TED Community » David Soul

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• A comment on Conversation: If you have chance to perform a TED talk , what topic you will choose?

  Apr 23 2012: Designing Freedom ala Stafford Beer .... using the principles used to develop the Viable Systems model

• A reply on Conversation: How do you envision "Biomimicry" will change our future?

  Feb 18 2011: They can and will be better in both, but the process is most likely to resemble the overcoming what's now commonly described as the Innovator's Dilemma (but was described at least 30 and perhaps even 40 years prior to that term gaining currency); that is find a niche where the existing level of performance and price can win and then improve the new technology until it's price/performance pushes past the old technologies in larger and larger application areas.

• A reply on Conversation: What's the overlooked gem, the book I haven't read that I must?

  Feb 18 2011: A great book, but I've actually been more influenced by his earlier NOTES ON THE SYNTHESIS OF FORM, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1964.

• A reply on Conversation: What's the overlooked gem, the book I haven't read that I must?

  Feb 18 2011: Wow! And Thanks!
  Totally forgotten about this one until you jogged the memory.... I'll have to do a search to see if I can locate it in the stacks for a re-read; as I do recall its a completeley different approach to that taken in many of today's pablum consistency offerings.

• A reply on Conversation: What's the overlooked gem, the book I haven't read that I must?

  Feb 18 2011: Almost chose it my self!
  
  I'd originally gone back and forth between Whitaker's compilation ""Think Before You Think" and Beer's own compilation "Platform for Change" before squirting sideways and going with Designing as the single book, of any genre from my book collection, that "resonates" and is the one "must read" as called for in Seth's request.
  
  The delightfully titled "Ten pints of Beer" which describes the rationale of each of his ten books on cybernetics - all of which are well worth reading - is available at www.kybernetik.ch/dwn/Ten_Pints_of_Beer.pdf

• A comment on Conversation: What's the overlooked gem, the book I haven't read that I must?

  Feb 17 2011: "Designing Freedom" - Stafford Beer.
  
  Includes prescient essays "the Threat to All We Hold Most Dear", "The Future That Can Be Demanded Now" and a "A Liberty Machine in Prototype" taken from the Massey Lecture series of 1973 (part of The CBC Radio Ideas series). A delightful, short (100 pages) read that tells where we are now, and what should be done about it....
  
  (unfortunately Canadian edition from Anansi Canada is out of print while UK publisher now charges near astronomical price of ~$1 per page so used is probably best bet)