham Hill completely understands that and instead encourages everyone to think about the amount of meat being consumed and decidedly cutting that amount down. His suggestion is only eat meat on the weekends and I know for many people even that would be difficult. The point is to be aware of what and how much you are consuming and ask yourself if you can make a change. Even a small change can make a difference.
TRANSCRIPT
We must look at things as systems, with properties and structures of their own. The system as a whole is spinning out of control. Not only do we need to make changes to the world of design and consumption, the world of scientific thought and general education has equally allowed itself to fall into a bubble of disconnect and isolation. Solving single problems in isolation without understanding their full implications. This has led to some strange “inventions” especially in the area of food sciences. The movie Food, Inc. highlights the affect science, technology and economics has had on our agriculture and food production. The problems that have arisen due to not looking at the big picture, such as more and more food infected with the e. coli bacteria due to modern agriculture practices. As more and more people are negatively affected by such “scientific breakthroughs” change has to occur. But how many more deaths from something as preventable as e. coli have to happen before the industry wakes up? But to end on a happier note, change is possible. The Next Industrial Revolution and waste reduction is within our future. An example of the Next Industrial Revolution’s possibility can be witnessed first hand through a fish farm in southern Spain. A true example of a closed loop waste equals food cycle. No food is provided to the fish, especially not the chicken pellets many fish farms are known to use, the environment feeds the fish and the fish feed the birds and yet there is still enough fish for controlled harvesting. An eco-system as it should be, as all eco-systems used to be, before the norms dictated more, faster and efficient. Let’s work towards returning the balance and achieving the next industrial revolution. Thank you.
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