Saturday, August 8, 2009

Let's not reinvent the wheel !!

One of the main reason I really love open source and free software that it allows user to reuse existing solution to any given problem. This allows them who have solved that problem to improve their solution and also for others who just want to use it to solve other problems and move on. We have enough problems to solve. Similarly as Janine Benyus attarcts our attention towards billions of years of wisdom and perfected solution. One of the best talk on TED I have come across ..
She explains how billions of species which were on earth much before we even came into existence have faced many similar issues and have found the solution which are natural,perfec and kind of cost effective. While we are relatively new on earth , the path we have chosen is not really in sync with natures and which is very different from what other organisms have achieved. Our solutions further damages natural equilibrium and eventually will be reason for our own destruction. And also it takes considerable effort to find out new solutions . Instead we can just ask the nature !! All we need to do is find similar problem in nature and understand the solution developed by other organisms and just adopt same solution .. We are done... Move on to find new problem.. new organism and new solution and show will go on.
Ok nice idea but we do not really have a nice catalog about such ideas,organisms,solutions and in which fields directly related to us we can use it. Well Janine Benyus has thought about exactly same problem and came up with asknature website which tries to address exact same issue. Its a nice attempt though not much comprehensive yet but it will eventually become one and I sincerely hope it becomes a perfect source for such information.
Looking at the vast amount of knowledge available in the form of these other living creatures , we have so much to learn .. I feel like we are not even in KG then .. Lets get started !!