While I have been on holidays for the past week I was writing a chapter for a book called Greening.IT (www.greening.it) on "Biomimicry + Technology".
It seems I never stop - even on holidays I write or work, sometimes much to my own annoyance considering I am supposed to be spending time with my fiance. But in this case he was happy for me to work a bit because he was doing "man things" - building a verandah for his parent's holiday house. He even managed to pull me away from the computer for a day to paint the front of the house. Now I don't mind renovating - in fact I find it a refreshing change to sitting in front of a computer - but painting has to be the worst renovation job in the world! Considering one of my brothers is a professional painter, the enthusiasm obviously doesn't run in the family!
Anyway - back to the book. Biomimicry is a super interesting area. For those who don't know what Biomimicry is, AskNature.org, founded by Janine Benyus (Pioneer and noted writer on the subject), says Biomimicry is:
" a design discipline that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies, e.g., a solar cell inspired by a leaf. The core idea is that Nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with: energy, food production, climate control, non-toxic chemistry, transportation, packaging, and a whole lot more."
What this is essentially saying is that although as humans we expect that we must develop all the solutions – in reality there has already been over 3.8 billion years of research going on in the natural world. There has been mass evolution and mass extinctions based on the capability to survive and adapt to the immense challenges. For organisms that can’t build a house, heat the home or adapt the environment to their needs, there has been a need to develop amazing evolutionary physical and social adaptations that have kept their species alive for thousands, millions or billions of years. In fact, we are not just talking about a few species that have stood the test of time. We are talking about between 10-30 million species that have beaten a path and scored the goal every time.
So why can't adapt some of that goodness for IT? That is what my chapter is about.
The Greening.IT book will be released around May/June 2010 however you can download an electronic copy of the draft (minus my chapters at the time of writing) in case you want to get a feel for what my fellow contributors are talking about in the field of Green IT.
