Examples of Digital Technologies that Incorporate Natural Principles

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The Digital Naturalness project is not entirely novel. There is a long tradition, even within computer science, of using inspiration from nature to guide the design of digital systems. Additionally, there are many already existing products and design methodologies in varying stages of development which follow a similar spirit as the one guiding Digital Naturalness. In this blog we offer an incomplete survey of some of these other efforts, to contextualize Digital Naturalness within a wider movement of people and organizations experimenting toward the healthy integration of nature and digital technology.

One helpful way to think about approaches to natural digital design is that they fall into two broad categories: overt and subtle. Overt approaches make a clear and obvious link between the user and nature, often through the visual UX of the product or feature. Subtle approaches draw from nature or makes the users’ experience something like being in nature, but the user may not be aware of this connection at all. Making office buildings feel better for the people who work in them by filling the office with plants and pictures of natural scenes and by encouraging people to make their computer background a natural scene are good examples of the overt approach. Reducing glare on computer screens by learning from the way the microscopic structures of moths’ eyes refract light is a good example of the subtle approach. These approaches are not mutually exclusive.

Both approaches can make our technologies more nature-like. Both approaches may also predispose the user to connecting with nature more deeply because the patterns and structures of their everyday life reflect the patterns and structures in nature. It might be that subtle approaches have a stronger impact in this way because they embed deep structures in the technology, which constitute it from the “ground up,” rather than more simply putting nature “on top.” However, overt approaches have an additional advantage over subtle approaches in that they consciously reinforce people’s awareness of nature and encourage them to reflect on its value for humans’ wellbeing.

The following list is a brief survey of design methodologies and digital products that draw from nature; it is not at all comprehensive.

Design Methodologies

There are currently two major processes used to develop technologies using natural principles. One is biomimicry, which involves the mimicking of nature, either partially or fully, to resolve a design or architectural problem. The other is biophilia, which includes the intention of enhancing connection with nature in the design process and product. The following describes ways that these frameworks have been applied to the development of digital technology. 

Biomimicry

There is a rich history of design inspired by nature. One of the earliest examples is the artificial neural network developed by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts in 1943 to imitate neuronal behavior (McCulloch and Pitts., 1943). In the late 1950’s, Otto Schmitt coined the term “biomimetics” and focused his research on mimicking the electrical activity of a nerve (Harkness, 2002). The term “bionics” was coined by Jack Steele in 1960 to describe a way of solving engineering problems using biology (“Bionics”). In 1997, Janine Benyus coined the term “biomimicry” to describe “innovation inspired by nature” in a book that brought biomimicry to the forefront of green design (Benyus, 1997).

Biomimetic TRIZ

TRIZ is a compilation of principles used to solve problems and resolve contradictions across multiple disciplines (“TRIZ Methodology, Tools, Articles and Case Studies”). TRIZ was originally developed to solve problems in physics and chemistry, recent efforts are being made to apply it to information technology and software development (Beckmann, 2015). Biomimetic TRIZ is a recent development of the program which incorporates biological solutions to problems in its database. It is not clear whether the Biomimetic TRIZ database has yet been applied to digital technology. 

Technobiophilia

Biophilia is a term coined by E.O. Wilson as “the innate attraction to life and lifelike processes” (Kellert and Wilson, 1993). Biophilic design is intended to replicate human experiences in nature and to create spaces that reinforce that connection; it is a way to improve health and wellness. For example plants and photos of natural scenes are used in interior design, courtyards, natural lighting, and water elements are implemented in architectural design, and parks and greenways connect humans to nature in urban design. Technobiophilia is the “innate attraction to life and lifelike processes as they appear in technology” as coined by Sue Thomas (Thomas, 2013). Technology developed with technobiophilia in mind helps increase our connection with nature while online. 

Products

Natural Computing

The field of “natural computing” or “bio-inspired computing” is decades old with some techniques already widespread and having a significant impact in applications today. The field takes three broad approaches: taking inspiration from nature to build hardware and software that solve problems uniquely or more effectively than previous methods, building digital systems that emulate life or are themselves alive, and building rudimentary computation or production machines from biological material or even living organisms. Perhaps the most well-known of these applications are artificial neural nets, which are the foundation of current artificial intelligence tools. Other examples include:

  • Slime mold computing: Slime mold can solve linear programming, network, and path optimization problems (Straszak and Vishnoi, 2016). It has inspired routing protocols for wireless sensors (Li et al, 2010) and been used to build living logic gates (Adamatzky and Schubert, 2014).

  • Generative design: Inspired by the diverse functionality that natural selection gives rise to, generative design lets algorithms iterate their own designs over hundreds or thousands of generations modified by predetermined constraints and goals. The results are often better than those humans have designed by themselves.

  • New distributed applications architectures are directly inspired by the coordination of organisms in ecosystems. Holochain’s “agent-centric” holographic storage architecture mimics ecosystemic “memory.” Individual agents record personal transactions that other agents can validate as correct, and no agent maintains an official record of all transactions in the system (Harris-Braun et al, 2018). 

  • At the intersection of software design and biological engineering,startups and researchers are engineering bacteria and even whole cells to deliver targeted gene therapies or other interventions to treat or prevent human disease (Conde, 2019).

Digital Art

  • Fractal screensavers: Beautiful and compelling precisely because they embody the structural patterns we have evolved to be surrounded by and of which we ourselves are composed. This is an example of a technobiophilic product.

Biofeedback with Natural Frequencies

  • Flux: A program that changes the color of phone and computer screens depending on the time of day to rebuild the bridge between our circadian rhythms and the cycles of the sun.

  • Pranawave: A biofeedback tool for matching one’s breathing frequency with one’s baroreflex frequency. Breathing in this way increases vagal tone and may have several significant health benefits.

Empathy with Nature

  • Rainforest Connection: This company installs acoustic monitors in rainforests and alerts authorities when chainsaws, motorcycles, trucks, or guns are heard. Their app allows users to listen to the actual sounds of rainforests in real time from anywhere in the world.

  • Plant/animal identification and tracking apps: These can be used to develop relationships with plants and animals by learning their characteristics and functions while in nature.

  • Tree Sense: A VR experiment out of MIT in which the user becomes a tree in a VR world. Haptic sensors on users’ hands and arms allow them to move and feel squirrels crawling on “their” branches.

Digital Naturalness is part of a long lineage of research and development to understand how to integrate the “code” of ecosystems and organisms into the digital product design and to use digital products to deepen humans’ perception and appreciation of the natural world in which we are embedded. In coming years, the development of this field will necessarily accelerate in order to solve for the destructive insensitivity of modern design and production methods while continuing to advance the power of computational tools.

References

Adamatzky, Andrew, and Theresa Schubert. “Slime Mold Microfluidic Logical Gates.” Materials Today, vol. 17, no. 2, 2014, pp. 86–91., doi:10.1016/j.mattod.2014.01.018.

Beckmann, Hartmut. “Method for Transferring the 40 Inventive Principles to Information Technology and Software.” Procedia Engineering, vol. 131, 2015, pp. 993–1001., doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2015.12.413.

Benyus, Janine M. Biomimicry Innovation Inspired by Nature. Harper Perennial, 1997.

“Bionics.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 12 May 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionics.

Conde, Jorge. “What Is a Medicine?” Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen Horowitz, February 7, 2019. a16z.com/2019/02/07/what-is-a-medicine-jorge-conde.

Harkness, Jon M. “In Appreciation ¶ A Lifetime of Connections: Otto Herbert Schmitt, 1913 - 1998.” Physics in Perspective (PIP), vol. 4, no. 4, Jan. 2002, pp. 456–490, doi:10.1007/s000160200005.

Harris-Braun, Eric, Nicolas Luck, and Arthur Brock. “Holochain Scalable Agent-Centric Distributed Computing Draft ALPHA 1) – 2/10/2018.” Holochain, 2018. https://github.com/holochain/holochain-proto/blob/whitepaper/holochain.pdf

Kellert, Stephen R., and Edward O. Wilson. The Biophilia Hypothesis. Island Press, 1993.

Li, Ke, Claudio E. Torres, Kyle Thomas, Louis F. Rossi and Chien-Chung Shen. “Slime Mold Inspired Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks.” Swarm Intelligence, vol. 5, no. 3-4, Oct. 2011, pp. 183–223, doi:10.1007/s11721-011-0063-y.

McCulloch, Warren S., and Walter Pitts. “A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity.” The Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, vol. 5, no. 4, 1943, pp. 115–133, doi:10.1007/bf02478259.

Straszak, Damian, and Nisheeth K. Vishnoi. “On a Natural Dynamics for Linear Programming.” Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science - ITCS '16, 2016, doi:10.1145/2840728.2840762.

Thomas, Sue. Technobiophilia: Nature and Cyberspace. Bloomsbury, 2013.

“TRIZ Methodology, Tools, Articles and Case Studies.” The Triz Journal, triz-journal.com/.