Proposal for assignment 3: The wonders of Biomimicry!

       For
assignment number three I have decided to look at the field of biomimicry. At
its heart biomimicry is a discipline that strives to take solutions found in
nature and apply them to manmade issues. We are in an age where a large number
of people believe in an existing separation between humans and nature. With ever
increasing amounts of people migrating to urban sectors as well the world
seeing fewer and fewer patches of habitat that are not in some way altered by
people it is easy to see how some sense of disconnection may arise. Out of
every human sector though, this separation is probably most prevalent in the
technological sector. Machines in a way are often viewed as tools for helping
man work and control nature. In the modern era it often seems that technologies
are becoming more and more synthetic as man tries to create his own perfect
world.  The benefits provided from
technologies often make it easy to ignore the potential environmental negatives
as well as the connection to the environment in general. Many of these
technologies often not only negatively affect environments but people as well.

           With biomimicry however this is not
the case at all. Instead of technologies to simplify the daily lives of people
in our anthropocentric world, we gain technologies that were derived from
natural systems that help create a more holistic world. In science fiction
films you often see humans reverse engineer alien technologies to help progress
human technological capacity; Biomimicry in a nut shell does the same thing but
reverse engineers natural process taken from all across the globe to make
cleaner and more efficient technologies. By making these technologies, people
learn more about natural systems as well as build a sense of personal
investment in these systems that helped spawn new technologies. My favorite
example of this is the simple case of sun block. Every single name brand sun
block on the market today while generally able to help prevent sunburn often do
not have the ability to prevent harmful UV radiation which can cause skin
cancer. Some sunscreens actually amplify the amount of UV radiation you intake!
Thinking about bare skin animals that have to generally deal with constant UV
radiation scientist eventually end up at the Hippo. Hippos have chemicals in
their sweat that provide an excellent natural sunblock that needs no synthetic
human additives (well maybe to alter the smell). Besides just being a sunscreen
though hippo sweat also works as an antiseptic, insect repellant as well as an
antifungal screen. This is just one of so many examples of how humans can benefit
from biological technologies.

        For
the scope of this paper I would like to give a general overview of the field of
biomimicry, some examples of key technologies that have been developed through
this discipline, as well as discuss the general separation of humans and nature
that has come from increased technological dependence and how biomimicry has
the ability to mend that gap!