WHOLE-SYSTEM THINKING By Shepherd Laughlin and Aleksandra Szymanska 12 : 03 : 2015 Anthropocene : Consilience : Life Sciences As the boundaries between modern society and nature begin to blur, consumerism is becoming more integrated with our living world. As this shift unfolds in the decades to come, brands will need to think on a planetary scale if they want to remain relevant in The Age of the Long Near. Introduction Whole-system Thinking Watch this video at https://www.lsnglobal.com/macro-trends/article/17236/whole- system-thinking Trends : Macro Trends Page 1 of 21
Transcript
WHOLE-SYSTEM THINKINGBy Shepherd Laughlin and Aleksandra Szymanska
As the boundaries between modern society and nature begin toblur, consumerism is becoming more integrated with our livingworld. As this shift unfolds in the decades to come, brands will
need to think on a planetary scale if they want to remain relevantin The Age of the Long Near.
Introduction
Whole-system Thinking
Watch this video at https://www.lsnglobal.com/macro-trends/article/17236/whole-system-thinking
1. Consumers are now looking for purpose, and assessing your brand’s long-term contribution to society andthe planet.
2. The Anthropocene is here, and it’s no longer possible to deny that major change is coming. Brands need toposition themselves as trusted partners in uncertain times.
3. The rise of Natural Capitalism means calculating your brand’s monetary cost or contribution to ecosystems.Share this information.
4. Waste is now a resource and opportunity. Convert cast-off materials into energy, or materials for high-endgarments.
5. The divide between rural and urban is blurring, leading to the Agropolis. Source ingredients as close aspossible to your consumers.
6. Synthetic tweaking is the future. Create products and campaigns that shift the GM debate away frombenefits to business, and toward benefits to consumers.
7. Consumers are uneasy with Synthetic Biology in the short term, but brands need to take the long view andimagine how biotech can transform your products and supply chain.
8. Nature and technology are merging, so look toward the emerging crop of biological innovators for partnersin branded initiatives.
9. Natural forces are now being harnessed in the built environment, so use energy itself as a medium forcreating engaging consumer spaces.
10. Planning cycles are now extended, so imagine how biology could help your brand adapt to a future inwhich nature and society are merged into a single system.
‘ We’ve been emphasising the downsides of being able to control the environment, but merging with andunderstanding nature has been an exceedingly good deal for our species ’
says Juan Enriquez, life sciences entrepreneur and author of Evolving Ourselves: How Unnatural Selection andNonrandom Mutation are Changing Life on Earth.
‘ Asking now how our ability to read, copy and rewrite life code will benefit consumers is like asking very early on‘what’s the internet going to be good for?’ ’
As predicted, the Turbulent Teens have seen waves of political and economic turmoil. But a larger, more systemiccrisis looms on the horizon: the relationship between human society and our living world.
As the human impact on the environment intensifies, it no longer makes sense to view nature as somethinguntouched by human activities and with little influence on our lives. Instead, we are thinking holistically about nature,in terms that go beyond traditional environmentalism. We are moving towards a world in which human innovationand nature will be integrated and hybridised.
In Whole-system Thinking, we explore:
: Anthropocene Mindsets – what the advent of the ‘human epoch’ means for our views on consumerism
: Trash to Table – why restaurateurs are taking inspiration from natural systems
: The New Biodisruptors – how technology innovators will reshape public perceptions of genetic modification
: Animal-free Omnivores – why ethical eaters will ultimately see the virtues of life grown in labs
Bioluminescent Forest by Friedrich van Schoor and Tarek Mawad
Watch this video at https://www.lsnglobal.com/macro-trends/article/17236/whole-system-thinking
People are beginning to realise that we have turned a corner as a species. As we alter the biosphere at a planetarylevel, we are starting to understand that, to survive, we will have to channel natural forces to our advantage.
Anthropocene Mindsets
In an age of entanglement between human activities andnature, the environment is no longer a pristine space tobe protected from consumerism, as previousconservationists believed.
The idea of creating a benign, sustainable economy hasfailed – consumerism is now part of the environment,and vice versa.
Anthropocene, the ‘human epoch’, is a term that hasbeen widely adopted to describe the geological periodsince humans began to significantly influence the worldaround them. The term implies that humanity now hassuch a pervasive influence on the Earth that it hasbecome a force of nature.
This concept has begun to influence humanists, cultural critics and consumers.
Plastiglomerate, a rock formation containing plastic inclusions, aproposed marker for the Anthropocene, found on Kamilo Beach,Hawaii, June 2014
‘ ‘This is the meaning of the Anthropocene: that thefuture of the human and material worlds are now totallyentwined’ ’
says writer McKenzie Wark, speaking at the November2014 Digital Labor conference at the New School inManhattan.
‘ ‘There is no longer a homeostatic cycle that can be putright just by withdrawing. There is no environment thatforms a neutral background.’ ’
The planet itself thus becomes our greatest experiment.The Anthropocene presents the Earth as the ultimatefusion of nature and human society, the ultimate WholeSystem.
The Great Acceleration: Art in the Age of the Anthropocene, 9thTaipei Biennial, The Deluge - Noah's Ark by Hung Chih Peng
Ice Watch by Olafur Eliasson Ice Watch by Olafur Eliasson Ice Watch by Olafur Eliasson
System Collapse
Whether we choose to respond to climate change or not, it is increasingly clear to the general public that humanactivity is fundamentally altering our environment.
Recent signs point to a tipping point in opinion. A New York Times/Stanford University poll carried out in January2015 found that 61% of members of the US Republican Party, previously resistant to the idea that humans areinfluencing climate change, now believe that if nothing is done, global warming will be a very or somewhat seriousproblem in the future.
Among the general population, the shift in thinking is even starker. In a February 2015 poll by The Future Laboratoryjust 12% of Britons and 11% of Americans said that ‘in the year 2035, my life will not have changed to accommodateshifts in the environment’.
Watch this video at https://www.lsnglobal.com/macro-trends/article/17236/whole-system-thinking
Re-enlightenment Rising
In 2013, LS:N Global described how science was bursting out of the laboratory and into the public consciousnessin Re-enlightenment Rising.
Now, as people are equipped with more knowledge ofscience as well as greater interest, they are more readilyengaging with it as an answer to the large-scale,systemic problems we face.
This mentality can be seen in the rise of citizen science,as consumers use a variety of new platforms tocontribute to science in their spare time. Communitybiohacking groups have sprung up in more than 50 citiesacross the US and Europe. Zooniverse, a communityplatform that enables people to take part in experiments,has gained more than 1,288,000 active participantssince it was launched in 2007, and the number isgrowing rapidly. This shift has also prompted ITcompanies such as IBM and SAP to launch citizenscience initiatives.Zooniverse
With sweeping global problems to confront, collaborationbetween specialists from all fields is increasinglynecessary. Consilience, which Pulitzer Prize-winningscientist and philosopher Edward O. Wilson defines as‘the interlocking of causal explanation acrossdisciplines’, is the order of the day.
In 2011, MIT professor and Nobel Laureate PhillipSharp called for convergence between the life sciences,physical sciences and engineering.
‘ This merging of technologies, processes and devicesinto a unified whole will create new pathways andopportunities for scientific and technologicaladvancement, ’
he wrote. Four years on, Consilient Thinking is reaching beyond science to have an impact on consumerism.
The Smog Free Park by Studio Roosegaarde, to be unveiled inRotterdam in 2015, uses an electronic vacuum cleaner to removesmog particles
Phillip Ross for Mazda Rebels
Watch this video at https://www.lsnglobal.com/macro-trends/article/17236/whole-system-thinking
Watch this video at https://www.lsnglobal.com/macro-trends/article/17236/whole-system-thinking
Innovators are embracing a deeper engagement with living systems, facilitated by biotechnology and geneticengineering. Just as nature and humanity are merging, biology is merging with technology. Meanwhile, the foodchain is merging with personal technology, the dining sector is redesigning its supply chain from a Whole-systemThinking perspective, and brands are creating models of commerce that benefit the environment rather thanexacerbating existing problems.
The New Biodisruptors
Just as the information revolution began with hometinkerers such as Steve Jobs, a new generation ofbiotech innovators is shaking up Silicon Valley.
‘ The first industrial revolution was about machines andthe second one is about information, ’
says Nina Tandon, CEO and co-founder of EpiBone,which grows living human bones for skeletalreconstruction.
‘ The third one will be seeing what we can do as weconnect what we know about fabrication and informationwith what we are learning about biology. ’
For more on why the new wave of technology investment is expanding beyond medicine into consumerbiotechnology, read our New Biodisruptors microtrend.
Juno DNA testing machine by Fuseproject for Fluidigm
Urban agriculture is often seen as the future of the foodsupply. We are now seeing new systems for growingfood in urban settings, beyond vertical farms.
Growing Underground has created a micro-herboperation in a tunnel 33m beneath the streets ofClapham in London to grow micro-greens and saladleaves. LED lighting and other technology ensure thatconditions remain stable throughout the year forcontinual production, while all nutrients are kept within aclosed-loop system.
In Japan, Fujitsu has converted a microchip factory into aradiation-free lettuce farm, while in Singapore,Panasonic has created an indoor vegetable farm to supply fresh produce to local restaurants.
Trash to Table
The dining sector is also rethinking its relationship with larger ecological systems. Silo restaurant, originally launchedin Melbourne by entrepreneur Joost Bakker, offers a seasonal menu that avoids waste, and produces all of its owningredients. Chef Douglas McMaster opened a Brighton branch of Silo in September 2014.
Joost Bakker’s Melbourne restaurant Brothl goes even further towards re-inventing dining from the perspective ofWhole-system Thinking. The menu is based around broths created using bones and offal discarded fromneighbouring restaurants.
‘ I truly believe that nutrient-dense soil produces nutrient-dense food. We can’t keep stripping the land and not puttingback what we take out. ’
Bakker tells The New York Times. For more, read our forthcoming Trash to Table microtrend.
Low-potassium lettuce growing in Fujitsu factories in Fukushima
Joost Bakker: Flowers for Bones, film by Earl Carler for The New York Times
Watch this video at https://www.lsnglobal.com/macro-trends/article/17236/whole-system-thinking
City-dwelling consumers are cultivating a newrelationship with the food chain that gives them controlover provenance and growing conditions.
Rather than emphasising craft and artisanaltechniques as urbanites did in the 2000s, this newwave combines urban farming with technology. This is inline with Whole-system Thinking and its emphasis onfusing natural processes with advanced technologies.
Massachusetts start-up SproutsIO is now testing asmartphone-responsive hydroculture system thatenables consumers to grow produce in their homes.Instead of the laborious DIY approach of conventionalurban farming, SproutsIO adopts a plug-and-play approach, and a clean design with the potential to reach a wideconsumer base interested in convenience above all else. ‘You place the seed pod into the SproutsIO, you add waterand you turn on your app, and it’s good to go,’ explains SproutsIO founder and CEO Jennifer Broutin Farah. ‘It can beas easy as making a coffee in your espresso machine.’
Niwa smartphone-controlled plant-growing system
Fungi Mutarium by Livin Studio Fungi Mutarium by Livin Studio Fungi Mutarium by Livin Studio
Powered by Waste
Brands and designers are looking at waste as a source of energy and nutrition. In July 2014, Sainsbury’s worked withwaste management firm Biffa to convert food waste into electricity using anaerobic digestion at its store in Cannock,near Birmingham. The store will no longer be connected to the grid for day-to-day power needs.
Livin Studio’s project Fungi Mutarium imagines technology that enables edible fungi to be grown on discardedplastic. The project imagines a future in which plastic waste could be converted back into organic matter, blurring thelines between the natural and the synthetic.
Watch this video at https://www.lsnglobal.com/macro-trends/article/17236/whole-system-thinking
Neo-materialism
Brands are rethinking materials and supply chains froma Whole-system Thinking perspective, making productsthat actively benefit the planet when consumed.
G-Star RAW has created garments using textiles wovenin part from recovered ocean plastic, which threatens thehealth of the planet’s oceans. Demand for the productscreates a further incentive to clean up eco-systems.
A partnership between musical artist will.i.am and Coca-Cola has resulted in Ekocycle, a brand initiative thateducates consumers about recycling. The EkocycleCube is a 3D printer that enables consumers to printobjects using post-consumer recycled plastic, cuttingdown on the waste produced by 3D printing.
G-Star Raw For the Oceans
You Buy, The Sea Pays by Young &Rubicam Paris for Surfrider Foundation
You Buy, The Sea Pays by Young &Rubicam Paris for Surfrider Foundation
You Buy, The Sea Pays by Young &Rubicam Paris for Surfrider Foundation
More brands are assigning economic value to aspects of the natural world that formerly were not quantified. Pumahas implemented an environmental profit and loss system in which the company assigns monetary value to naturalassets such as clean air, fresh water and productive land. This enables the company to gauge whether its activitiesultimately benefit the environment.
Other companies that are beginning to place a dollar value on eco-system services include the Dow ChemicalCompany and Puma’s parent company, Kering.
‘ It is my conviction that sustainable business is smart business. It gives us an opportunity to create value whilemaking a better world, ’
Watch this video at https://www.lsnglobal.com/macro-trends/article/17236/whole-system-thinking
As the fusion of technology and living systems continues, consumers will begin to see how genetic engineering canwork in favour of health, transparency and ethical eating, values they already hold dear. Meanwhile, as technologyharnesses energy alongside natural processes, artists and designers are creating work that reflects this exchange.
At the moment, the public is uncomfortable withgenetically modified (GM) foods. Public views divergemore widely from the views of scientists on GMO safetythan on any other issue, according to a January2015 study by the Pew Research Center. While 57% ofthe public believed that genetically modified foods weregenerally unsafe to eat, only 11% of scientists surveyedexpressed this belief.
But few people have yet considered the idea that GMproducts could potentially reduce reliance on theindustrial agriculture system and increase transparency.According to a September 2014 report from research
company Hartman Group, those Americans who were avoiding or reducing GMOs in their diet cited transparency astheir foremost concern.
Several companies are developing products such as milk, eggs and leather that can be grown inlaboratories. Modern Meadow can cultivate a square-foot leather sample in less than two months in a lab, comparedto the two or three years needed to produce leather from an animal. Muufri is using bacteria to ‘grow’ milk using ‘sixkey proteins for structure and function, and eight key fatty acids for flavour and richness’. And the IndieBio companyClara Foods aims to produce ex-vivo egg whites.
Although these novel systems appear unnatural, they have the potential to be much more transparent than thecurrent industrial agriculture system, according to scientist, entrepreneur and biohacker Ryan Bethencourt. Heimagines a billboard contrasting the bloody scene at a traditional slaughterhouse with meat grown in vitro in a lab. ‘Allyou see is meat, that’s it, with sugar, water and nutrients, in a very clean system, almost like an Apple-type factoryfloor,’ he says. ‘The contrast is just so strong.’
Muufri Animal-Free Milk
Biosynthetics 2.0
The emerging field of synthetic biology follows on fromConsilient Thinking to combine insights from physics,engineering, computer science and other disciplines.This approach enables scientists to create new biologicalsystems, fusing nature and technology.
Synthetic biology is attracting attention from brands andgovernments. In January 2015, UK business secretaryVince Cable announced a £40m (€55m, $61m)government investment in synthetic biology, for a total of£200m (€284m, $300m) in government funds invested inthe field since 2012.
One early consumer application for the field is incosmetics. San Francisco researchers at Solazyme developed the anti-ageing skincare brand Algenist based ontheir research into engineering algae into a source of fuel. Synthetic biology company Intrexon has entered apartnership with Johnson & Johnson to develop new skin and haircare products. These will be made using DNAtechnology that enables researchers to control the quality, function and performance of living cells.
Watch this video at https://www.lsnglobal.com/macro-trends/article/17236/whole-system-thinking
Glowing Lines, part of the Smart Highwayconcept by Studio Roosegaarde
Glowing Lines, part of the Smart Highwayconcept by Studio Roosegaarde
Glowing Lines, part of the Smart Highwayconcept by Studio Roosegaarde
Super Surfaces
Whole-system Thinking is ushering in a phase in which artists and designers look more readily to the living world forinspiration. In line with this, automotive and infrastructure designers are creating advanced surfaces that convertsunlight into energy.
In November 2014, Mercedes revealed the Vision G-Code SUV, a concept car finished in ‘multi-voltaic silver’ paintthat relays solar energy to the car’s internal power system, and also generates electricity from wind.
Dutch design firm Studio Roosegaarde has developed Glowing Lines, a project that aims to replace street lampsalong Dutch roads with strips of photo-luminising powder. These absorb solar energy during the day and glow atnight, marking out lanes and showing drivers the shape of the road ahead.
Cult of Resource
A new secular reverence for nature is emerging along with Whole-system Thinking. Artists and designers areblending nature with artificial technology, venerating both.
In October 2014, Irish artist John Gerrard created SolarReserve, a large-scale virtual simulation of a Nevadasolar plant. Occupying a prominent location inManhattan’s Lincoln Center, the work took on thecharacter of a secular shrine. For the second year in arow in 2015, the courtyard of the MoMA PS1contemporary art museum will pay tribute to energy andnature as a background for summer revelry. This year’sinstallation by Spanish architect Andrés Jaque will createa huge network of water-filtration pipes. When the waterreaches a certain level of purification, bioluminescentmicro-organisms will make it glow.
Water-purifying structure by Andrés Jaque, winner of the YoungArchitects Program at MoMA PS1
As we re-invent our lifestyles around Whole-system Thinking, in the far future architecture will merge with energy,biodiversity will be preserved using synthetic life, and advances in synthetic food production will unleash culinarycreativity.
Energetic Architecture
In the context of a system-level crisis, architects arefundamentally rethinking the relationship betweenenergy and the built environment to create holisticsystems.
For some, this means sustainable designs that harnessexisting natural flows in novel ways. The MasdarInstitute of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi, forexample, is developing a facility that uses seawater toirrigate the surrounding desert, producing fish andshrimp for human consumption and plants for biofuels.
More radically, architects are re-imagining energy flowsas a medium for architecture. Sean Lally, founder of theChicago architecture group Weathers and author of The Air from Other Planets: A Brief History of Architecture toCome, imagines speculative futures in which regions of electromagnetic, thermodynamic, acoustic and chemicalenergy can be turned on or off and reconfigured at will in urban spaces, much like street lights.
‘ I’m trying to create a visual language and an aesthetic quality to energy and these new states so people can see thepotential beyond sustainability as a moral good ’
Studio Roosegaard has created a concept for Beijing that reflects Lally’s ideas about malleable regions of energy.Its Smog Free Park envisages zones of clean air in public spaces, created using patented ion technology. Thestudio has also designed high-end Smog Rings made from compressed particles vacuumed from the air. The parkwill be realised in Rotterdam in 2015 before travelling to China.
Masdar City by Foster and Partners, Abu Dhabi
The In Vitro Meat Cookbook byNext Nature
The In Vitro Meat Cookbook byNext Nature
Rustic In Vitro, The In VitroMeat Cookbook by Next Nature
Bone Pickers, The In VitroMeat Cookbook by Next Nature
Transhuman Cuisine
Artists have begun to explore the long-term implications of synthetic biology for food culture, imagining how people inthe future will eat when the boundaries between nature and technology have fully collapsed, and even the ability ofhumans to process food may have been technologically enhanced.
The Dutch group Next Nature has created the In Vitro Meat Cookbook , featuring ‘meat paint, revived dodo wings,meat ice cream, cannibal snacks, steaks knitted like scarves and see-through sushi grown under perfectly controlledconditions’.
Royal College of Art student Paul Gong created the Human Hyena project, which explores a future in whichsynthetic biology might allow us to create microbes that enable humans to digest mouldy and out-of-date foods.
‘ I imagine transhumanists, DIYbio enthusiasts andmakers coming together to form a group known as‘human hyenas’, who want to tackle the increasinglyserious problem of food wastage ’
Living Technology
Noting that the human body processes certaincomputations more efficiently than any silicon microchip,researchers are looking towards a future in whichcomputers will use DNA to store data and makecalculations. Research published in the journal NewScientist estimates that each gramme of DNA couldpotentially store 455 exabytes of data, which means thatonly about four grammes would be needed to store alldigital data now in existence.
Artists are already exploring these possibilities. The band OK Go is working with the University of California, LosAngeles to encode its latest album in DNA.
Human Hyena by Paul Gong
Anti-extinctionists
Synthetic biology is creating a new approach toconservation that substitutes lab-grown products fornatural ones, preserving eco-systems throughcommerce.
The biotech start-up Pembient has set out to supplantthe illegal trade in rhinoceros horns by creating anidentical product grown in a lab using rhinoceros DNA.Demand from Asia, where some claim rhino horn hasmedicinal properties, has driven the rhinoceros nearly toextinction. Pembient, however, has found that theseconsumers are willing to accept lab-grown rhinoceroshorn as a substitute for the real thing.
‘ We’re trying to build natural products using an artificial process ’
Matthew Markus, CEO Pembient
Post-oil World
In a finite world, we are no longer asking whether our economy will move away from oil, but when. A world thatpowers itself without oil will be radically different in ways that we cannot predict, but it will certainly involve newapproaches to biological systems and technologies inspired by life.
‘In a post-oil world, you would expect an explosion in renewable energy enabled by smart grid technology, a move toelectric vehicles, air travel via advanced biofuels and lots of ways of converting waste to new uses,’ says SarahTulej, senior sustainability advisor at Forum for the Future.
The Beaked Porcupine, Endless Species by Kathryn Fleming
The Age of the Long Near calls for truly integrated thinking,which moves far beyond the environmental, and sees brands andbusinesses as inextricably embedded in global networks. Only byunderstanding the opportunities and threats that can come from
counterintuitive places can brands truly maximise their potential.This consultancy toolkit gives some pointers along the way.
Businesses need to move away from individualistic thinking, and instead focus ona shared narrative, with shared responsibilities. Brands and businesses need to lookat the wider implications of their decision-making, turning themselves into apositive ecosystem that enhances everything it comes into contact with
One man’s waste is another man’s fortune. Smart business will see long-termthinking as commercial viable growth; not a gimmick or even a moral imperative.Think in multi-revenue work streams, and find value in unlikely places, such aswaste and our biological futures
Don’t be afraid to bet on the counter-intuitive, and apply new mindsets to oldproblems. An artist will dare to do what an economist never would, and the resultscan often be surprisingly impactful. Rather than taking a reactive approach,become proactive and playful in the way you tackle the future
It’s time to accept the fact that synthetic biology is the next step in technology.Smart brands need to own the nature-tech discourse in a passionate and proactiveway, to make sure they remain part of the conversation, and can even move itforward
Think of your role in research, politics and academia. Brands need to be theconduit for heavy-hitting subjects, and help move these Big Ideas away fromsomething abstract, and into something impactful. Be a leader in bringing scienceinto the everyday
Reframe GM, and create a more meaningful, acceptable term. The negativeconnotations of this debate are unsolvable, so start creating messaging around bio-hacking, synthetics and genetic tweaking. This will be increasingly important inenabling our transition towards synthetic, efficient futures
Brands and businesses need to think more progressively than just recycling, andto go beyond vertical integration. You need to better understand the complex globalwebs of connection that are providing opportunities and threats to your business
Brands need to understand that what is for the greater good is also often goodbusiness practice too. This isn’t fuzzy ethics, but good business, so brands need tostart collaborating across sectors and markets in unusual ways. Rather than justfocusing on those connected to you in a direct, transactional, sense, think abouthow you can bring about greater transformations
Be active not passive, and believe in improvement, not just maintenance. This isthe key to the Spiral System, which isn’t a closed loop or a complete linearnarrative: it is an open and constantly expanding process
