TED Circles with CN&CO 2020
March 28, 2021

TED Circles March 2021 – Time, Consumption, and Bio design

We visit TED.com regularly to clear our heads, have a laugh or get inspired. It’s become a popular past time and we, along with our associates and friends, value the thinking that the TED platform brings to the world. The TED Tuesday series is one of our longest running blogs, here’s the latest one.

It’s have been over a year since South Africa went into lockdown to combat the spread of the global pandemic. It’s rather crazy to think about how much has happened in the last 12 months.

We now live in a pandemic world and I think we will for some time to come. We have had to adapt, evolve and change… as humans we have done this many times through history.

We have connected digitally and fast tracked developments in different sectors. The rate of change is increasing and we are seeing Moore’s Law expand outside of the semiconductor industry (which is ironic seeing that we are currently experiencing global shortages of computer chips).

As more people around the world come on line we are seeing the digital divide start to grow, which is a concerning inequality and something that we need to work to address. There is much wrong in the world and much work we need to do to fix it. The opportunity though is exciting and it’s why small communities, just like this one, are important as we all have a role to play in creating a future we can be proud of.

The start of lockdown in 2020 was also the first time we hosted a TED Circles together, I can clearly remember the call as we all were mentally preparing for what the next three weeks had in store for us. Thank you to everyone who has joined one of the calls and supported the space we are seeking to create. Special thanks to Carel for the idea you put me on to while I was sitting in St Francis Bay in December of 2019 and you were sitting in Palm Springs attending TED Women.

Many lessons learnt, challenges faced, and opportunities taken.

Fast forward 12 months and we were gathering for our second TED Circle of 2021. The theme for the month of March was “Consumption, what’s your function?”. In our thinking about consumption we were brought to the concepts of time and design.

Joan Kinghorn, whom I met through creating TED Circles hosted by CN&CO, kindly agreed to co-host the discussion for this circle with me. She selected two interesting talks for us to watch – exploring the relationship we have with speed and the intricacies of biodesign.

Here are two extracts from the talks to get your mind working around time, the future and consumption.

  • Why does modern technology promise efficiency, but leave us constantly feeling pressed for time?
  • The intersection of nature, technology and society to create sustainable materials and models for the future – what does this look like?

Kathryn Bouskill: The unforeseen consequences of a fast-paced world

Why does modern technology promise efficiency, but leave us constantly feeling pressed for time? Anthropologist Kathryn Bouskill explores the paradoxes of living in a fast-paced society and explains why we need to reconsider the importance of slowing down in a world that demands go, go, go.

Biodesigner Natsai Audrey Chieza prototypes the future, imagining a world where people and nature can thrive together. In this wildly imaginative talk, she shares the vision behind her innovation lab, which works at the intersection of nature, technology and society to create sustainable materials and models for the future. Chieza invites us to consider what kind of world we wish for — and what systemic changes and collaborations need to happen for it to exist.

I have been spending a lot of time in Clubhouse over the last few weeks and as a result we tried something a little different to the way we have run these get togethers in the past. We listened to just the audio versions of the talks.

In closing here are some thoughts around the discussion that we had during the session.

  • Time – it’s different for everyone. What may be fast for me may be slow for others. Our experiences are constructs of the spaces that we have exposed ourselves to.
  • Microbes and bio design – what can we learn from some of the smallest creatures and organism on the earth?
  • Thrilled by speed – is speed just a construct of our surrounding spaces or what attracts us to it?
  • In her Talk Kathryn makes reference to the point that we evolved for endurance (biology and lifestyles) and not speed. A question that I have for her is what if we have always had speed, but the difference is that it is now just more visible?
  • Decision making, we can’t make decisions faster but we can increase the quality of the decisions we make. Check out this article, “The power of thinking without thinking” about Blink, a book from well known author Malcolm Gladwell.

We have much to learn from the world around us. Thank you to everyone who has joined the conversation and engaged with the circles we have hosted over the last year. Here’s to the journey ahead.