“Now that we can do anything, what will we do?”

Welcome to Massive Change Weekly, an electronic newsletter sharing news about groundbreaking achievements in global design.

We will design evolution.

When Franklin, Crick, and Watson discovered the structure of DNA in 1953, the realm of the living was rendered as a system of information. Since then, we’ve grown in our capacity to explore every aspect of life as we know it - from biological systems and products to new forms of intervention in medicine and genetic engineering. As Alvin Toffler wrote in The Third Wave, “Second Wave thinkers conceived of the human species as the culmination of a long evolutionary process; Third Wave thinkers must now face the fact that we are about to become the designers of evolution.”

That being said, it will do us no good to put ourselves above nature. As the great biologist E.O. Wilson has said, “our species and its way of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution.” As “designers of evolution” it behooves us to learn from its genius. I recently met Julian Vincent, professor of biomimetics at the University of Bath in the UK. Vincent, trained as an engineer, started his career with the intention of engineering nature but soon realized that engineering probably had more to learn from nature than the other way around.

Biomimetics, or biomimicry, the application of methods and systems found in nature to the fields of engineering and design, has its modern roots in the thought of Buckminster Fuller, but its importance is now gaining critical mass. One of the leaders in the field today is Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovations Inspired by Nature. (more…)

“Now that we can do anything, what will we do?”

Welcome to Massive Change Weekly, an electronic newsletter sharing news about groundbreaking achievements in global design.

Dream Guatemala Dream

Imagine changing the course of an entire country.
Imagine a better Guatemala.
Imagine reshaping a nation’s reality by rethinking its future, and creating an image powerful enough to galvanize action.
Imagine a field of vectors all pointing toward an improved condition.
Imagine if Guatemalans were to dream again…

About a year and a half ago, Bruce Mau Design was approached by a group of Guatemalan citizens who believed that through a collaborative process we could help them define the future of their country.

Before meeting them we received a letter from the Minister of Education asking us to join them in their “endeavors towards a common goal of building the spectacular Guatemala that they deserve”.

We helped this group of citizens define their identity and create the Foundation Project of Life (Fundación Proyecto de Vida), the entity that gave birth to the ¡GuateAmala! movement and which will continue to move it forward.

“We are a group of Guatemalans who deeply love and believe in our country. We are confident that the future of Guatemala is one of greatness. We believe that our people can be happy and prosperous, that in our souls there is the courage and the passion to make this a place of possibility for all Guatemalans. (more…)

“Now that we can do anything, what will we do?”

Welcome to Massive Change Weekly, an electronic newsletter sharing news about groundbreaking achievements in global design.

If you like Massive Change, you’ll love the Worldchanging blog ( http://www.worldchanging.com/ ). This is an “absolute must-read” website. The “about us” section will make it clear why we love it so much. Visit it and you will be addicted.

“WorldChanging.com works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us. That plenty of people are working on tools for change, but the fields in which they work remain unconnected. That the motive, means and opportunity for profound positive change are already present. That another world is not just possible, it’s here. We only need to put the pieces together.

“Informed by that premise, we do our best to bring you links to (and analysis of) those tools, models and ideas in a timely and concise manner. We don’t do negative reviews – why waste your time with what doesn’t work? We don’t offer critiques or exposes, except to the extent that such information may be necessary for the general reader to apprehend the usefulness of a particular tool or resource. We don’t generally offer links to resources which are about problems and not solutions, unless the resource is so insightful that its very existence is a step towards a solution. We pay special attention to tools, ideas and models that may have been overlooked in the mass media. We make a point of showing ways in which seemingly unconnected resources link together to form a toolkit for changing the world.

“Every link we post is informed by technology, but the new possibilities we cover aren’t just high-tech. Sure, we all need to understand the uses (and dangers) of advances like biotechnology, the Internet, ubiquitous computing, artificial intelligences, “open source” software and nano-materials. But we also need to know how best to collaborate, how to build coalitions and movements, how to grow communities, how to make our businesses live up to their highest potential and how to make the promise of democracy into a reality. We need to understand techniques as well as technologies, ideas as well as innovations. How we work together is as important as the tools we use.” (more…)

“Now that we can do anything, what will we do?”

Welcome to Massive Change Weekly, an electronic newsletter sharing news about groundbreaking achievements in global design.

A few short blasts this week:

Researchers at Brigham Young University believe they have found a new compound that could finally kill the HIV/AIDS virus. Current treatments can slow it down, but not eliminate it. Although so far limited to early test tube studies, CSA-54, one of a family of compounds called Ceragenins (or CSAs), mimics the disease-fighting characteristics of anti-microbial and anti-viral agents produced naturally by a healthy human immune system. http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_3482712

Further news on desalination: China recently announced that it will produce around up to one billion liters of of fresh water produced by desalination by 2010.

The space elevator reaches one mile. A space elevator is, for now, a hypothetical structure designed to transport material from the earth into space. Though there are many different proposals for doing this, they all share the same goal of replacing rocket propulsion with the traversal of a fixed structure similar to an elevator. LiftPort proposes doing this with a cable tether that would span from the earth’s surface to a point beyond geosynchronous orbit. As the earth rotates, the inertia at the end of the tether counteracts gravity and keeps the tether taut. Vehicles can then climb the tether and escape the planet’s gravity without the use of rockets. Such a structure could eventually permit delivery of great quantities of cargo and people to orbit, and at costs only a fraction of those associated with current means. LiftPort has now produced one mile of tether, with 61,999 miles to go to reach its target of being fully operational by 2018. (more…)