This is the key component in our next 100 years as a species and society - Are we ready to collectively strive for an evolutionary, aware and active artificial landscape, culture and future, or do we simply want to continue with the stagnant sustainability rhetoric, which puts innovation in the hands of capitalist ventures, aimed at proliferating and prolonging the life cycle of our current, unsustainable lifestyles?
In a recent letter, Dr Rachel Armstrong, senior TED fellow and lecturer at Greenwich University's Architecture department, put forward the challenge facing humanity and our vision for innovation :
"...the kinds of ideas presented to industry are ones that are productised and are immediately recognisable to particular markets and pander to our immediate concerns and expectations."
She continued by outlining a key concept, taken from a new language being explored through the science of synthetic biology and the creativity of architectural artifice,
"If we don’t invest in creating evolvable (rather than sustainable – which preserves the status quo) practices then humanity itself will meet stark extinction scenarios in the middle of this century rather than making decisions based on evolutionary-style challenges."
This is protocellular artifice. The reason this area is so important is capture by Dr Armstrong as she exclaimed,
"... no, I don’t accept that our innovators are under-imagining at all: they’re being asked to make products rather than provide systems and methods that underpin change"
If we continue down this vein, characterised by the increasing propensity for our higher learning centres to capitalise on profit over intellectual pioneering, we will end up sailing in the same leaking boat, attempting to invent new paddles but sinking all the same.
We will move increasingly rapidly, develop our much needed products quicker, build our cities much faster, but still end up in the same, leaking boat.
The problem has not been addressed. One can't expect everyone to take to the new diet with zeal and see it through for the rest of their lives.
Instead, their mentality should be called in to question. Do they really want to change their habits? They won't loose weight without doing this.
All the same, unless a serious paradigm shift is proposed, nurtured and allowed to fight its own intellectual ground, we will keep on slowly sinking.
We will need visionaries on this road, to inspire our motley crew of castaways from a much brighter reality, aboard our sinking ship, to take to jumping and swimming again - in full faith that this boat is no good for them, and sustaining its speed only prolongs the inevitable sinking.