More and more in the early part of this 21st century we are being made to realize the creative power of complexity dynamics and its potential for system self-organization and emergence. In some arenas such as a multicultural society, the economy, technology, the arts, and even our daily lives, self-organization and emergence is a source of great diversity and creativity; but in other areas such as financial markets, terror networks, and the global climate it can be a source of great instability and destruction. Over the last 400 years cause and effect has told us a lot about the dynamics of…

We live amid a global wave of anthropogenically driven biodiversity loss: species and population extirpations and, critically, declines in local species abundance. Particularly, human impacts on animal biodiversity are an under-recognized form of global environmental change. Arguably the most serious aspect of the environmental crisis is the loss of biodiversity—the other living things with which we share Earth. This affects human well-being by interfering with crucial ecosystem services such as crop pollination and water purification and by destroying humanity’s beautiful, fascinating, and culturally important living companions. Analysis shows that current extinction rates vastly exceed natural average background rates, even when…

Solutions to the urban problems of the future must assume the new reality of –mega- cities. The inevitable technological progress must find a balance with the bio-ecological recovery of the natural environment. Bionic science is an alternative to the philosophical thinking and scientific development of mankind’s urban models.

Technological innovation is more rapid and broad-based than in any previous industrial revolution, much of it linked to the entrepreneurial dynamism of its denizens. Rapid advances in technology and the liberalization of public policy have shaped a world in which large companies face increasing performance pressure amidst sinking return on assets, intense competition, and changing workforce dynamics. Individuals are taking advantage of lowered barriers to market entry and commercialization to become creators in their own right. As a result, a new economic landscape is beginning to emerge in which a relatively few large, concentrated players will provide infrastructure, platforms, and…

Be guided by and inspired….. A lesson that can be learned from biomimicry-motivated invention can inspire confidence, given the public’s general impression that nature has proven to be creative in terms of crafting sustainable organisms and systems. Moreover, the innate appeal of nature, which has developed highly efficient and stable processes to not only control systems, but also perform tasks such as build new objects or store energy, enhances a positive perception of the otherwise cold, inanimate world of engineering.

In an era of emerging transformational technologies that promise to have disruptive economic and strategic impacts—from 3D printing and robotics to biotech—renewable energy is rarely at the top of futurist lists. But maybe it should be. Continuing long-term trends point to a steady decline in prices and parallel increases in efficiency by 2035. Technology, policy, and finance are the three traditional under­pinnings of the energy sector. Policy and capital markets are gen­erally not very agile in responding to the evolution of technology, and technology tends not to be very agile in the byzantine world of policy. While each leg of…

We are getting used to hearing that ‘we live in a world of cities’. How to make city living sustainable is one of the key challenges of our times. The United Nations set a stand-alone goal on cities within the Sustainable Development Goals, stating to ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’. As exemplified by this goal, it is becoming common for concepts such as sustainability and resilience to be used synergistically, or interchangeably. In order for cities to become more sustainable they must change the linear to a circular self-regulating sustainable relationship with the biosphere.

Hominin evolution has involved a continuous process of addition of new kinds of cognitive capacity, including those relating to manufacture and use of tools and to the establishment of linguistic faculties. The dramatic expansion of the brain that accompanied additions of new functional areas would have supported such continuous evolution. Extended brain functions would have driven rapid and drastic changes in the hominin ecological niche, which in turn demanded further brain resources to adapt to it. In this way, humans have constructed a novel niche in each of the ecological, cognitive and neural domains.

Some of the most cherished political, economic and social structures have been turned on their heads. In a sense, capitalism remains the dominant economic model, but is now evolving drastically in response to ecological impacts, resource scarcity, demographic trends, technology and a host of other factors. The endless consumer culture that was prevalent throughout the first world has all but collapsed, as more people and businesses place greater strain on living systems, limits to prosperity are coming to be determined by natural capital rather than industrial prowess. This is not to say that the world is running out of commodities in…

There is an unprecedented global transition happening where the world’s populations are migrating toward urban environments, creating sprawling, densely populated, overloaded, and loosely governed (mega)cities. Urban living is on the rise whereas rural living is becoming the exception – in all parts of the world and at an ever-increasing rate. The rapid pace of urbanization is an important marker of the societal transition at large that has occurred over the past thirty years. This continuous expansion of urban regions constitutes one of the most radical changes in our environment at the beginning of the 21st century.