TED Community » Mike Westdijk

More About Me

I'm passionate about

new ideas and concepts, biomimicry and nature, music, design in the broadest sense

An idea worth spreading

biomimicry. search on ted.com, use google. you'll see, it's pretty awesome ;)

Talk to me about

interested in all kinds of stuff. especially if it's about making the world a bit better, and people a bit happier :)

Comments

• TEDCred score: +4.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +1

  A reply on Talk: Steve Keil: A manifesto for play, for Bulgaria and beyond

  Jun 15 2011: In the NL, the politics are only talking about generating more knowledge and expertise, more students to colleges and universities, but overlook the importance of creativity, freedom and playing. If our economy should move from producing goods to delivering creativity and solutions... I really do not see how that's possible with the current politics. Maybe it's up to parents to start a kind of revolution indeed.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Steve Keil: A manifesto for play, for Bulgaria and beyond

  Jun 15 2011: I hope more parents have the same worries. And as long as there are no changes in education, the best you could do is to let the children play after school as much as possible. So much creativity in them, and it gets so easily broken down by the current education systems. I regret that my education (in the Netherlands) had such a great Baba Factor.
  And add to that, with a lot of BIG problems to be solved in the following decades, it is all creativity on deck.
• +5

  A comment on Talk: Steve Keil: A manifesto for play, for Bulgaria and beyond

  Jun 15 2011: To be honoust, this actually does not apply to Bulgaria alone. Education for example in the Western world is focussed on the academic way of thinking. There is little space for music, for play, for art, for dance, for sport etc. It is about thinking logically and it is removing emotions and creativity out of our professional lifes.
• +2

  A comment on Talk: Shea Hembrey: How I became 100 artists

  Jun 14 2011: That's a lot of creativity! :)
• +1

  A comment on Theme: Inspired by Nature

  Nov 25 2010: Leonardo da Vinci already recognised it, he said: “Those who are inspired by a model other than nature, a mistress above all masters, are labouring in vain.”

• A reply on Talk: Mitchell Joachim: Don't build your home, grow it!

  Aug 2 2010: @ Cartan: What's more worrying is the green/sustainable movement putting ideas forward that are also not the solution. As long as it is not using a lot of resources,or using a lot of energy, does not mean it is automatically good. This grown home is an interesting concept, I agree, and you could argue it is also courageous for this man to present this idea and pursue it. But in the end, it will not be the solution we are looking for.
  Solutions being the opposite of the crap done nowadays does not intrinsically mean they're right. I think the best solutions are brilliant/paradigm-challenging in their concept, not in how they are realised.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Laurie Santos: A monkey economy as irrational as ours

  Jul 30 2010: You're missing a really important thing about evolution: selection by environment. Only those characteristics beneficial for the species within the environment/context, will be selected. As Laurie Santos said in the beginning, humans constructed highly complex, artificial systems like mortgages and the financial market. Humans did not evolve in these conditions, so humans did not evolve treats for their own creations.
  
  Or a better, short example. Wisdom teeth. Or stress? Do we really need stress in the modern world? No, it is a reaction to a situation that took place 2 million years ago, like being threatened by evil people or animals. It causes you to sleep light and short, high blood pressure etc. It could save your life. Nowadays, it does not save your life anymore. It could affect your work or private life negatively.

• A reply on Talk: Mitchell Joachim: Don't build your home, grow it!

  Jul 21 2010: You have to step away from understanding nature just the way you do. I think everyone has its own definition, which makes debates sometimes so hard on this subject. Ye Gao probably means 'natural' as 'alive', and the term nature is quite often mixed up with the term biology. Earthquakes and birds are both nature, but the birds are only biology. In this sense, Ye Gao does not regard atom bombs or lounge chairs as natural.

• A comment on Talk: Mitchell Joachim: Don't build your home, grow it!

  Jul 21 2010: In my opinion Joachim goes a bit too far. This house does remind me a lot of the ideas behind biomimicry/bionics - using biological solutions for our good. It would be interesting to investigate the idea of growing a house, as it would be more efficient on energy and material (as there is no waste). But I think to do it all literally does not make any sense. Animals built eco-friendly nests, hills and burrows, right, but mostly out of lifeless and dead materials - it just makes more sense.
  
  And there is a difference between being friendly for life (sustainable) and using biology for creating technology. Creating stuff environmentally sound by using growing trees and meat is such a flat concept. We need to go deeper.