What Technology Can Learn From Biology
WE HOPE THE things we make stay together. We prefer that our bridges never move, that our buildings don’t sway, that our shoes remain sturdy. The highest compliment we might give to something we made is that it could outlive us. This sense of solid fixity has been the north star for engineers and designers forever. As a result, our built world is composed of artifacts and structures that are laboriously assembled to consistently work with little degradation in service over their lifespans. Even when they are obsolete, they are hard to get rid of.
In contrast to this model of perfect design, Skylar Tibbits outlines a very different mode inspired by biology. Instead of manufacturing finished polished products, he argues, we can use technology to create things the way, he reports on early experiments that demonstrate these crazy ideas are at least possible, and probably doable, and very much desirable.
