Streamlined Design

Introductory Questions

• Should we design things to be faster? Is there a limit for how fast we should make things?

• What would the world be like if transportation was brought back to before motor vehicles? Would we be able to survive?

• People often say that we are living in a time of instant gratification. How instant is “instant”? How “instant” can we get? Is this a good thing?

• What would the world be like if things could be made instantly?

• Should there be more or fewer laws hindering the development of new technologies?

• What is a “waste of resources”? If a resource is never used, is it wasted?

• When should we limit the use of technologies? When should we stop the advancement of a technology?

• Can a technology be perfect?

• What does self-sufficiency mean? Is it wrong to rely on others?

• If one goal should be designated as the sole direction that humanity should be steered towards, what would that goal be?

Speeding Tickets

• Nevermind what direction we choose to get there, if we simply move at a faster speed, we will ultimately reach a destination faster, even if the route is brutally inefficient. In practice, however, our roads have caps on the speed at which motor vehicles can reach. The lives of pedestrians and other drivers are at risk if a driver does not cooperate with a road’s speed limit. Speed limits keep our roads safe. Sometimes these speed limits are fundamentally intertwined with other aspects of the road rather than being posted on a sign. On the contrary, some have noticed issues with this system of keeping streets safe. With their shortcomings, some roads have seen success forgoing the practice altogether. Discuss with your team: as the technology progresses for faster and faster transportation, what measures should we be taking to balance speed and safety?

• Maybe instead of asking the question of how fast we can legally go, we should be asking how fast we can physically go. Traditional automobiles have to limit their drag and weight while increasing their engine’s horsepower. This balance has led to concepts like the One:1 and the Sixteen. Discuss: is it right to subject people to the stresses of going at these speeds?

• Another aspect of moving quickly is how little time it can take to reach a high speed. Acceleration is another metric used to determine how fast a car is. With the advent of electric vehicles, the old records of acceleration are being blown out of the water completely, leading to some inept drivers crashing. Discuss with your team: is there more value in outright speed or acceleration?

• In terms of human propulsion, it seems it should be clear as to what is allowed in competitions and what is not; conversely, the Nike Vaporfly was engineered in such a way that it enhanced the running speed of competitors, leading to the Olympic Committee almost banning its use. Discuss with your team: what is the difference between enhancement and enabling?

• Back on the legal side of things, the United States is lifting its ban on supersonic transport, allowing NASA to do what Concorde did not succeed in popularizing. Meanwhile, China is shattering the speeds that trains reach. Transport akin to trains may even lack rails in the future, although this concept has seen some major hiccups. Discuss: what could travelling faster than sound entail for the future of media?

• Travelling quickly on water seems to be a feat that we also wish to achieve. However, the record has been touted as the most dangerous record to attempt. Discuss with your team: will transportation over water become obsolete with the popularity of air transport?

• To be faster, more efficient, and quieter, Japan’s high-speed rail took inspiration from an array of birds. Sometimes when it comes to designing better products and technologies for the world, we turn to the natural world around us. Biomimicry is the practice of taking inspiration from biological phenomena and emulating them when designing technologies. Learn about the following natural phenomena and the biomimetic technologies that they have inspired and discuss with your team: in what areas are natural processes too far behind to be of use? Can we always see natural precedent in the things we do? Should we?

  • Bur | Shark skin | Nacre | Samaras

  • Termite mounds | Whale tubercles | Owl feathers

  • Amphibian toe-pads | Lotus leaves | Venus flytrap

  • Marble berry | Morpho butterfly | Bombardier beetle

• We have always been told to shoot for the stars, but this has led us to theorize of transporting ourselves between them. With the vastness of space, most of the universe would take well over a lifetime to travel to at the speed of light, however travelling at speeds that high has some weird consequences. Learn about the following terms, some of which refer to methods of FTL (faster-than-light) travel and discuss: what has stopped us from finding life elsewhere in the universe?

  • Wormhole | Krasnikov tube | Quantum tunneling

  • Alcubierre drive | Warp drive | Hyperspace

  • Tachyon | Quantum entanglement

To Create is to Be

• Not only should we clean up how we transport ourselves, but also how we construct the things that transport ourselves. Assembly lines allow for complex technologies and products to hit markets continuously and reliably. Products created in this manner are valued much less than so-called “hand-crafted” products, however. Learn about how they began and, with the advent of automation and robotics, how they are being adapted to the world today and discuss: should manufacturing be a step that we try and simplify? Or should we appreciate the journey to a product’s creation as much as the use of the product?

• With the advent of robotics and AI, menial tasks like stacking shelves can be completely automated. The technology is profoundly shaking up how we run the world around us. Take a look at how Amazon is using robotics in its e-commerce and discuss: just how far can AI take us? Is this a good thing?

• Quickly gathering or producing materials for construction is no use if you are unable to shape them. Learn about the following methods that we can use to cut materials to make the tools that we know and love and discuss with your team: which of these methods will prevail into our future?

  • Laser cutting | Waterjet cutting | Plasma cutting | Oxy-fuel cutting

• Perhaps, rather than relying on cutting, we produce the parts so that they already have their final shape. 3D printing is a modern method of manufacturing that has seen great attention. Learn about the different types of 3D printing and the potential paths that lay before it and discuss: should ease of production be a goal to allow future generations to create things faster? Or would that play into future laziness and complacency?

• No matter how we create individual shapes, we will still need ways to put pieces together. Glue is a popular way to perform such a task, and it has been for quite some time; however, it is not the only way. Learn about the following methods of joinery and discuss with your team: are stationary joineries a waste if we can improve technologies to form any shape in the future?

  • Dowel | Nail | Screw | Biscuit

  • Box joint | Dovetail joint | Mortise and tenon

  • Dado joint | Cross-lap joint | Splice joint

Route-amentary Decisions

• When it comes to international trade, resources can be carried in four ways. Nevertheless, shipping is by far the most popular mode of transport for the goods of the world, but it can bring some problems. Learn about the recent Red Sea Crisis as well as the following examples and discuss with your team: how can the world be more equal in terms of access to trade? Be sure to look at this time that the Panama Canal closed.

  • Suez Canal | Panama Canal | Great Lakes Waterway

  • Danube River | Turkish Straits | Danish Straits

  • Strait of Malacca | Strait of Hormuz | Northwest passage

• With the world warming every year, the ice caps at our poles are melting. In the south, this is not a huge advantage due to Antarctica’s out-of-the-way placement. But in the north, receding ice caps can bring one of the most influential and best shipping shortcuts to ever be opened—the Arctic Ocean. In the present day, however, a certain country seems conflicted on how to manage their new commodity. Discuss with your team: should we focus on building better technologies to shape the world, or have the world shape how we run our lives?

• When choosing a route, people often want the fastest route. Occasionally though, people seek a trade off of speed in exchange for safety, whether that be from dangerous intersections or, controversially, high-crime areas. In the air, planes should always be taking the most direct path, unless their airline is banned from a country’s airspace, and it seems that uninvited objects in another country’s airspace can stir quite a fuss. Discuss: how thoroughly will we need to define borders in the future?

• The ocean contains vast swathes of resources; thus, the nations of the world need to agree on how to divide it all up. Also, people can reside outside of the jurisdiction of any nation simply by living in international waters. Learn about what an EEZ is, as well as the laws of international waters, and discuss with your team: are we too greedy as a species? Or are these universally justified actions to take when a potential resource is discovered?

• “All roads lead to Rome” is unfortunately untrue; nevertheless, ever since the Silk Road, routing people and goods across land has been instrumental for the development and spread of ideas and technologies. Even a “New Silk Road” is being lobbied for by parties around the world. In the modern era, roads are a staple of transportation. Take a look at the following examples of influential roads and discuss: will all of this infrastructure be obsolete one day with another form of transport? How will roads change in the future?

  • Trans-Canada Highway | Pan-American Highway | Interoceanic Highway

  • Cairo-Cape Town Highway | Asian Highway 1 | Australia Highway 1

  • U.S. Route 66 | U.S. Route 1 | Transfagarasan Highway

• Bridging the gap in terms of transport allows for tremendous potential economic gains, which is why building bridges is such a huge deal. During times of war, pontoon bridges have been a staple to cross bodies of water quickly. Otherwise, bridges can be staples to one’s livelihood, and can have their own reputation. Take a look at the following bridge construction projects and discuss with your team: how would one measure the value of a bridge?

  • Fourth Mainland bridge | Messina Strait bridge | Tanzania-Zanzibar bridge

• When we are told to “stay in our lane,” that usually is not a literal command. In the case that it is however, we can look to see how lanes allow for vehicles to organize themselves neatly on an otherwise featureless slab of concrete. Strangely there is no consensus on what the widest road in terms of number of lanes is; additionally, increasing lane quantity counterintuitively does not result in smoother traffic. To solve their traffic problems, many places have implemented reversing lanes, which allow for traffic to flow when it otherwise is static. Discuss with your team: will we be able to accommodate the transportation needs of future generations, whose populations will likely be impressively higher than today’s?

• On the topic of reversing lanes, a quick look at what places drive what direction yields a strange amount of logic behind a pretty arbitrary decision. Learn about this topic and discuss with your team: should we agree on one direction to allow for more simple cosmopolitan international travel? Or are things like this a part of our modern culture?

• For vehicles travelling at high speeds on a highway, it is imperative that they need not slow down and potentially pose a hazard to the road when leaving the highway. When two or more major roads come together, designers can choose from a variety of interchanges to facilitate safe direction changes. Discuss: what ways can we improve this system?

• Instead of flooding drivers with copious amounts of road signs, shared-space intersections seek to strip away all indicators, leaving drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians on their own when it comes to being safe. Learn more about what the results of these “experiments” are and discuss with your team: should we lean more on our own judgement? Or is that a form of anthropocentrism?

Treat Others with Kindness

• One of the greatest discoveries in medicine was Alexander Fleming's penicillin, despite it being accidental. Before that, doctors did essentially anything crazy enough to work to treat diseases. Discuss with your team: does something even simpler come after this? How much can modern antibiotics be improved?

• When new drugs are discovered, they go through a process before they can reach the masses. The process, at least in the United States, takes around 5 steps, and takes a long time given how much testing is required. However, not all drugs are approved by the body in charge of regulating medicinal substances; in fact, some were previously not approved or are still not approved. Sometimes, this delays potentially life-changing drugs from hitting the market, but other times it would have been better for this approval to be made. Discuss with your team: are these regulations hindering development and the potential lives they can save, especially when diseases spread as quickly as they do?

• Before any of these regulations, people would let a leech suck their blood as a “treatment” to smallpox, then slowly, the deadly disease died out thanks to a new practice in healthcare: vaccination. The invention of vaccines revolutionized and simplified treatment and antibiotic development of a staggering number of pathogens, but none of them have fully gone away ever since the eradication of smallpox. Discuss with your team: will diseases ever leave our world for good?

• In the case of hereditary diseases and disorders, rather than continually treating an afflicted patient throughout their whole life, we may have found a way to rid the patient of their deleterious inherited gene entirely. This concept, known as gene editing, is a profound new technique that can allow numerous people to live a more “normal” life without worrying about their genetic disorder. However, this concept also stirs up tremendous controversy over its ethics. Discuss: should we be able to “customize” our own bodies to our liking? What about our children’s?

• When a surgery is conducted, the patient is made unconscious using anesthetics to prevent them from feeling the pain of being cut open. This technique is so revolutionary that an entire day has been allocated to celebrating it. Discuss with your team: are anesthetics just a gateway into transcending from the body? Is general sleep a similar experience?

Times of Waste

• In order to combat the current state of the environment, the world has set out some ideas for how we can live in harmony with the natural world. These ideas are contentious and not universally agreed upon. Discuss with your team: should we be more integrated into nature? Or does the fact that we are able to leave the planet inherently place us over the natural world?

• Firstly, reducing the waste we produce. Many cities around the world have plans to reduce the amount of trash they produce. Hong Kong and New York seem to be more focused on getting the trash off the streets; meanwhile, others embrace the premises of Zero-Waste day. In addition, places around the world are bickering over what the best way to produce electricity is. Learn about the following methods of extracting power, how they work, their history, and where they tend to be preferred; then, discuss: should countries struggling to achieve their energy needs be allowed to use less clean options to allow for their economy and population to advance?

  • Coal | Crude oil | Natural gas | Nuclear fission | Biomass

  • Geothermal | Hydroelectric | Wind | Solar | Tidal

  • Nuclear fusion | Ocean thermal | Dyson sphere

• Secondly, getting the most out of every resource. This not only involves limiting the waste that a resource produces, but also reusing the resource so that its lifespan lasts longer and still is productive. Many people think of reusable bottles or utensils, but even rockets can be reused. Unfortunately, many small businesses find it difficult to stay afloat with these modern precedents of environmental friendliness; meanwhile, larger companies can “greenwash” the population to make them look good. Discuss with your team: can we find a common ground between economic prosperity and environmental awareness? Be sure to learn about the environmental crimes of this Ikea supplier.

• Finally, completing the life cycle of every resource with a repurposing procedure; sustainable recycling. Whether it means that radioactive waste can be turned into utensils, or that safe drinking water can come from any source, society strives to recycle more in the name of helping the environment. In the world of today, however, much of our recycling is never treated, instead going straight to the landfill to sit for an exceptionally long time. When international borders are involved, the situation can get even more complicated. Discuss: are recycled products less valuable because they are tampered? Or are recycled materials more valuable because they carry with them histories of other uses?

• In order for a society to be truly waste-free, it needs to have no resources lost from its economic system and it needs to have enough resources in the first place to sustain its population; it needs to be self-sufficient. Different countries appear to be at different stages of achieving this model, likely due to them focusing on different aspects of it. Learn more about what it means to have a circular economy, and discuss with your team: is it inherently wrong to rely on others for resources? Should all countries individually be self-sufficient or should society as a whole strive for this goal?

• How we deal and dispose of the waste we create varies across the world. For example, Kyoto’s trash cans automatically compact their contents. Consider the following smart waste technologies as well as the following terms, and discuss: can a thing ever be unusable? Should we spend more time disposing of waste or transforming waste? Be sure to learn about the situation in New York City.

  • Garbage truck | Landfill | Compactor | MRF

  • Compost | Sewage | Incinerator | Bottle depot

  • Hazardous waste | Biohazardous waste | Anaerobic digestion

• On the topic of reuse, we find ourselves in a world dominated by single-use plastics, and as a result, the waste we produce is exceptionally high. As these plastics are hard for natural processes to break down, these microplastics end up in our oceans. Discuss with your team: how much should we allow the natural world around us to take care of its own affairs given how destructive our actions have been? Is it necessary at this point for us to take action, or can nature’s profound resilience persevere?

• As solutions to the plastics, many brands introduced paper straws, intended to be compostable and biodegradable. However, it appears this move has mixed responses, especially when it comes to how safe they are. As a result, Japan is turning back to plastics, and they seem to be much more environmentally friendly and healthy. Discuss with your team: when is it right to risk the safety of our health for the safety of the planet?

• Companies are in it to make money. Usually that means producing products that satisfy their customers better, but sometimes this is not the case. For example, a company can lose out on a ton of money after universal adoption of a product if their product never requires maintenance or dies. So, to combat this, companies exercise a model known as planned obsolescence. Discuss with your team: Given that this practice leads to more waste, should companies be punished for this? Should they be instead incentivized to improve the longevity of their products in some way? What would be the way?

The End-tropy

• In the natural world, organisms commonly die by consumption. However, when this is not the case, most have a maximum age they tend to reach. Amazingly, some organisms seem to have traits that could let them theoretically live forever. Research the following terms and the following cases of organisms and how they age; then, discuss: what can we learn from these organisms and implement into our lives? Is it better to live forever?

• Terms

  • Senescence | Negligible senescence | Cryptobiosis

  • Menopause | Semelparity | Life cycle

• Cases

  • Mayfly | Luna moth | Gastrotrich | Salmon | Cephalopod

  • Sturgeon | Naked mole-rat | Lobster | Ocean quahog | Greenland shark

  • Planarian flatworm | Hydra | Tardigrade | Immortal jellyfish | Aspen

• There is a myth out there that hair and nails continue to grow after death. Even still, scientists do not see death as a well defined point of decline. In fact, some think that, in the right circumstances, individuals can be revived after they have “died” under the traditional definition. Research the following terms about processes after an individual dies and discuss: when is an organic material completely erased?

  • Decomposition | Biodegradation | Autolysis | Putrefaction | Detritivore

  • Fresh | Bloat | Active decay | Advanced decay | Dry

  • Mummification | Fossilization | Cryonics

• The building blocks of the universe have a lifespan too. Back in 2007, a Michigan man, known colloquially as a ‘Radioactive Boy Scout’ was accused of stealing smoke detectors. Why smoke detectors? Because they contain americium, which is radioactive. Despite radioactive decay being harmful to humans, radioactive isotopes find their way into a few of our technologies due to their properties. Learn about the following common forms of decay and discuss with your team: will we ever find a better solution to the problems that these products solve?

  • Alpha decay | Beta decay | Gamma decay

• Eventually, there will be a final breath, final hour, and final second. The end of the universe is a heavily discussed topic, which is especially impressive given how little we understand what its processes are. Take a look at the following theories (all of them start with “big” in one way or another) and discuss with your team: is there a way to prevent these? Is it poetic in a way that everything will eventually become nothing? What emotions does that thought evoke?

  • Heat death (Big Freeze) | Big Rip | Big Crunch | Big Bounce | Big Slurp

Concluding Questions

• When designing a system, engineers are always vigilant that for whatever reason a compartment could be faulty and malfunction; thus, they build in redundancy. Can you ever be too safe in design?

• On the topic of redundancy in design, regulations ensure that the people, location, and resources are safe and accounted for. When they are not adhered to, accidents like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill can occur. Is there a universal set of regulations? Why have they not been agreed upon?

• In order to combat climate change, some scientists are trying to understand and alter the biology of crops like potatoes to better future food security. Is it right to unnaturally change species to fit our needs?