REGENERATIVE TECHNOLOGY

Technology Sucks! Or Does It?

Can we change the world with technology?

No sugar coating from me. A lot of technology sucks! Or, let me put it more clearly. It’s not the fault of technology. It’s the fault of the business models behind the technology. They suck. Resulting in Social Dilemma. Resulting in addiction to chemical pills. Resulting in horrible fields full of solar panels and windmills, where we should be growing healthy food for all.

It’s also the fault of technologists and their teams. They have huge blinders on and are not ambitious enough to create the technology that will change the world for the better. They keep running around in circles. Doing what has been done before and not going for Moonshot Leaps ahead.

What are the moonshot leaps in technology? Well, that’s very simple. The technology of the future will be hugely inspired by nature because it’s the only way we will be creating a human world with a future. There’s one truth only. We are humans living on a planet with natural laws. And only if we combine high-tech based on natural laws with ethical business models will we survive as a species.

It can be done. But we must want it badly enough to make it happen…

Regeneration

People say to me, Desiree, it has to be like this. I cannot be otherwise. And I smile. Because I know differently. And luckily, I also see it happening all around me. Companies inventing new, ethical business models based on synergy. Government systems changing, based on the wisdom of Humankind. Trust instead of authoritarian control.

There are many flavors in the movement, but the main term nowadays is Regeneration. Built upon the scientific theories of James Lovelock (systemic design) and Lynn Margulis (symbiosis). We can heal the wrongs of our past and build a regenerative future. A future in which materials repair themselves and do not create waste. A future in which we have developed lots of technologies to create fashion and color without resources.

The butterfly knows how to reflect the sunlight and create color. We don’t need toxic chemicals for that! So why don’t we innovate textiles?

But I’m only one lake of knowledge. I don’t know everything there is to know about every technology. Yes, I was a pond and became a lake. But I’ll never be an ocean. One lifetime is too short for that.

So, I collaborate. And wow, how innovation starts to grow then. Magic is being unleashed!

Medium, thank you for being my bouncing platform. And thank all of you at Illumination, and Technology Hits to give me friends and colleagues. We are all only as wise as combined lakes. So, I let the drinkable rivers between the lakes flow freely.

Energy Technology

Today I received two comments about energy technology.

The first one was from Frederick Bott on my story about beauty as valuable value for climate change. He calls himself a solar punk and said:

“Desiree I agree completely beauty is something fundamental that drives us, and should not be denied. But you’ve read and commented on at least one of my stories (kindly!), which are pretty much all to the effect that solar power is the real thing we are missing, fixing that, fixes everything, very beautifully, I perceive.

But still you deny that, which means I have not yet made it beautiful enough for you, my fault entirely. I obviously still have some work to do :) Meantime, here is a thought for you; Imagine sunlight as money, raining down on us. Will we still use plastic?” — Frederick Bott

The reply I gave from a regenerative perspective is as follows:

Oh Frederick, but I admire a solar punk like you! Never doubt that! The sun is a very important source for our future world. But I’m not fully enlightened yet.

Gunter Pauli, my well-respected teacher from thinktank ZERI and the Blue Economy, says that gravity will be our main source of energy in the enlightened future. He combines it in systemic designs with piezo electronics in great projects. And after some doubts at first, I now see what his enormous group of thinktank scientists see.

Frank Collaris, my colleague, inventor, and friend has been enlightened about free energy. And he will soon be working on the energy-supply of a decades-old estate where solar panels and windmills are not allowed.

I’m following closely and helping wherever I can to make Blue Earth Innovations, the company of Frank and his health-practitioner wife Lilly, flourish.

Sun and moon do the great planetary work in nature. And we will get there to see how we humans can use these vast sources of energy and tide-movement with regenerative wisdom.

However, for me, one thing is clear: large farming fields full of solar panels are not going to save the world. It’s plain stupid to do that! And about solar panels on roofs, I’m not sure yet how the radiation will affect human health. I do know that my off-grid friends are often putting them on the shed to avoid radiation in the house.

Enlighten me, Frederick. I’ll gladly add your solar wisdom to my portfolio while I make up my own mind…

Hydrogen Technology

The second comment was from Vic Cherikoff on my story about the solution to halt climate change. He said:

“Inspiring article. Have you seen the restorative work in the Loess Plateau in China? They reclaimed an area the size of Belgium and it has encouraged other works in Portugal, Africa and the Middle East. Google John Liu who was the film maker/presenter who worked on the Chinese project. His articles are equally inspiring.

My interest in restoration is the reintroduction of wild species, particularly wild foods. A blend rich in Australian Indigenous foods I call LIFE and which I market suggests that it may be the way to address the many diseases of nutrition we suffer these days.

The wild food ingredients in LIFE also help encourage preservation of wild lands as food resources and protofarms. A growing number of Indigenous Australian communities are supplying product to me now and investing in sustainable practices and scale up as demand grows.

The aim is to preserve the nutritional value of these wild foods so they help us reach our ideal health, unlike current modern foods.

Another area of interest that you may find a hot topic (no pun intended) is the application of hydrogen for energy. An Australian company, Star Scientific, just won an international energy award for the Best Emerging Energy Technology. They have a catalyst which they call HERO for Hydrogen Energy Release Optimizer. It is being developed to replace coal and gas in power plants with a plug and play solution.

All great news for humankind — if we do not wait for our useless politicians and as you say, add the economic imperative and get the job done via private funding or straight business concepts.” — Vic Cherikoff

My answer to him from a regenerative perspective is as follows:

Thanks Vic. I do know John Dennis Liu and the Loess Plateau project well. I’ve written about it. I’ve been working with John when I was director for his Ecosystem Restoration Camps a few years ago.

Nutrition from naturally grown food on regenerative soil will be one of the biggest achievements. I wrote about Vandana Shiva once as one of the people I admire greatly as a permaculturist working on food forests and regenerative farming in my country. I’m very glad to see so many people are working on it.

About the energy solutions, I’m not sure yet. I just wrote a reply to Frederick Bott in another article of mine about beauty as a valuable value. Some people say gravity, some say solar, some say hydrogen, some say free energy, some say the fourth phase of water. I follow them all.

Personally, I’m convinced that the right regenerative solutions for energy-supply will be varied based on local circumstances. They will be embedded in a clever systemic design so they interact with other fields and create many more essential values at once.

We’ll see what the future will bring. For me personally, the challenge is to get the business models changed so the current toxic triggers are not compromising ethics anymore. We need to embrace the principles of synergy for that. Many large scale entrepreneurs around the world are onto it! And I think it might be one of the most important steps towards a regenerative future.

Keep up the good work. And see you around!

Collaboration Essential for Innovation

So here’s my story about two answers to technological questions I gave that are stories in themselves. I give comments a new life like this and hope they’ll find a broader audience.

And as a wrap-up, here’s my answer to how we will change the world with technology:

• Listen to others and collaborate synergetically
• Don’t get stuck in one big scale solution but adapt every solution to local circumstances. Local ecosystems and local cultures.
• Embed the technology in a clever systemic design
• Innovate with nature’s vast wisdom!
• Learn to deal with diversity
• Create business models without toxic triggers
• Ethics are central!

And to wrap this all up. My friend Dr John Rose wrote an excellent article about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can find unethical patterns in the data. That’s a technology for the future. And I’m so glad I work every day in so many different colleague groups to make it happen.

Ask me questions about technology, please. I’d love to answer them from a regenerative perspective. And welcome you to the active scientific and business groups all around the world who are making it happen. Together we can do it, my friends. Change the world with low-tech and high-tech.

If you want to connect, you can find me somewhere on this beautiful planet. My hands in the soil and my gaze focused on the stars. Or you can find me via Linktree.

And because this is my first story for Technology Hits, I’ll add my biography for whoever doesn’t know me (yet).

© Désirée Driesenaar