Open Doors   Who Is Who    Amsterdam - 14, 15, 16 November 2002
Innovations Inspired by Nature  Janine Benyus  So let me begin
by saying that I think we are nature. I don’t think that any of
our technologies are unnatural, I think that the tram I came on
today, B52 bombers, the chairs you are sitting on, this
technology, I think it is all nature, because we are biological
beings and we created it. As a biologist, the question for me is
not whether our technology is natural, but how well adapted it
is to life on earth over the long term. And as designers, I
think we are realising that perhaps our designs are not that
well adapted yet. We're a young species at this point in our
evolution; other species have been here before. It is the point
at which you try to match yourself to the context, to the
conditions that are out there. And you put out an artefact, just
like a robin’s nest is an artefact, and the context decides yes
or no, well adapted or not well adapted. And in the same way I
think that our artefacts