listened to this podcast today on biomimicry in design
quotes
"There's a huge opportunity to tap into nature's genius"
"Nature has been honing it's R&D process for 4 billion year"
"Nature is hard to mimic because it needs to live"
"All nature has on its hands is time what can we do with the tech and collaboration we have?"
examples
The Shinkasen in Japan is so fast that it created a sonic boom when it went through tunnels. To fix this, they looked to nature and mimicked the front of the train after a kingfisher's bill
There's an underwater nuclear missile that mimics the way a tuna swims to avoid sonar detection
Scientist has been able to replicate photosynthesis and create liquid fuel that's renewable, scalable, and in the long term cheaper than oil
questions / thoughts
what are the ethics around biomicry? do no harm? do the greatest good for the most people? what problems do we choose to solve?
I don't just want to talk about biomimicry. I want to talk about how we integrate and collaborate with nature. How we work with it. How do we form a symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationship?
the biggest barrier to some of these changes is the upfront cost to infrastructure modifications, i.e. getting off oil
