[MUSIC]. The third kind of technological constraint we're going to talk about has to do with ecology. And this has to do with you know, through basically the distribution of natural resources. And also our ability to sustain life you know, human life and otherwise inside the system that we place our innovation in. And so again, we're going to put our innovation in some context. And so, what is the effect of that context on our innovation from the ecological perspective, and the effect of our innovation on that ecosystem as well. We'll talk about three kinds of constraints or subcontraints within here. first being the availability of necessary inputs. Where do we get the inputs that we allow to and help us to think of the transformations we need to? Where do we make those transformations? So, I am talking about a site, the suitable site for transformation. And also, when a system has outputs, when our innovation creates outputs, where do those outputs go? And some of the outputs are the ones that we want as outputs. The, you know, the, the the outputs we would call them. But then, there are some other things called the by-products, and what happens with those. So, let's start with necessary resources. If you're going to do certain activities that you would do require a great deal of power, for example. And so, in the case of the A12 aircraft, what they needed was they needed lots of power to be able to test these engines. And so, they needed to put the testing facility, the innovation, you know, basically the place where they're doing the innovation, in some place where electricity was available. And in fact, they had to do the testing at night because the city use too much power during the day, and so if they did these tests at night, they could actually get enough power out of the power grid. Interestingly you might say, well, we can put the system where it's best for the system. Think of solar power. So, in solar power actually, you know, just off the top of your head, you might think that solar power, best place for solar power might actually be in the desert, right? because there's lots of sun, no clouds rain. This should be a great place for it. Well, it turns out, all the ways that we know to use, or how to produce power through solar energy require a great deal of cooling, so the paradox is you have this place where there's lots of sun, but there's not a lot of water available. And so, how do you mitigate that, how do you make that work? You know, there might be other materials that we need as well. And other things, we're talking about power nuclear power plants, for example. And nuclear power plants, they have to be sited in places where there's you know, the, the, I mean, the weather we may have humidity issues. You have ground stability, you know, are there earthquakes in the area, what's the temperature there. Nuclear power plants also require a great deal of cooling. And so, when you put one next to a river and you pull the water out and you, you basically cool down your reactor, you put it back into the river, the water is at a much higher temperature. And this also creates a problem in terms of siding effort for transformation. So if it's a very small river, you may raise the temperature of that thing too high in order to sustain life within it. And life become, becomes a kind of problem that you have to face. We may also have the sighting that is, we need to put our transformation and put our innovation inside of a biological host. And so, if we're putting something inside of a person, you know, if we are putting something inside of a cow, that those kind of things, those constraints of biology also may constrain us as well. It's like how do I get them inside, how do I keep that thing alive while I actually have these things in there? So again, doing the, you know, it's like, to use an example a long while ago. Keeping the body alive during brain surgery is a very difficult thing that we have to be able to sustain life, and do it within the limitations of our understanding. And so, again, this is about, not about conscious competence, but it's really within the limits of our understanding. Then, we have this problem of raw input availability. And the raw inputs that I need to bring into my innovation in order to do the transformation, they might not be available in the place I need. And so again, like power and all these things, how do I get the access to the, the material, the inputs that I need to make my innovation possible. Then, we have the problem of outputs. Outputs, you know, basically we're transforming inputs into outputs and that's, that's happening at some site and there are constraints there. The constraints are the in the products that we produce, you know, the good stuff, but also the unhealthy bad stuff that we produce as well. There's an example of Xintang that's my bad Chinese pronunciation, Xintang, China where there is a city known as Jean City or Cowboy City where they produce a lot of, of denim material for using them in the Western market. And so, go ahead and watch this video. And you'll see one of the problems where we actually have taken something that might have made sense in the beginning where we might have had one factory or two factories or three factories and amplify it to where we have 1,500 factories in one small area, the kind of problems that we create from that. This also underlies the problem of our willingness to put the manufacturing, that there's a transformation of products in other places and concentrated in places and not account for the cost that that creates on the ecology in those areas, because we're in a safe and, and different area ourselves. And so, we want to consume blue jeans, and this is the kind of problem that we create by doing that. So, instead of talking about overcoming natural constraints, I'd rather talk about living within natural constraints. And so here, is really not about that we're going to have some kind of mindset that, oh, we can, you know, trample nature. We can, we can control it. We can do all sorts of things, but really is to say, how do I actually live within it? Because if I don't have to expend energy, you know, taming nature, I can use that energy for other parts of my innovation, other maybe more important parts of the innovation. So, if I can understand how to live within it, I might have a better chance of getting my innovation real, getting my innovation produced and adopted in the world. So, one thing is to use what's available, are there materials around that we might be able to use. In some developing countries to, to irrigate fields, what farmers might do is go buy a, a diesel powered pump and try to come up with the diesel somewhere to be able to run that pump. And so, a pump is very, very expensive. It's heinously expensive. They require many months of a family's wage, and then also where do you get the diesel from? The diesel has to be brought in from far, far away, especially if you're in a rural area like this. And so, what Paul Polak came up with, and Paul Polak wrote a book, Out of Poverty, where he describes this and he describes his company, IDE International Development Enterprises. And they developed this $20 pump that was actually human powered. And so, in these places where they don't have a lot of diesel sitting around, they certainly have a lot of people sitting around, and so he made this pump. It's basically a cast iron pump and it has two, he put two bamboo poles in and you're able like to do the step master motion which uses the big muscles in your legs instead of the small muscles in your arms to pump this thing. It's, and it's by, because of leverage, when you put these let me show you a picture of one. Well, well, by way of leverage, you can actually have small children, you know, kids can do this and, and, and pump fluid in just as good way as the diesel engine can. And you'll do it at a price that is actually affordable and that actually works within that context. So again, using what you have at hand can be an important thing. My next piece of advice is to come in from the wind and the rain. So here, we're really to think about when I, when I site my area for transformations do I have a innovation that's going to be produced or going to make something somewhere, how do I think about where I put it? You know, these things like I said before tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, floods, avalanches, all of those things are going to happen and so let me think about them ahead of time and say to what extent are these going to be problematic for me. In the tsunami in Japan in 2011, there was a big problem because here's a picture of a cleaning room, the, the, the one on this side, picture of a cleaning room where they're making computer chips. And the problem with computer chips is a very time dependent sequence-dependent process that is cannot be interrupted. And when the power went out and when the floods came in, that the process were interrupted and they lost millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of production that was in process because of this. And so, we're going to think about if I had a process that's super susceptible or super vulnerable to that kind of thing, how do I think about where it is that I want to put that process? And so, this is something important to think about. If I'm, it goes from anywhere from baking bread, if you will need a certain level of humidity and things like that, where can you put it, to something as complex as making computer chips. In a book Biomimicry, Jane Janine Benyus, in 1997, she wrote a book that described how it is that we might use models in nature. Well, they might mimic things in nature, which is called biomimicry, mimic things in nature to create new innovations that actually work to sustain life and sustain it in a way that's consistent or that's more easy on the world. So, take this example of a termite mound, this is a gigantic termite mound. these things are tall and high and one question has always been how do these things cool themselves. There's a lot of insects in here and they are in really hot places and this thing is sticking up in the air. But as often where there's not a lot of wind, how do they cool themselves? Well, through a careful study, some people figured it out, and in fact uh,Mick Pearce, an architect in Harare, Zimbabwe, he created this building. This Eastgate, this Eastgate office building, the Eastgate Center. And this building because of the way it's designed, it uses the cooling, the ideas of how a termite mound cools itself is able to use 90% less energy for ventilation of the other buildings of comparable size. And so, that's pretty amazing. 90% less energy just by having modeled it on a termite mound. And probably is, inside, it's probably like a termite mound. If you think of any high rise building full of little people scurrying about it has that, that sense. Another thing we might do is get smart about supply chain, that is understanding when people, where it is we put the outputs in a way that is actually is helpful. Starbucks, you know, Starbucks they make a lot of coffee and a lot of coffee throws off a lot of coffee grinds. And the coffee grinds really are not that useful to them and it is something they would probably would have to pay to have taken away. One thing they do is they put an, often there's a little basket inside the Starbucks where they put the coffee grinds, the used coffee grinds. They put them in these big bags, and as a customer, you're just able to grab a bag, grab five bags, grab whatever and take it home and use it as compost and spread it out in your gardens. It's actually a very healthy kind of compost. And so, what they're doing is they're able to take this thing, it's normally a waste, a waste product and get the customers to take it with them. And that is actually very, you know, that's a, that's good thinking. Because they're able to get the waste product out of their store and get it to a place where it's actually much more useful than have it trucked off into a big landfill somewhere, where it wasn't actually be able to be used as a compost, is there's, there's a real high value thing. And from the customer's perspective, the customer also gets access to compost, or this composting material, and doesn't have to go buy some more themselves. And so, there's a virtual cycle in there through that whole thing. Another example like that is with Martin Guitar Company and then, then their participation in the SmartWood program . Martin joined the SmartWood Consortium and what the SmartWood Consortium does is they certify the use of woods, so basically hardwoods inside of, of companies. And what they certify is that the wood will be sustainably harvested fairly purchased and, and, and bought and, and, and used and, and, and augmented through its life cycle. The value to Martin is, first of all, there's some people who play guitars who actually care about the environment and who'd like to see this. And those are people who are set up in this way emotionally and they're going to pay more money for one of these guitars. And these guitars probably start at like $3,000. The other thing that it does is that it ensures for Martin that they actually have a sustainable wood supply. Because if they know that the wood supplies that they were buying are certified trees and they're sustainably grown that they're going to be around for awhile and they'll be able to get access to these. And so, with their factory, they're not going to be likely to idle it. That is, you have these high paid, highly skilled crafts people who build these guitars, and the worst possible problem you could have, is have a bunch of people sitting around, but no wood. And so, by sustainably growing the wood, you ensure that you have a nice supply chain. And by doing the SmartWood part, it actually helps the customers, the kind of customers that you want to buy your products. And so, it becomes a virtual cycle there as well. So, why are some things are just hard? Well, it may have to do with the ecology of it because the distribution of the natural resources and our ability to sustain life within the context of the innovations occurring. To wrap this week up on technological constraints, let me just leave you with an example that hearkens back to the one from last week. Last week, we talked about the segway and about this sort of an idea about the self-balancing scooter. When I ran across this interesting article written by Trevor Blackwell, at least a website where the chronicles is building up one of these self-balancing scooters. And by the end of his studies, he spent about 5,000 bucks, he spent about a week, he spent another week tweaking it and writing it up. But basically, he spent a week making this thing happen. So clearly, here's a case, unlike the A12 where technological constraints were not the problem. And often, we want to jump right to technological constraints especially if we're oriented as an engineer, we think of ourselves as, you know, a sort of a technical person. often the technology is, is concrete, it's easy, we can test whether it's working or not. It's a lot easier to sort of jump into than it is to deal with the human aspects of the constraints that we're talking about. So again, so don't be tricked and don't, don't just jump right into thinking that every problem is a technological problem. But this is not to say that not every problem, that every problem is not a technological problem as well. And so, here again we require a little bit of judgement, that we actually have to use our brains to figure out, is this a constraint that we suffer from given the innovation we're trying to do or not? So ultimately, these kind of constraints, why some of these things are hard, they're hard because of physics, because we don't know how to manage matter, we don't know how to make matter behave. Because of time, because we may not have time, we may not have windows of opportunity, we may think of time the wrong way inside of our organization, and, and, unproductive ways. And then, because of ecology, because there's not a good place to get the inputs we need, there's not a good place to do the transformation we need. And there's not good place for the outputs, both the value outputs and the by-products of what it is we're producing in terms of our innovation. And it's all Open Source people who given lots of images that I can use in my class. Thank you.
