Innovation i tech High

DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM
our friends are doing across
the world?
Are we sacrificing our native
habitat for the short-term
exhilaration of change?
We see this conflict all around
us. Instead of enjoying
sunsets, humans are “more
focussed on merging
themselves into a frame with
the setting sun in the form of
a “selfie” while thousands of
tonnes of toxic ‘e-waste’ are
being dumped in wetlands
each year. Words such as
'acorn', 'adder' and 'willow'
have been eliminated from
the Oxford Junior Dictionary
to make way for 'broadband',
'analogue' and 'cut and
paste'.
We complain about the
colonisation of our wild places
with wifi, yet declare internet
access to be a human right.
We dream of relaxing on
tranquil Seychelles islands,
but demand unsustainably
cheap flights to get us there.
No wonder we're so
conflicted.
As the scientific philosopher
Christopher Potter points out
in his book “How To Make
A Human Being, “Humans
never were part of nature.
We were always part of
technology.”
From the moment modern
humans harnessed the power
of fire, it put us on a path to
global domination and we
never looked back.
Having said that, more
humans today than ever
before are waking up to the
new realities.
Although many of our digital
inventions serve to estrange
us from the world they were
created to enrich, technology
and nature are also
continually cross-pollinating
in powerfully positive ways.
It is also important to
discuss the use of tech to
support conservation and
sustainability projects.
Technology For Nature is a
unique partnership between
Zoological Society of London,
University College London
and Microsoft Research
designed “to rapidly scale
up our global conservation
response” by bringing
together technologists and
zoologists.
Current projects include
FetchClimate, a fast, free,
cloud-based service that
allows experts to access
accurate climate change
data from any geographical
region around the world, and
Mataki, which develops new
devices for recording the
behaviour of animals in the
wild.
The conservation issues
we most urgently need to
tackle right now include
the monitoring of protected
areas, tracking of species
with a high commercial value,
and the online detection
of illegal wildlife trading.
In the past 10 years, our
emerging ability to achieve
near constant monitoring of
valuable natural assets, such
as protected areas and rhinos
has created a powerful nexus of
information
Of course, nature isn’t all
puppies and waterfalls, and tech
is also helping people manage
her crueller side. Hashtagged
tweets and geotagged
Instagram photos have become
a valuable way to share real-time
updates as natural disasters
unfold. Google’s Person
Finder, which was created to
reunite relatives during 2011’s
Japanese tsunami, is currently
live in Nepal. And various
apps like Federal Emergency
Management Agency’s (FEMA’s)
app, allow stricken communities
to crowdsource crisis relief.
Consider the field of biomimetics,
where natural design elements
and processes are used as
a model for new materials,
devices and tools. One famous
historic example is the invention
of Velcro, which was developed
by Swiss engineer Georges de
Mestral in 1941 after he observed
how cockleburs in the mountains
caught on his clothing and in his
dog's fur.
In the field of construction,
companies such as ours focus
on sustainable methods and
push environment-friendly
designs with use of sustainable
materials. Together with
visionary architects, engineers
and suppliers we need to devise
sustainable and commercially
viable alternatives to traditional
construction materials.
During the entire lifecycle of a
construction project, we help
developers decide what to do with
INNOVATIONANDTECH
January | 2018
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