Haiti School, Education, and Sustainability IssuesDesigning Innovation Networks Modeled on Life’s Origins & Evolution
Google Tech Talks
November 20, 2008
ABSTRACT
Highly innovative organizations face a constant challenge to process a flood of good ideas, both generated by employees and submitted from outside. In the wake of Google’s Tenth Birthday Competition, this talk describes how innovation networks apply principles found in life’s origins and evolution to “processing innovation.” Debates about how novelty emerged in the origin of life and its evolution toward complexity demand revising umptions that we’ve taken for granted. Steven Jay Gould said that “Darwinism” misrepresents Darwin.
A more complete interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution could inspire new problem-solving methods with a range of practical applications, from multi-agent systems able to learn and improve their performance to cross-disciplinary decision support systems designed to address environmental sustainability challenges. Objective. To discuss nine principles of innovation networks and the problem-solving method they support.
Speaker: Zann Gill
Zann Gill will describe ideas from her forthcoming books What Daedalus told Darwin (about Darwin’s dilemma and designing intelligence) and If Microbes begat Mind (on origins of life and emergence of intelligence). With an M.Arch. from Harvard, her early experience as a researcher for Buckminster Fuller exposed her to Fuller’s concepts for “World Game” to achieve environmental sustainability and “design science.” Inspired by research into complex adaptive systems and multi-scale innovation networks, her entry to the international competition Kawasaki: Information City of the 21st Century, sponsored by the Japan ociation for Planning Administration and Mainichi Newspapers, with cooperation of ten ministries and three agencies of the Japanese government, tied with Matsushita Corp. for first place and won the Award of the Mayor of Kawasaki. She proposed an Innovation Network comprised of sixteen initiatives for urban innovation as a complex adaptive system. More recently at NASA she developed program plans for an Institute for Advances Space Concepts (IASC), a think tank called Bio-Evolutionary Advanced Concepts (BEACON) and NASA University. She founded DESYN lab (http://desyn.com) to explore “raising collaborative IQ” (http://www.zanngill.com/3ciq.html).
This Google Tech Talk was hosted by Boris Debic.
Duration : 0:48:1
Hc3 Smart System - Water Conservation - What you should know…
The relationship of fresh water and human life. Startling facts & statistics about the future of our most precious resource, fresh water. We need planned management of our fresh water: Introducing the Hc3 Smart System. Think different. Think Responsible. Think Smart.
Duration : 0:4:8
Sustainable Living Program, Environment 185, ESLP, Lecture 1, UCLA
Scott Sherman on “Introductions, Footprints, and Empowerment,” as part of the Education for Sustainable Living Program (ESLP).
ESLP is a student designed, student developed, and student facilitated program offered through UCLA’s Institute of the Environment. ESLP runs a Lecture Series which brings guest speakers from UCLA and across the country to speak on specialized subjects including food systems, green business, organic gardens, sustainable living, the green economy, environmental justice, transportation, as well as sustainability projects across Los Angeles. More information can be found at www.eslp-la.com.
Scott Sherman is a founder of the Transformative Action Institute (TIA), devoted to training a new generation of social entrepreneurs, innovators, visionaries and problem-solvers for the 21st century. www.transformativeaction.org
Some clips and images may have been blurred or removed to avoid copyright infringement.
* See all the UCLA Education for Sustainable Living classes in this series: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=970187D814A61677
* See more courses from UCLA: http://www.youtube.com/uclacourses
* See more from UCLA’s main channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/ucla
Duration : 1:18:54
Lewis & Clark professor prepares teachers to teach sustainability issues
Greg Smith, professor of teacher education at Lewis & Clark, received a $19,380 grant from the Oregon Community Foundation to train teachers on environmental issues. The grant aims to increase the number of teachers implementing sustainability projects in schools, and increase student and educator awareness of local natural systems, ecologies, and social needs. During three courses offered in 2009, Smith will prepare 50-60 teachers to incorporate sustainability issues into their classrooms and help them implement school or community projects that will enhance local, natural, and social environments.
Duration : 0:3:45