We just emerged from several glorious generations of developing technology and learning a bunch of new skills. This rapid expansion in technology has allowed us to build bigger, faster and cheaper than ever before. It has allowed us to grow and taught us new habits to simplify our lives. The speed of advancement has forced us to quickly establish new systems and processes. Unfortunately this has led to some miscalculations and unforeseen errors.
Now I’m not sure about you, but I’m yet to see someone discover a bicycle, jump on, and ride off into the sunset. Riding a bike, like many skills, involves nailing several basic skills that when combined allow us to ride off into the sunset, or down the street, or wherever your heart desires.
When learning, we are consciously pedaling, braking and steering. We don’t have the cognitive space to think about doing skids or mono’s. The more skills we can unconsciously execute the more energy we have to process new skills. This is how we advance, refine and grow.
The same could be said for our new breed of skills and technologies. We have our basic manufacturing skills working like well oiled machines. Now we can better understand and address the unethical and unsustainable habits that are taking a toll on our planet. Many of these habits are in their infancy and are malleable enough to be reshaped.
There are already some incredible industry and consumer led innovations reshaping some of our failed habits. For example: Keep Cup has been instrumental in reshaping our take away coffee habits with personalised and reusable coffee cups, Parley has created a movement to utilise ocean plastics as a resource and trademarked the term “Purpose is the new luxury” and Spindye has developed a recycled fabric dyeing process that substantially reducing toxic water waste.
It is an exciting time for innovation. We have our new skills and technologies, now we can refine them to find better ways to live in harmony with our planet’s resources.
