What we learned at How to Change the World 2017
The How To Academy’s innovation conference was provocative, inspiring and even delicious.
It is easy to feel quite small and slightly insignificant listening to brilliant minds speak of their most ingenious inventions and discoveries that are literally changing the world.
If nothing else, How to Change the World 2017 conference at the Royal Institution London was provocative, inspiring and even delicious.
The conference provided fresh and remarkable insights into the relatively customary world change themes of sustainability, medicine and humanity.
We saw emission-free passenger aircraft and weight loss pills, tasted edible packaging for liquids and learned about reverse engineered foods. We heard about the second death of distance, the healing powers of virtual reality and amidst all of this we also saw or should say, felt, astonishingly beautiful photographs of love in devastating circumstances.
We were greeted with a rapid-fire round-up of 2017 by Sophie Hackford. She touched on KFC’s facial recognition technology that is predicting customer’s orders in China, progress made in hyperloops, asteroid mining for water, bodyNET’s smart devices worn on skin through to wetware enabling us to ‘technodope’ with chips in our brains. Robots where explored in Ocado’s entirely robotic warehouse and empathy experiments that test human-robot relationships. The most salient takeaway being that machine learning is blurring the lines between humanity and technology more than ever.
Hydrogen Enables Emission-Free Passenger Flights
Hyperloops were not the only environmentally friendly breakthrough in transportation mentioned. Professor Josef Kallo spoke about his team in Germany that have successfully developed a hydrogen battery powered 4 person aircraft, HY4. Capable of travelling 1000–2000km and making very little sound, its battery is able to recharge at the other end in only 15 minutes.
Seaweed Makes Packaging Disappear
The sustainability progress didn’t stop at transport. Lise Honsinger is the CFO of Skipping Rocks Lab who have developed a fully biodegradable flexible packaging made from seaweed extract that intends to replace plastic bottles and from what we have seen, is likely to succeed. As already mentioned, the conference was delicious too — we were lucky enough to try an Ooho! for ourselves. Not only solving the plastic problem, Ooho! transcends current supply models as it is able to be ‘bottled’ from personal machines that stores and consumers alike can link up to their own water supply. This drastically cuts shipping costs and impact on the environment.
On the topic of reducing shipping’s drastic contribution to environmental devastation, Azeem Azhar voiced what he calls the second death of distance. 3D printing has enormous disruptive potential as its capability improves. The ability to print anywhere, similar to the Ooho! personal machine, circumvents shipping costs and environmental impact with a conversely destructive impact on the industry.
Machine Learning Creates Better Vegan Products
Sustainability was also covered by Katrina Dodd from Contagious who spoke to us about NotCo, a Chilean company that are breaking down foods to a molecular level and using machine learning to create vegan alternatives. Why are they doing this? NotCo believes that if we had to start all over again with a solution to feed the billions of people on our planet, meat would not be the answer. AI selects the best plant based substitutes for what would otherwise be dairy and animal products. Fluxx designers were also particularly impressed by the branding of NotCo’s products.
A Pill Replaces The Need For Exercise
We are changing the world through sustainable environmental practices but what about the directly human side? Making an immediately physical impact on our species is Compound 14; a pill with the power to make exercise obsolete. Chemical biologist Professor Ali Tavassoli may have failed his attempt to cure cancer, but has managed to mimic the effect of exercise inside the cells of those with obesity and type 2 diabetes. While the magic molecule literally drops weight from those suffering by making their cells think they have run out of energy, therefore picking up metabolism, it does not seem to change anything in a healthy weight. Seem being the operative word because when asked about the side effects, Professor Tavassoli was quick to stress its infancy and allude to the inevitable albeit unknown repercussions of long term use.
Virtual Reality Heals Physical Reality
Dominic Collins told us how virtual reality is making an astonishing impact on medical progression. Burns victims in hospitals have reported dramatic pain reduction when immersed in virtually freezing experiences. Harnessing the concept of mind over matter; images of Antarctica and particularly games such as SnowWorld have eased the discomfort and aided the healing of many.
Storytelling Changes The World
While the technological and scientific achievements we heard about are undoubtedly as impressive as they are progressive; there was one particular talk that held the audience in a way that was almost indescribable. It was a combination of Giles Duley’s raw and fervent narrative voice, combined with the deeply affecting content that demonstrated unquestionable capacity to change the world.
In 2011 Duley lost both his legs and his left arm after stepping on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan, whilst photographing those caught up in the conflict. His family were told he wouldn’t make it through the night, however he was back working in Afghanistan less than 18 months later.
Duley documents The Legacy of War; the stories of families living in the most extreme conditions around the world but he is not interested in portraying their suffering or displaying them as victims because when he looks at them, he sees their resilience and their strength above all else. It was as though we were huddled around a campfire as he sat before us and spoke of the love. He showed us the real power of a story and every person in the room felt it.
If one man’s story of humanity was more indelible than an array of earth-shaking discoveries and inventions, then it has to be said that Fluxx’s takeaway from How to Change the World 2017 is that human centred design matters.
While mankind reaches for the stars with bewildering creativity and genius; such accomplishments are frivolous without serious consideration for those they affect. This is especially true in a world where robotics are increasingly raising questions on what it really means to be human and while we may not have an explicit answer, storytellers such as Giles Duley certainly come close.
