Jun 19, 13
More Neo-Biological Design
Bruce sends still more examples of design inspired by nature, culled from the Net by our stalwart Viridian allies. First, this exhibition at the Victoria and Albert of "zoomorphic" architecture, complete with a highly recommended catalog: "In architecture, this development comes at an opportune moment. The old dogmas of both the Modernists and their repudiators have collapsed. Meanwhile, there are new materials and a new bravado among structural engineers that allow forms imagined on a...
Beyond Microcredit
Microcredit is a simple idea, really: you lend people who have nothing a tiny bit of money so that they can begin to make some money, part of which they pay back to you so you can do the same thing for the next person. It has, generally speaking, been a smashing success, and will by 2005 have given as many as 100 million people a chance to escape the most dire poverty. But it's not enough. The NYT recently called for a "microfinance" revolution. They're right. Microcredit is a powerful tool,...
Collective Intelligence
"I can't shake the feeling that I'm witnessing a metaphorical dawn, that the darkness is giving way, that in the next few years I will see the edge of the sun and know that we, as a planet, have made it." Run by Tom Atlee, the Co-Intelligence Institute exists "to catalyze the sustainability and conscious evolution of human culture." In pratical terms one of the things that means is coming up with new models and ideas for democracy. The book bases its solutions on notions of...
Necessity, the Mother, etc.
Fabulous NYT Magazine profile of MIT's Amy Smith, whose classes focus on teaching engineers how to work with people in the developing world to invent tools that will improve the lives of the poorest. A must-read: "[I]n Smith's 'D-lab' class, students gather around a huge, black-topped slab of a table. It's the first semester of design lab, and these undergrads are learning about the politics of delivering technology to poor nations, how to speak a little Creole and the nitty-gritty of...
Greenest Building in the US?
The new Southern Caifornian NRDC headquarters building may be the greenest in the country. No one quite knows, but it's clearly a sign of what's possible: "Truth be told, no one can really verify the claim that the Robert Redford Building is the nation's greenest structure. Though it is expected to receive the much-coveted Version 2 Platinum green building rating from the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, which indicates the highest...
Islamic Primers
Post 9/11 a bunch of my friends ran out and bought copies of the Koran in the hope of gaining some deep(er) insights into the Islamic mind. The trouble with that was that the Koran demands serious study and really isn't amenable to being read and grasped on a rainy afternoon while waiting for the next episode of the West Wing. I know 'cause I tried. (Having said that if you have the time, energy and patience to try and understand the Koran then there is no better way of understanding...
How to Change the World
"How to Change the World: Lessons for Entrepreneurs from Activists" by Adam Kahane It's a question that keep us folks here at worldchanging awake late at night scratching our heads, burning the proverbial candle at both ends. How to change the world? Inspiration comes from a friend, Adam Kahane (Generon Consulting), who as he describes it, has been "commuting between two very different worlds: the world of entrepreneurs and the world of activists." Asking himself the questions: "How can...
Getting Through the Bottleneck
That Jeffrey Sachs is a smart fella. Take this recent essay, Getting Through the Bottleneck. Sachs outlines four positive trends that are leading us towards a more sustainable world: the gradual slowing of population growth; the increased urbanization of the planet's people; "the continuing explosion of scientific and technological knowledge"; and the "clear evidence that those technologies are diffusing widely in the world." But he also highlights three risks which threaten to undo all our...
In The Beginning Was The Deed...
"The focus on minutiae, which directly opposes much conventional wisdom about the need to focus on 'important problems,' has its background in a fundamental phenomenological experience, that small questions often lead to big answers. In this sense, phronetic research is decentered in its approach, taking its point of departure in local micropractices, searching for the Great within the Small and vice versa. 'God is in the details,' as the proverb says. 'So is the devil,' the phronetic...
The Technique
About ten years ago I was given a small print of Robert Rauschenberg's "Words Appearing in a Dream of William Burroughs." I find it endlessly compelling. It's a simple piece: a collage of images (the Taj Mahal; Neil Armstrong on the Moon next to the lunar lander and an American flag; a stormy sea; a diagram of magnetic fields; a botanical sketch of a flower; a truck driving through a puddle; torn polaroid snapshots; an unreadable bar graph; a white horse in the mist) overlayered with cut-out...
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