00:11 If I could reveal anything that is hidden from us, at least in modern cultures, it would be to reveal something that we've forgotten, that we used to know as well as we knew our own names. And that is that we live in a competent universe, that we are part of a brilliant planet, and that we are surrounded by genius. 00:42 Biomimicry is a new discipline that tries to learn from those geniuses, and take advice from them, design advice. That's where I live, and it's my university as well. I'm surrounded by genius. I cannot help but remember the organisms and the ecosystems that know how to live here gracefully on this planet. This is what I would tell you to remember if you ever forget this again. Remember this. This is what happens every year. This is what keeps its promise. While we're doing bailouts, this is what happened. Spring. 01:30 Imagine designing spring. Imagine that orchestration. You think TED is hard to organize. (Laughter) Right? Imagine, and if you haven't done this in a while, do. Imagine the timing, the coordination, all without top-down laws, or policies, or climate change protocols. This happens every year. There is lots of showing off. There is lots of love in the air. There's lots of grand openings. And the organisms, I promise you, have all of their priorities in order. 02:20 I have this neighbor that keeps me in touch with this, because he's living, usually on his back, looking up at those grasses. And one time he came up to me -- he was about seven or eight years old -- he came up to me. And there was a wasp's nest that I had let grow in my yard, right outside my door. And most people knock them down when they're small. But it was fascinating to me, because I was looking at this sort of fine Italian end papers. And he came up to me and he knocked. He would come every day with something to show me. And like, knock like a woodpecker on my door until I opened it up. And he asked me how I had made the house for those wasps, because he had never seen one this big. And I told him, "You know, Cody, the wasps actually made that." And we looked at it together. And I could see why he thought, you know -- it was so beautifully done. It was so architectural. It was so precise. 03:25 But it occurred to me, how in his small life had he already believed the myth that if something was that well done, that we must have done it. How did he not know -- it's what we've all forgotten -- that we're not the first ones to build. We're not the first ones to process cellulose. We're not the first ones to make paper. We're not the first ones to try to optimize packing space, or to waterproof, or to try to heat and cool a structure. We're not the first ones to build houses for our young. 04:05 What's happening now, in this field called biomimicry, is that people are beginning to remember that organisms, other organisms, the rest of the natural world, are doing things very similar to what we need to do. But in fact they are doing them in a way that have allowed them to live gracefully on this planet for billions of years. So these people, biomimics, are nature's apprentices. And they're focusing on function. What I'd like to do is show you a few of the things that they're learning. They have asked themselves, "What if, every time I started to invent something, I asked, 'How would nature solve this?'" 04:51 And here is what they're learning. This is an amazing picture from a Czech photographer named Jack Hedley. This is a story about an engineer at J.R. West. They're the people who make the bullet train. It was called the bullet train because it was rounded in front, but every time it went into a tunnel it would build up a pressure wave, and then it would create like a sonic boom when it exited. So the engineer's boss said, "Find a way to quiet this train." 05:17 He happened to be a birder. He went to the equivalent of an Audubon Society meeting. And he studied -- there was a film about king fishers. And he thought to himself, "They go from one density of medium, the air, into another density of medium, water, without a splash. Look at this picture. Without a splash, so they can see the fish. And he thought, "What if we do this?" Quieted the train. Made it go 10 percent faster on 15 percent less electricity. 05:48 How does nature repel bacteria? We're not the first ones to have to protect ourselves from some bacteria. Turns out that -- this is a Galapagos Shark. It has no bacteria on its surface, no fouling on its surface, no barnacles. And it's not because it goes fast. It actually basks. It's a slow-moving shark. So how does it keep its body free of bacteria build-up? It doesn't do it with a chemical. It does it, it turns out, with the same denticles that you had on Speedo bathing suits, that broke all those records in the Olympics, 06:22 but it's a particular kind of pattern. And that pattern, the architecture of that pattern on its skin denticles keep bacteria from being able to land and adhere. There is a company called Sharklet Technologies that's now putting this on the surfaces in hospitals to keep bacteria from landing, which is better than dousing it with anti-bacterials or harsh cleansers that many, many organisms are now becoming drug resistant. Hospital-acquired infections are now killing more people every year in the United States than die from AIDS or cancer or car accidents combined -- about 100,000. 07:04 This is a little critter that's in the Namibian desert. It has no fresh water that it's able to drink, but it drinks water out of fog. It's got bumps on the back of its wing covers. And those bumps act like a magnet for water. They have water-loving tips, and waxy sides. And the fog comes in and it builds up on the tips. And it goes down the sides and goes into the critter's mouth. There is actually a scientist here at Oxford who studied this, Andrew Parker. And now kinetic and architectural firms like Grimshaw are starting to look at this as a way of coating buildings so that they gather water from the fog. 10 times better than our fog-catching nets. 07:49 CO2 as a building block. Organisms don't think of CO2 as a poison. Plants and organisms that make shells, coral, think of it as a building block. There is now a cement manufacturing company starting in the United States called Calera. They've borrowed the recipe from the coral reef, and they're using CO2 as a building block in cement, in concrete. Instead of -- cement usually emits a ton of CO2 for every ton of cement. Now it's reversing that equation, and actually sequestering half a ton of CO2 thanks to the recipe from the coral. 08:25 None of these are using the organisms. They're really only using the blueprints or the recipes from the organisms. How does nature gather the sun's energy? This is a new kind of solar cell that's based on how a leaf works. It's self-assembling. It can be put down on any substrate whatsoever. It's extremely inexpensive and rechargeable every five years. It's actually a company a company that I'm involved in called OneSun, with Paul Hawken. 08:53 There are many many ways that nature filters water that takes salt out of water. We take water and push it against a membrane. And then we wonder why the membrane clogs and why it takes so much electricity. Nature does something much more elegant. And it's in every cell. Every red blood cell of your body right now has these hourglass-shaped pores called aquaporins. They actually export water molecules through. It's kind of a forward osmosis. They export water molecules through, and leave solutes on the other side. A company called Aquaporin is starting to make desalination membranes mimicking this technology. 09:35 Trees and bones are constantly reforming themselves along lines of stress. This algorithm has been put into a software program that's now being used to make bridges lightweight, to make building beams lightweight. Actually G.M. Opel used it to create that skeleton you see, in what's called their bionic car. It lightweighted that skeleton using a minimum amount of material, as an organism must, for the maximum amount of strength. 10:10 This beetle, unlike this chip bag here, this beetle uses one material, chitin. And it finds many many ways to put many functions into it. It's waterproof. It's strong and resilient. It's breathable. It creates color through structure. Whereas that chip bag has about seven layers to do all of those things. One of our major inventions that we need to be able to do to come even close to what these organisms can do is to find a way to minimize the amount of material, the kind of material we use, and to add design to it. We use five polymers in the natural world to do everything that you see. In our world we use about 350 polymers to make all this. 11:03 Nature is nano. Nanotechnology, nanoparticles, you hear a lot of worry about this. Loose nanoparticles. What is really interesting to me is that not many people have been asking, "How can we consult nature about how to make nanotechnology safe?" Nature has been doing that for a long time. Embedding nanoparticles in a material for instance, always. In fact, sulfur-reducing bacteria, as part of their synthesis, they will emit, as a byproduct, nanoparticles into the water. But then right after that, they emit a protein that actually gathers and aggregates those nanoparticles so that they fall out of solution. 11:47 Energy use. Organisms sip energy, because they have to work or barter for every single bit that they get. And one of the largest fields right now, in the world of energy grids, you hear about the smart grid. One of the largest consultants are the social insects. Swarm technology. There is a company called Regen. They are looking at how ants and bees find their food and their flowers in the most effective way as a whole hive. And they're having appliances in your home talk to one another through that algorithm, and determine how to minimize
More transcript: ------------------------------ 12:33 There's a group of scientists in Cornell that are making what they call a synthetic tree, because they are saying, "There is no pump at the bottom of a tree." It's capillary action and transpiration pulls water up, a drop at a time, pulling it, releasing it from a leaf and pulling it up through the roots. And they're creating -- you can think of it as a kind of wallpaper. They're thinking about putting it on the insides of buildings to move water up without pumps. 13:06 Amazon electric eel -- incredibly endangered, some of these species -- create 600 volts of electricity with the chemicals that are in your body. Even more interesting to me is that 600 volts doesn't fry it. You know we use PVC, and we sheath wires with PVC for insulation. These organisms, how are they insulating against their own electric charge? These are some questions that we've yet to ask. 13:35 Here's a wind turbine manufacturer that went to a whale. Humpback whale has scalloped edges on its flippers. And those scalloped edges play with flow in such a way that is reduces drag by 32 percent. These wind turbines can rotate in incredibly slow windspeeds, as a result. 13:57 MIT just has a new radio chip that uses far less power than our chips. And it's based on the cochlear of your ear, able to pick up internet, wireless, television signals and radio signals, in the same chip. Finally, on an ecosystem scale. 14:19 At Biomimicry Guild, which is my consulting company, we work with HOK Architects. We're looking at building whole cities in their planning department. And what we're saying is that, shouldn't our cities do at least as well, in terms of ecosystem services, as the native systems that they replace? So we're creating something called Ecological Performance Standards that hold cities to this higher bar. 14:48 The question is -- biomimicry is an incredibly powerful way to innovate. The question I would ask is, "What's worth solving?" If you haven't seen this, it's pretty amazing. Dr. Adam Neiman. This is a depiction of all of the water on Earth in relation to the volume of the Earth -- all the ice, all the fresh water, all the sea water -- and all the atmosphere that we can breathe, in relation to the volume of the Earth. And inside those balls life, over 3.8 billion years, has made a lush, livable place for us. 15:26 And we are in a long, long line of organisms to come to this planet and ask ourselves, "How can we live here gracefully over the long haul?" How can we do what life has learned to do? Which is to create conditions conducive to life. Now in order to do this, the design challenge of our century, I think, we need a way to remind ourselves of those geniuses, and to somehow meet them again. 16:02 One of the big ideas, one of the big projects I've been honored to work on is a new website. And I would encourage you all to please go to it. It's called AskNature.org. And what we're trying to do, in a TEDesque way, is to organize all biological information by design and engineering function. 16:21 And we're working with EOL, Encyclopedia of Life, Ed Wilson's TED wish. And he's gathering all biological information on one website. And the scientists who are contributing to EOL are answering a question, "What can we learn from this organism?" And that information will go into AskNature.org. And hopefully, any inventor, anywhere in the world, will be able, in the moment of creation, to type in, "How does nature remove salt from water?" And up will come mangroves, and sea turtles and your own kidneys. 16:57 And we'll begin to be able to do as Cody does, and actually be in touch with these incredible models, these elders that have been here far, far longer than we have. And hopefully, with their help, we'll learn how to live on this Earth, and on this home that is ours, but not ours alone. Thank you very much. (Applause)
@@weneedmoreconsideratepeopl4006 I have finished my apprenticeship as metalworker I'm also interested in Additive manufacturing/ 3D printing and biomimicry can be a very useful tool
Thank you Janine Benyus for this Ted talk. Been trying to rebound in health and while I do, I look at biophilic design & mimicry as a huge hope for now and the future. I'm working on a kids' model building to help get the word out because this is the way to unite people in hope. At this time when media spreads climate destruction news, I look to these things to lift my own spirit and move forward with my own projects.
Hero Miles I agree she is completely changing all fields of science. Einstein focused on physics only. Janine’s ideas are a complete game changer. This girl is on fire.
I imagine this also happened to geniuses like her back in the day. They didn't get the recognition for their contribution that they deserved. Some prize that is.
Actually her talk is about how nature, over millions of years has found the optimal designs (in most cases, not all) through evolutionary algorithms that allow for increasingly complex and intricate designs where at first everything was clunky and through successive generations and mutations bad designs were weeded out and better ones kept. That we are still at that "clunky design" phase and could do well to use those same algorithms to our advantage.
Inspiring... and I'm not very easily inspired anymore; I was made dull and complacent and learned taking everything for granted, growing up. But for the last couple of years I've been trying to unlearn the misinformation, lies and blindness! Thanks to inspirational people like her - Janine Benyus - and others, for instance Carl Sagan, I've been re-learning how to appreciate all this wonder that is our existence! It's easy to notice just the ugliness, but to see the beauty... is spectacular!
Within every cell of all of life, there exists an interactive receiver/transmitter system, with quantum characteristics which has the capability of interpreting the encoded signature which is transmitted from sources that have only been realized by some as of late. The medium used to send and receive information between all of life on the planet and the sentient design system is earth’s magnetic field and through varying frequencies which stimulates oxygen molecules
Have you read this from a book? What you say on there being a source for these designs sounds similar to what Nikola Tesla said when he got interviewed on how he was able to come up with unique inventions.
a lot of studies and experiments find what makes us so different from chips is that we work together and we dont just care about ourselves. we understand what benifits one can help the whole group aswell.
"The URL contained a malformed video ID." But i know this Car. My original comment (that did not post?) was that GM/O had indeed a similar project. At first i thougt it yielded a very similar car but as it turns out i was misstaken. They only use it for the internal structure. the drag on the Elise is not suprising as it needs downforce to keep its feather wight on the road. Another exaple of high drag coefficient (cd) is the Corvette C6 Stock cd: 0.28 Z06 cd: 0.31 ZR cd: 0.34
"9 times out of 10 the ingrained pattern will win" neurons that fire together wire together. the next time you try to overcome ur physiological predispositions you be will be more and more successful until ur have 'conditioned' urself to react in a way that you willfully choose to.
The Wright brothers were successful because they didn't mimic birds in their transfer of power to the air. They did use principles of lift that birds use to get off the ground. Before the brothers the attempts to create flight involved a flapping motion, or lighter than air devices such as balloons.
7:05 this may have been true 15 years ago but the leading causes of death in the United States now are as follows: 1. Opioid Overdose 2. Automobile related 3. Heart Disease
I don't see any meat in this, science by definition comes from the observation of nature, technology comes from science. The only thing you need to turn observation into technology is for someone to make the connection, but those people are rare. How many people saw the lid rattling on a boiling pot before James Watts came along and thought - "I can use that to make a steam engine". The flip side of this is once someone like James pointsout the connection, it seems obvious to everyone.
Her main poin5, mention3d in other presentatjons, is that nature uses low energy, low toxicity, low polluting ways to do what present technologies do at high energy waste, pollution and toxicity.
making just one [conscious] decision to change a deeply ingrained pattern IS considered an effective strategy for creating behavioral change. by being able to change ur pattern of behaviour you have proven that tought and concious will can overpower any genetic predispositions
You sound like Dr. Joe Dispenza. "We live life in an auto-pilot. Most of our unconscious actions are repetitive patterns. Patterns are what makes nature. It's what makes us." Something like that. I can't recall the exact words but that's how I understood it. Anyway I'm interested in why talks on consciousness came this far and in a video about biomimicry too! Why mention consciousness here?
Good talk. Why on earth are people giving this less than 5 stars?? i don't get it. I enjoyed it and she's right, nature already has answers to most of our questions.
To some extent they did. The airfoil os derived from looking at bird's wings, by them or before by Lilienthalk. They also realised, early on that flapping is not feasible for machines and put a lot of effort into a lightweight motor.
I agree, once again. if thought can control emotions you are essentially controlling gene expression. and if thought can control gene expression i think it would be safe to say that the only limit to what one can experience psychologically and physically is linked to the richness of functional genes in ones genome. imagine wut unexperienced emotions and abilitys lie out there in combinations of nucleotides we have not yet experienced!
Obviously this is an old idea. I think Janine's, point was just to spread some awareness, and to get people thinking and talking. Which clearly has worked. I enjoyed most the information on actual projects under taken with private capital. Theres no better way to creat change
Biomimicry, I want to design a pedestrian park in the center of a small town. With a focus on Biomimicry, can you give me suggestions? in March there are strong winds. At summer in Greece, we have high temperatures. The area is 17 meters wide and 450 meter long. What should I consider, what should I avoid, and more?
How we are amazed by the design of our universe But the real question is how it designed ! It's great to understand our world and how it's works But to refer to the system as a person that builds it'self is what not quit understandable !?
Creation screams praises to the creator but not us, we attribute this brilliance to a universe that exploded into existence out of nothing and self assembled...sad and foolish, where has our reason gone
That "Opal" car she was talking about, there's a vid showing how the program works. Pretty interesting stuff. (skip over the 17 second ad at the start) watch?v=kTUlyYWNgFQ
20 times more effective than existing fog moisture collection nets ? are they really so effective ? if they are... can such be made locally, rather low tech, from available materials ?
Oh how the turns have tabled. Without a scientist or "expert" to confirm it, some people would not easily believe that nature is capable of such genius or complexity as most can only see what's on the surface and compare that to human standards. Not nature's standards. The myth that anything that is well-made must not come from nature because they don't have the level of "sentience" as us... As if they don't have genius, creativity, and minds of their own.
Yes... we can't stand for any scientist coming off sounding faith-based. How can anyone look at nature and deny an intelligent designer? I think it takes FAR more faith to think something as complex as DNA somehow formed on its own.
Axiom is a logic term, and I deal with proof. But why she sounds that way specifically (other then the the talk of brilliants and design) is that she defines Biomimicry partly as 'sustainable'. That is one of those organic feel good terms that has nothing to do with an efficient design. Second is that she supports a group that says 'cities [should] provide the same level of ecosystem services'. as (I presume) a non-developed area. Cities are good for the environment as is(see Charter Cities)
i totally disagree. by saying we cant control our behaviours is to question the very essense that sets us apart from other animals. ALL behavioural traits can be induced or supressed by concious will. physical traits of course are determined by genetics. but behaviour is not. even if you are predisposed to be shy, for example, u can voluntarily choose not to. it is via technology that we overcome pysical barriers. and it is via our minds that we overcome behavioural barriers.
Nah, elected governments have short time frames, corporate entities even shorter, the economy at present is 'nature predatory' and the power of common man to change this is near to zilch.
Good question. The only thing I can criticize is it comes off a bit faith based. Yes nature has done a lot and it is a good idea to learn from nature, but she is presenting it kind of like a religion. Just because it is natural does not make it good, right, moral, or even better. What does it mean to have cities provide the same level of ecosystem services? That is not the function of a city. This common notion that natural is better just because it is natural is not valid.
Well, nature is subject to evolution. And evolution is always set on making everything in nature just perfect at what it does. I think shes only saying we should look to nature to give us easy answers. We dont have to mimic all of it. Just the stuff that we find useful. And not because its natural, because it works.
This is not an intelligent design freak, don't worry guys. Get to around 3:45 if you want the scientific questions and answers. What she is saying is fantastic, what better efficient design is there than nature itself. She shows examples of how creatures survive with such minimal resources and how we can copy that. We have all the resources in the world at our finger tips, some of the things stopping us from doing the right thing is greed and ignorance.
I wish humans weren't in the habit of manufacturing needs and then using up resources to satisfy those needs. We don't need a million high-efficiency lights in Las Vegas. We need to correct the flaws in our arrogant adult world that lead to such embarrassing wastes of energy. I do however enjoy washing my clothes in detergent, driving a car instead of riding a horse, and watching videos online instead of reading by candlelight. I don't want us to go backwards. Just forward and out of the fog.
"I live here." hahahahaha I disagree with you, but you made me laugh really hard. It takes quite a lot to inspire the average Joe to take an interest in science and that personal touch is usually what sells it.
"what we need to do is use our collective intelligence to find ways that allow us to alter our gene switches" - So you're saying that to be able to not be controlled by our genes is we need to find a way to "tweak" it so that we can act on favorable outcomes? Interesting.
You have to cultivate and work on compassion as an individual but also as a society. Do you see much of that? We are on the last leg, one hopes, of dead stupid materialism.
@5:51 we see an image of the kingfisher breaking the density barrier without a splash so it can see.... that particular image of the Kingfisher reminds me of the well known middle ages sketch of the 'dove' a.k.a. the Holy Spirit diving into the Grail cup ... ;)
I see what you're doing... coming from the teleological argument with a bunch of unfounded assertions. First that there is a design, second that nature is a being, third that there is such a thing as perfection, fourth that if there is a designer that it is male, and fifth that this design works well. I'm sure I left a couple out but those were the ones that came to the top of my head.
00:11
If I could reveal anything that is hidden from us, at least in modern cultures, it would be to reveal something that we've forgotten, that we used to know as well as we knew our own names. And that is that we live in a competent universe, that we are part of a brilliant planet, and that we are surrounded by genius.
00:42
Biomimicry is a new discipline that tries to learn from those geniuses, and take advice from them, design advice. That's where I live, and it's my university as well. I'm surrounded by genius. I cannot help but remember the organisms and the ecosystems that know how to live here gracefully on this planet. This is what I would tell you to remember if you ever forget this again. Remember this. This is what happens every year. This is what keeps its promise. While we're doing bailouts, this is what happened. Spring.
01:30
Imagine designing spring. Imagine that orchestration. You think TED is hard to organize. (Laughter) Right? Imagine, and if you haven't done this in a while, do. Imagine the timing, the coordination, all without top-down laws, or policies, or climate change protocols. This happens every year. There is lots of showing off. There is lots of love in the air. There's lots of grand openings. And the organisms, I promise you, have all of their priorities in order.
02:20
I have this neighbor that keeps me in touch with this, because he's living, usually on his back, looking up at those grasses. And one time he came up to me -- he was about seven or eight years old -- he came up to me. And there was a wasp's nest that I had let grow in my yard, right outside my door. And most people knock them down when they're small. But it was fascinating to me, because I was looking at this sort of fine Italian end papers. And he came up to me and he knocked. He would come every day with something to show me. And like, knock like a woodpecker on my door until I opened it up. And he asked me how I had made the house for those wasps, because he had never seen one this big. And I told him, "You know, Cody, the wasps actually made that." And we looked at it together. And I could see why he thought, you know -- it was so beautifully done. It was so architectural. It was so precise.
03:25
But it occurred to me, how in his small life had he already believed the myth that if something was that well done, that we must have done it. How did he not know -- it's what we've all forgotten -- that we're not the first ones to build. We're not the first ones to process cellulose. We're not the first ones to make paper. We're not the first ones to try to optimize packing space, or to waterproof, or to try to heat and cool a structure. We're not the first ones to build houses for our young.
04:05
What's happening now, in this field called biomimicry, is that people are beginning to remember that organisms, other organisms, the rest of the natural world, are doing things very similar to what we need to do. But in fact they are doing them in a way that have allowed them to live gracefully on this planet for billions of years. So these people, biomimics, are nature's apprentices. And they're focusing on function. What I'd like to do is show you a few of the things that they're learning. They have asked themselves, "What if, every time I started to invent something, I asked, 'How would nature solve this?'"
04:51
And here is what they're learning. This is an amazing picture from a Czech photographer named Jack Hedley. This is a story about an engineer at J.R. West. They're the people who make the bullet train. It was called the bullet train because it was rounded in front, but every time it went into a tunnel it would build up a pressure wave, and then it would create like a sonic boom when it exited. So the engineer's boss said, "Find a way to quiet this train."
05:17
He happened to be a birder. He went to the equivalent of an Audubon Society meeting. And he studied -- there was a film about king fishers. And he thought to himself, "They go from one density of medium, the air, into another density of medium, water, without a splash. Look at this picture. Without a splash, so they can see the fish. And he thought, "What if we do this?" Quieted the train. Made it go 10 percent faster on 15 percent less electricity.
05:48
How does nature repel bacteria? We're not the first ones to have to protect ourselves from some bacteria. Turns out that -- this is a Galapagos Shark. It has no bacteria on its surface, no fouling on its surface, no barnacles. And it's not because it goes fast. It actually basks. It's a slow-moving shark. So how does it keep its body free of bacteria build-up? It doesn't do it with a chemical. It does it, it turns out, with the same denticles that you had on Speedo bathing suits, that broke all those records in the Olympics,
06:22
but it's a particular kind of pattern. And that pattern, the architecture of that pattern on its skin denticles keep bacteria from being able to land and adhere. There is a company called Sharklet Technologies that's now putting this on the surfaces in hospitals to keep bacteria from landing, which is better than dousing it with anti-bacterials or harsh cleansers that many, many organisms are now becoming drug resistant. Hospital-acquired infections are now killing more people every year in the United States than die from AIDS or cancer or car accidents combined -- about 100,000.
07:04
This is a little critter that's in the Namibian desert. It has no fresh water that it's able to drink, but it drinks water out of fog. It's got bumps on the back of its wing covers. And those bumps act like a magnet for water. They have water-loving tips, and waxy sides. And the fog comes in and it builds up on the tips. And it goes down the sides and goes into the critter's mouth. There is actually a scientist here at Oxford who studied this, Andrew Parker. And now kinetic and architectural firms like Grimshaw are starting to look at this as a way of coating buildings so that they gather water from the fog. 10 times better than our fog-catching nets.
07:49
CO2 as a building block. Organisms don't think of CO2 as a poison. Plants and organisms that make shells, coral, think of it as a building block. There is now a cement manufacturing company starting in the United States called Calera. They've borrowed the recipe from the coral reef, and they're using CO2 as a building block in cement, in concrete. Instead of -- cement usually emits a ton of CO2 for every ton of cement. Now it's reversing that equation, and actually sequestering half a ton of CO2 thanks to the recipe from the coral.
08:25
None of these are using the organisms. They're really only using the blueprints or the recipes from the organisms. How does nature gather the sun's energy? This is a new kind of solar cell that's based on how a leaf works. It's self-assembling. It can be put down on any substrate whatsoever. It's extremely inexpensive and rechargeable every five years. It's actually a company a company that I'm involved in called OneSun, with Paul Hawken.
08:53
There are many many ways that nature filters water that takes salt out of water. We take water and push it against a membrane. And then we wonder why the membrane clogs and why it takes so much electricity. Nature does something much more elegant. And it's in every cell. Every red blood cell of your body right now has these hourglass-shaped pores called aquaporins. They actually export water molecules through. It's kind of a forward osmosis. They export water molecules through, and leave solutes on the other side. A company called Aquaporin is starting to make desalination membranes mimicking this technology.
09:35
Trees and bones are constantly reforming themselves along lines of stress. This algorithm has been put into a software program that's now being used to make bridges lightweight, to make building beams lightweight. Actually G.M. Opel used it to create that skeleton you see, in what's called their bionic car. It lightweighted that skeleton using a minimum amount of material, as an organism must, for the maximum amount of strength.
10:10
This beetle, unlike this chip bag here, this beetle uses one material, chitin. And it finds many many ways to put many functions into it. It's waterproof. It's strong and resilient. It's breathable. It creates color through structure. Whereas that chip bag has about seven layers to do all of those things. One of our major inventions that we need to be able to do to come even close to what these organisms can do is to find a way to minimize the amount of material, the kind of material we use, and to add design to it. We use five polymers in the natural world to do everything that you see. In our world we use about 350 polymers to make all this.
11:03
Nature is nano. Nanotechnology, nanoparticles, you hear a lot of worry about this. Loose nanoparticles. What is really interesting to me is that not many people have been asking, "How can we consult nature about how to make nanotechnology safe?" Nature has been doing that for a long time. Embedding nanoparticles in a material for instance, always. In fact, sulfur-reducing bacteria, as part of their synthesis, they will emit, as a byproduct, nanoparticles into the water. But then right after that, they emit a protein that actually gathers and aggregates those nanoparticles so that they fall out of solution.
11:47
Energy use. Organisms sip energy, because they have to work or barter for every single bit that they get. And one of the largest fields right now, in the world of energy grids, you hear about the smart grid. One of the largest consultants are the social insects. Swarm technology. There is a company called Regen. They are looking at how ants and bees find their food and their flowers in the most effective way as a whole hive. And they're having appliances in your home talk to one another through that algorithm, and determine how to minimize
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12:33
There's a group of scientists in Cornell that are making what they call a synthetic tree, because they are saying, "There is no pump at the bottom of a tree." It's capillary action and transpiration pulls water up, a drop at a time, pulling it, releasing it from a leaf and pulling it up through the roots. And they're creating -- you can think of it as a kind of wallpaper. They're thinking about putting it on the insides of buildings to move water up without pumps.
13:06
Amazon electric eel -- incredibly endangered, some of these species -- create 600 volts of electricity with the chemicals that are in your body. Even more interesting to me is that 600 volts doesn't fry it. You know we use PVC, and we sheath wires with PVC for insulation. These organisms, how are they insulating against their own electric charge? These are some questions that we've yet to ask.
13:35
Here's a wind turbine manufacturer that went to a whale. Humpback whale has scalloped edges on its flippers. And those scalloped edges play with flow in such a way that is reduces drag by 32 percent. These wind turbines can rotate in incredibly slow windspeeds, as a result.
13:57
MIT just has a new radio chip that uses far less power than our chips. And it's based on the cochlear of your ear, able to pick up internet, wireless, television signals and radio signals, in the same chip. Finally, on an ecosystem scale.
14:19
At Biomimicry Guild, which is my consulting company, we work with HOK Architects. We're looking at building whole cities in their planning department. And what we're saying is that, shouldn't our cities do at least as well, in terms of ecosystem services, as the native systems that they replace? So we're creating something called Ecological Performance Standards that hold cities to this higher bar.
14:48
The question is -- biomimicry is an incredibly powerful way to innovate. The question I would ask is, "What's worth solving?" If you haven't seen this, it's pretty amazing. Dr. Adam Neiman. This is a depiction of all of the water on Earth in relation to the volume of the Earth -- all the ice, all the fresh water, all the sea water -- and all the atmosphere that we can breathe, in relation to the volume of the Earth. And inside those balls life, over 3.8 billion years, has made a lush, livable place for us.
15:26
And we are in a long, long line of organisms to come to this planet and ask ourselves, "How can we live here gracefully over the long haul?" How can we do what life has learned to do? Which is to create conditions conducive to life. Now in order to do this, the design challenge of our century, I think, we need a way to remind ourselves of those geniuses, and to somehow meet them again.
16:02
One of the big ideas, one of the big projects I've been honored to work on is a new website. And I would encourage you all to please go to it. It's called AskNature.org. And what we're trying to do, in a TEDesque way, is to organize all biological information by design and engineering function.
16:21
And we're working with EOL, Encyclopedia of Life, Ed Wilson's TED wish. And he's gathering all biological information on one website. And the scientists who are contributing to EOL are answering a question, "What can we learn from this organism?" And that information will go into AskNature.org. And hopefully, any inventor, anywhere in the world, will be able, in the moment of creation, to type in, "How does nature remove salt from water?" And up will come mangroves, and sea turtles and your own kidneys.
16:57
And we'll begin to be able to do as Cody does, and actually be in touch with these incredible models, these elders that have been here far, far longer than we have. And hopefully, with their help, we'll learn how to live on this Earth, and on this home that is ours, but not ours alone. Thank you very much. (Applause)
Andy Li Thank you so much !’
Thank you
This presentation warms my heart.. it seems there might be a future for us on this planet after all.
Yes, if we can only take the opportunity.
Alive?
@@ಠಿಠಿ-ದ6ಗ Thriving.
@@ehhhhhhhhhh how changed it is from 12 years ago
@@ಠಿಠಿ-ದ6ಗ How changed is what?
upsetting this only has 200k views in 11 years... i actually searched for this
Wow there are people who search for this? Are you a designer or architect by any chance?
yep searched for it as well. Industrial Design Engineering student
@@weneedmoreconsideratepeopl4006 I have finished my apprenticeship as metalworker I'm also interested in Additive manufacturing/ 3D printing and biomimicry can be a very useful tool
I just increased it by one
And 21Million a year later. Let not tomorrow's problems become today's worries.
Thank you Janine Benyus for this Ted talk. Been trying to rebound in health and while I do, I look at biophilic design & mimicry as a huge hope for now and the future. I'm working on a kids' model building to help get the word out because this is the way to unite people in hope. At this time when media spreads climate destruction news, I look to these things to lift my own spirit and move forward with my own projects.
We are surrounded by genius... we are geniuses, who have forgotten about it. Love for the idea of biomimicry...
Janine Benyus is a great inspiration. Although she gives old news, she has news and models for our times.
How Janine Benyus is not yet considered for a Nobel Prize is beyond me.
Hero Miles I agree she is completely changing all fields of science. Einstein focused on physics only. Janine’s ideas are a complete game changer. This girl is on fire.
I imagine this also happened to geniuses like her back in the day. They didn't get the recognition for their contribution that they deserved. Some prize that is.
Maybe her category is not yet created for her-maybe in Economic Sciences?
I just discovered her. She is pretty amazing 👏 !!!!
I want her to win a Norbel Prize.
Actually her talk is about how nature, over millions of years has found the optimal designs (in most cases, not all) through evolutionary algorithms that allow for increasingly complex and intricate designs where at first everything was clunky and through successive generations and mutations bad designs were weeded out and better ones kept. That we are still at that "clunky design" phase and could do well to use those same algorithms to our advantage.
The fool has said there is no god.
Just chance. Nothing more
No intelligent input
Mind boggling
Inspiring... and I'm not very easily inspired anymore; I was made dull and complacent and learned taking everything for granted, growing up. But for the last couple of years I've been trying to unlearn the misinformation, lies and blindness!
Thanks to inspirational people like her - Janine Benyus - and others, for instance Carl Sagan, I've been re-learning how to appreciate all this wonder that is our existence! It's easy to notice just the ugliness, but to see the beauty... is spectacular!
Have you heard of Permaculture?
Carl Sagan and permaculture? Thanks for mentioning this btw. Looks like I've got a new person and concept to look into. 😄
that was brilliant. I knew we had looked at birds for flight and sharks for hydrodynamics but I didn't appreciate just how much nature had to offer.
Great Job! I LOVE EVERYONE WHO IS ON THIS CHANNEL! THANK YOU FOR KEEPING US ALIVE!
wow! how are you!you commented when I was 2 ears od
Within every cell of all of life, there exists an interactive receiver/transmitter system, with quantum characteristics which has the capability of interpreting the encoded signature which is transmitted from sources that have only been realized by some as of late.
The medium used to send and receive information between all of life on the planet and the sentient design system is earth’s magnetic field and through varying frequencies which stimulates oxygen molecules
Your comment intrigues me.
Have you read this from a book? What you say on there being a source for these designs sounds similar to what Nikola Tesla said when he got interviewed on how he was able to come up with unique inventions.
found this by accident, loved it! found the two websites she mentions, gonna devour them later.
The website she mentions is asknature.org/
a lot of studies and experiments find what makes us so different from chips is that we work together and we dont just care about ourselves. we understand what benifits one can help the whole group aswell.
This is amazing, we really need to consider nature and how it is doing so for so long.
Superb presentation all should know one needs to learn from nature.
"The URL contained a malformed video ID."
But i know this Car. My original comment (that did not post?) was that GM/O had indeed a similar project. At first i thougt it yielded a very similar car but as it turns out i was misstaken. They only use it for the internal structure.
the drag on the Elise is not suprising as it needs downforce to keep its feather wight on the road. Another exaple of high drag coefficient (cd) is the Corvette C6
Stock cd: 0.28
Z06 cd: 0.31
ZR cd: 0.34
Hell to the yeah. Permaculture design + biomimicry = the future
hey, how are you, you commented this when I was 4 years old
"9 times out of 10 the ingrained pattern will win"
neurons that fire together wire together. the next time you try to overcome ur physiological predispositions you be will be more and more successful until ur have 'conditioned' urself to react in a way that you willfully choose to.
Wow, it's really incredible to imagine where technology will eventually lead when considering all the things we could learn from nonhuman life.
Very insightful presentation.
The Wright brothers were successful because they didn't mimic birds in their transfer of power to the air. They did use principles of lift that birds use to get off the ground. Before the brothers the attempts to create flight involved a flapping motion, or lighter than air devices such as balloons.
This presentation raises a lot of philosophical questions/issues.
That's right
I want to get into this, it’s been two years now that I’ve been looking into this
I live in Japan.I learned this theory in Japanese high school.I was surprised at her idea.
Wow, Japan is indeed pretty advanced!
Very powerful lecture.I agree that we must go return back to mama,mama nature.....
I wonder if I can still use the organism without infringing on someone's patent of natural process on earth.
Nature has everything for us to learn and grow but we need to protect it if we want to flourish more..
7:05 this may have been true 15 years ago but the leading causes of death in the United States now are as follows: 1. Opioid Overdose 2. Automobile related 3. Heart Disease
Truly mind blowing lecture, everyone should see this
I don't see any meat in this, science by definition comes from the observation of nature, technology comes from science.
The only thing you need to turn observation into technology is for someone to make the connection, but those people are rare.
How many people saw the lid rattling on a boiling pot before James Watts came along and thought - "I can use that to make a steam engine".
The flip side of this is once someone like James pointsout the connection, it seems obvious to everyone.
Her main poin5, mention3d in other presentatjons, is that nature uses low energy, low toxicity, low polluting ways to do what present technologies do at high energy waste, pollution and toxicity.
A wonderful presentation
An old idea but a good one. Great overview of some new products I look forward to seeing, good video.
making just one [conscious] decision to change a deeply ingrained pattern IS considered an effective strategy for creating behavioral change.
by being able to change ur pattern of behaviour you have proven that tought and concious will can overpower any genetic predispositions
You sound like Dr. Joe Dispenza. "We live life in an auto-pilot. Most of our unconscious actions are repetitive patterns. Patterns are what makes nature. It's what makes us." Something like that. I can't recall the exact words but that's how I understood it.
Anyway I'm interested in why talks on consciousness came this far and in a video about biomimicry too! Why mention consciousness here?
I AM SO LOVING THIS!
OK, i checked it. All Pictures belong to MB.
Hm..... why is my previous comment to you not displayed?
Good talk. Why on earth are people giving this less than 5 stars?? i don't get it. I enjoyed it and she's right, nature already has answers to most of our questions.
How incredibly cool. The upcoming videogame 'Brink' also mentions the coral cement.
Excellent. Thanks for the wisdom.
Indeed, the Flying Spagetti Monster has designed the universe very well.
Let us pray to him right now.
Intelligent, incredible design doesn't happen by accident.
It's called evolution
billion year of evolution
@@menezessilva3007 no evidence .
Nice video.
Did the Wright brothers mimic birds?
inquisitive871 I think they based it off the pigeon yea
To some extent they did. The airfoil os derived from looking at bird's wings, by them or before by Lilienthalk. They also realised, early on that flapping is not feasible for machines and put a lot of effort into a lightweight motor.
I agree, once again.
if thought can control emotions you are essentially controlling gene expression. and if thought can control gene expression i think it would be safe to say that the only limit to what one can experience psychologically and physically is linked to the richness of functional genes in ones genome. imagine wut unexperienced emotions and abilitys lie out there in combinations of nucleotides we have not yet experienced!
Obviously this is an old idea. I think Janine's, point was just to spread some awareness, and to get people thinking and talking. Which clearly has worked.
I enjoyed most the information on actual projects under taken with private capital. Theres no better way to creat change
Love it Biomimicry is the present, past and future. Stubbornly Persistent Illusion Loop 🌎
so relevant toaday to fertilize our imagination and make sustainable designs possible inspired by nature
someone have a free link to download 21st century reading unit 3 pdf ?
Biomimicry, I want to design a pedestrian park in the center of a small town. With a focus on Biomimicry, can you give me suggestions? in March there are strong winds. At summer in Greece, we have high temperatures. The area is 17 meters wide and 450 meter long. What should I consider, what should I avoid, and more?
All in nature is about optimization.
5*'s Brilliant Presentation.
How we are amazed by the design of our universe
But the real question is how it designed !
It's great to understand our world and how it's works
But to refer to the system as a person that builds it'self is what not quit understandable !?
Wonderful
can anyone send me a link to the company onesun with paul hawkin? my father is investing in solar technology and i want to lead him in this direction.
what is the difference between the terms "biomimicry" and "biomimetics"?
YES! nominate Jacque Fresco! He would be a brilliant presenter!
I love this!
How do I like this 1,000 times?
Creation screams praises to the creator but not us, we attribute this brilliance to a universe that exploded into existence out of nothing and self assembled...sad and foolish, where has our reason gone
That "Opal" car she was talking about, there's a vid showing how the program works.
Pretty interesting stuff.
(skip over the 17 second ad at the start)
watch?v=kTUlyYWNgFQ
I swear tf thats an icecream sandwhich shes got in her hand
anyone got the website she recommended at the end of the talk?
Ask Nature dot org
Hello!!!!! The designer is God!
Hello! This is not a religion! It's just a way to understand our world better
Which one?
lmao no!
it maybe that its tooo good to be just natural selection.
2020 anyone?
God is perfect. God is real.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
John 1:3
King James Version
Amen
It's most beautiful site I ever search ❤❤
5*s. Heavy
and interesting
Information.
Thanks,
Humans must know their limitations for them to fit in
20 times more effective than existing fog moisture collection nets ? are they really so effective ? if they are... can such be made locally, rather low tech, from available materials ?
actually, science was first concieved as a way of proving that the world is so complex that only god could have created it.
Oh how the turns have tabled. Without a scientist or "expert" to confirm it, some people would not easily believe that nature is capable of such genius or complexity as most can only see what's on the surface and compare that to human standards. Not nature's standards.
The myth that anything that is well-made must not come from nature because they don't have the level of "sentience" as us... As if they don't have genius, creativity, and minds of their own.
I love my planet!
Shout out to those USTP students who are watching this 😊😉
with a user name like that, one can only expect great insight
must take google a little while to collect the result, coz i'm still seeing zero.
Yes... we can't stand for any scientist coming off sounding faith-based. How can anyone look at nature and deny an intelligent designer? I think it takes FAR more faith to think something as complex as DNA somehow formed on its own.
Things that don't exist can't be authorities.
their new 7 series looks like a Volvo s class :)
Axiom is a logic term, and I deal with proof. But why she sounds that way specifically (other then the the talk of brilliants and design) is that she defines Biomimicry partly as 'sustainable'. That is one of those organic feel good terms that has nothing to do with an efficient design. Second is that she supports a group that says 'cities [should] provide the same level of ecosystem services'. as (I presume) a non-developed area. Cities are good for the environment as is(see Charter Cities)
i totally disagree. by saying we cant control our behaviours is to question the very essense that sets us apart from other animals.
ALL behavioural traits can be induced or supressed by concious will. physical traits of course are determined by genetics. but behaviour is not. even if you are predisposed to be shy, for example, u can voluntarily choose not to.
it is via technology that we overcome pysical barriers. and it is via our minds that we overcome behavioural barriers.
Nah, elected governments have short time frames, corporate entities even shorter, the economy at present is 'nature predatory' and the power of common man to change this is near to zilch.
Good question. The only thing I can criticize is it comes off a bit faith based. Yes nature has done a lot and it is a good idea to learn from nature, but she is presenting it kind of like a religion. Just because it is natural does not make it good, right, moral, or even better. What does it mean to have cities provide the same level of ecosystem services? That is not the function of a city. This common notion that natural is better just because it is natural is not valid.
Natural is better simply because it is created by god.
Theology is the queen of science and thus faith is the first step to knowledge
Tq information
But how does nature solve existential crisis and procrastination
cool stuff
whats that little bug called??
The "fog-basking" beetle (Onymacris unguicularis)
Well, nature is subject to evolution. And evolution is always set on making everything in nature just perfect at what it does. I think shes only saying we should look to nature to give us easy answers. We dont have to mimic all of it. Just the stuff that we find useful. And not because its natural, because it works.
This is not an intelligent design freak, don't worry guys. Get to around 3:45 if you want the scientific questions and answers. What she is saying is fantastic, what better efficient design is there than nature itself. She shows examples of how creatures survive with such minimal resources and how we can copy that.
We have all the resources in the world at our finger tips, some of the things stopping us from doing the right thing is greed and ignorance.
Find god
I wish humans weren't in the habit of manufacturing needs and then using up resources to satisfy those needs. We don't need a million high-efficiency lights in Las Vegas. We need to correct the flaws in our arrogant adult world that lead to such embarrassing wastes of energy. I do however enjoy washing my clothes in detergent, driving a car instead of riding a horse, and watching videos online instead of reading by candlelight. I don't want us to go backwards. Just forward and out of the fog.
Brilliant
"I live here."
hahahahaha
I disagree with you, but you made me laugh really hard. It takes quite a lot to inspire the average Joe to take an interest in science and that personal touch is usually what sells it.
old idea. VERY old idea.
"what we need to do is use our collective intelligence to find ways that allow us to alter our gene switches"
- So you're saying that to be able to not be controlled by our genes is we need to find a way to "tweak" it so that we can act on favorable outcomes? Interesting.
At least watch the whole video first guys.....
what if greed and ignorance are hardwired to our genes?
- then altruism & compassion must be hardwired as well.
how to behave, it's up to us.
You have to cultivate and work on compassion as an individual but also as a society. Do you see much of that? We are on the last leg, one hopes, of dead stupid materialism.
And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know both good and evil.
Genesis 3:22
Someone giving thumbs down to all the comments? Get a life.
@5:51 we see an image of the kingfisher breaking the density barrier without a splash so it can see....
that particular image of the Kingfisher reminds me of the well known middle ages sketch of the 'dove' a.k.a. the Holy Spirit diving into the Grail cup ... ;)
If you Google for the exact phrase "How does nature remove salt from water", you actually get zero results.
:(
Nice commercials at the end.
I see what you're doing... coming from the teleological argument with a bunch of unfounded assertions.
First that there is a design, second that nature is a being, third that there is such a thing as perfection, fourth that if there is a designer that it is male, and fifth that this design works well.
I'm sure I left a couple out but those were the ones that came to the top of my head.
why do the designer have to be male?
Actually one already ;)