Biomimicry (1997)

If upon first reading the title of this book you were slightly lost, don’t feel alone.  At first I thought it may be something to do with French street artists using natural camouflage!  Luckily, I turned to the blurb and was immediately fascinated by Janine Benyus’s stimulating and imaginative book about the possible future of environmental manufacturing/design and sustainability.

Benyus writes with adventurous prose and genuine enthusiasm about the potential direction of a series of different products/economy sectors/holistic systems in a book that, frankly, opened my eyes to a number of budding marriages between science and nature that had not even crossed my mind.  At times it feels like a science fiction novel, but the book is incredibly well researched – Benyus interviews many of the most credible and innovative scientists in each of the respective fields she writes about – and has a great blend of idealism and pragmatism.

Benyus playfully deconstructs the efforts made by scientists to mimic nature’s best designs in order to improve functionality and reduce their impact on the environment with the ‘Holy Grail’ of reaching sustainability (or even net positive impacts).  Just a few of the ideas that genuinely caught my attention include:

Bio-Computing

Understanding the computing strength of DNA and how this can be harnessed to radically improve the speed and size of our computers is incredibly hard to fathom (and I am certain the proceeding explanation will not do it justice, so please research more on your own if you’re interested).  Natural or bio-computing involves completely divorcing your mind from the idea of computers as man-made, solid (and slow) objects. 

Needless to say that my scientific knowledge isn’t strong enough to properly boil the process down to a digestible sentence in one blog, but the basic idea was developed by the head of the of the cutting-edge BioComputing Group, Michael Conrad, and revolves around harnessing the processing power of DNA/enzymes/proteins.  To evolve beyond digital computation (a.k.a. linear computation), where one piece of information is processed at a time using a series of zeros and ones, to parallel or 3D computation (similar to the brain) in which multiple networks are connected and exponentially more computations are processed at the same time, Benyus describes the switch from the world of silicon computing to carbon computing.

Like conventional computers, DNA takes information, processes it and passes it along to initiate an action.  Protein molecules have specific receptors that can feel for other shapes, consequently, they are the ultimate pattern recognisers (which is essentially what conventional computer code is).  Were you to hitch together millions of these proteins you would could create molecules that, when activated by a specific light frequency, could create a specific shape that interlocks with a corresponding shape/line of code to create a new sequence/computation.  Known as a “tactilizing processor,” these proteins compute simultaneously and evolve to create smarter and smarter networks.  Consequently, without a single electric wire, a large number of disparate inputs would be sorted, coded and translated simultaneously into a coherent answer.   

The power of such computing is, I think, not understated in the following quote, “a DNA computer could perform more operations in a few days than all the calculations ever made by all the computers ever built.”

The potential of such computing is truly difficult to comprehend.  Not only does it apply to computation but also storage as, “a million times more information could be stored at the bottom of a test tube of DNA than in the entire human brain.”

The most modest of early applications includes real-time facial recognition software that works in any environment, no matter how crowded or complex (current linear computation struggles with such a task).  However, you don’t need to be George Orwell to think about the repercussions of being able to create extremely powerful little computers that can fit inside your blood stream!

Natural Fibres

Current methods for producing synthetic materials all involve serious levels of heating, beating or treating that all inescapably energy intensive.  Yet, in nature, we see that the spider is able to produce a silk that is five times stronger than steel without any ovens, machines or chemicals.

Other animals have similarly amazing abilities to produce materials that man-made materials cannot yet come close to matching.  Consider a rhino horn that repairs itself, an abalone shell that has twice the structural strength of any known ceramic or a mussel’s adhesive that is completely water resistant and reusable.  In addition, all of these animals manage to produce such results without toxicity.

Consequently, Benyus analyses the efforts being made by scientists to understand the protein sequences of such materials and how we may attempt to recreate the conditions in which they are naturally made.  Benyus never fails to stimulate the imagination and provides an exciting insight into how we may soon be seeing products like synthesised crystal which could be used to manufacture (virtually) unbreakable windshields.

Solar Energy

Swanson’s Law (similar to Moore’s Law in computer processing) dictates that the price of solar photovoltaic cells tends to drop 20% for every doubling of industry capacity.  As encouraging as that may be, Benyus explores how the photosynthetic potential of solar panels can radically improve by studying the electron transfer in the reaction centre of photosynthetic cells in different types of leaves.  The most revolutionary application of this research being the ability to create power packs that are activated by sunlight (meaning you could carry back up power with you to any corner of the globe!).

Natural Medicine

Biomimics across the world are studying primates to see how they use plants, minerals and bacteria to regulate their digestive system.  Surprisingly this has already been the inspiration for many previous medicines (and even contraceptives) and continues to provide innovative solutions to the healthcare industry.

It’s hard to know which ideas will prove fruitful and which will die on the laboratory table, but it’s Benyus’s childlike enthusiasm that really turns this book from a dry exploration of current scientific trends into a wonderfully optimistic book about Man’s potential to live harmoniously on this planet.  It’s ‘keen green’ if ever I’ve read such a thing, but I can’t fault the author for its truly infectious tones.

Benyus concludes by talking about the different types of natural systems and I think she draws a powerful parallel in doing so.  In nature there are three types of systems:

I.                    Type I Systems expand quickly, using all the resources and filling all available space at the expense of others (and ultimately their own – as they always eventually collapse).  Type I examples include things like ragweed, crabgrass, viruses and bacteria, etc.  They’re characterised by short-term thinking and opportunism.

II.                  Type II Systems attempt to create rooting systems and will fight their neighbours for the space around them but are not as voraciously dominant as Type I systems.  They’re characterised by a mixture of medium growth rates with eventual prudence (such as bushes and seedlings).

III.                Type III Systems grow slowly, plant deep roots and seek equilibrium with their surroundings.  The quintessential Type III is a redwood tree: patient, seeking optimisation of resources with no waste and consideration of its neighbours.

It’s obvious where the analogy is heading, but nonetheless a salient point to make.  Humans have for too long behaved like Type I systems, drawing down on natural resources, creating waste that is not recycled, maximising rather than optimising and, in the process, fouling our own nest.  All three systems are necessary to grow a forest, but over time the Type III system always wins.  

I would love for Benyus to update this book, as it was written in 1997 and is still, in 2013, way ahead of its time.  It undoubtedly awoke something in the social and scientific conscience that we all know to be true: we are not bigger or better than Mother Nature and we must learn all we can from her or we’ll be thrown out the classroom.

Score: 84/100

P.S. In researching whether Benyus had updated this book, I did stumble across a TED Talk that she gave in 2009.  It covers some of the material in the book and a couple of new, updated ideas as well – definitely worth the time if the above caught your attention.