John Thackara is the founder and director of the event series „Doors of Perception“ in which grassroots innovators work with designers to imagine sustainable futures and take practical steps to realize them. John is also the author of 12 books – his most recent one "In the bubble" has been published by MIT press.
In his provocative talk at Lift France, John invites us to avoid overused terms like ‚future’ or ‚sustainable’ as they maintain a certain distance to the problem we face. He points out the problems of being digital: A radical increase in the resource flows, emissions and impacts for the economy and another step backwards from our awareness of the state of our body and the state of the planet (which are all part of the same he says). John’s basic proposition is that we don’t need to invent a large amount of new stuff, that the resources to be put in place already exist and that they might not necessitate complex technological developments. His basic principle is that if we cannot prove that an action will not diminish the capacity of the biosphere to support life than we should not do it!
Click here for an overview of presentations and interviews from Lift France 2009.
07.12.2009 at 03:12
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