Stuffitis, Affluenza and the Circular Economy
Lecture to design students at Central Saint Martin’s, University of the Arts, London, November 2015. The session was aimed at questioning the contemporary Green zeitgeist, which completely dominates the design scene, both in higher education and in practice.
James starts by tackling the notion, captured by no fewer than three books titled Affluenza, that people have too much stuff – so much, indeed, that it is making them unhappy or ill. Challenging the notion that the Earth is running out of resources, he runs through how yields in agriculture have risen, how new wellsprings of oil and gas are being found every day, and why rare earths are not really so rare.
Briefly noting how enthusiasts for a circular economy prefer efficiency in the use of resources to the saving of labour, James goes on to look at some of the possibilities, for designers, that now exist with both inorganic and organic materials. He concedes that the successful application of 3D printing to housing could lead to shortages of steel, aluminium and concrete, but ends with a plea for designers to orientate more to science, and to be aware of the opportunities available from… the sea.
KOWTOWING TO BEIJING DEPT: Whaddya know? Keir Starmer finally discovers his ‘growth agenda’! As my piece also suggests, the portents don't look good for Labour to protect the UK from CCP operations https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britain-pares-back-secretive-china-strategy-review-seeking-closer-ties-2024-12-16/
"By all means, keep up the salty, anti-Starmer tweets, Elon. But kindly keep your mega-bucks to yourself."
At the #ECB, convicted lawyer #ChristineLagarde has just beaten inflation, oh yes. But #AndrewBailey's many forecasts of lower interest rates have excelled again, with UK inflation now at 2.6 per cent
Painting: Thomas Couture, A SLEEPING JUDGE, 1859
Innovators I like
Robert Furchgott – discovered that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body
Barry Marshall – showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid
N Joseph Woodland – co-inventor of the barcode
Jocelyn Bell Burnell – she discovered the first radio pulsars
John Tyndall – the man who worked out why the sky was blue
Rosalind Franklin co-discovered the structure of DNA, with Crick and Watson
Rosalyn Sussman Yallow – development of radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body
Jonas Salk – discovery and development of the first successful polio vaccine
John Waterlow – discovered that lack of body potassium causes altitude sickness. First experiment: on himself
Werner Forssmann – the first man to insert a catheter into a human heart: his own
Bruce Bayer – scientist with Kodak whose invention of a colour filter array enabled digital imaging sensors to capture colour
Yuri Gagarin – first man in space. My piece of fandom: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10421
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield – inventor, with Robert Ledley, of the CAT scanner
Martin Cooper – inventor of the mobile phone
George Devol – 'father of robotics’ who helped to revolutionise carmaking
Thomas Tuohy – Windscale manager who doused the flames of the 1957 fire
Eugene Polley – TV remote controls
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