Author Archives: Sahar Mirshafiei
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Take that piece of cheesy word play and prepare yourself for something immeasurably better ~ thankfully! One day my friend Sarah told me about something with such excitement that I was actually slightly confused. An energetic person enthralled by the world, Sarah’s enthusiasm is quite infectious. But she was telling me about a podcast. A podcast about trees.
I was intrigued. What had captured the interest of this supersonic human comet to such a great degree? Months passed and this niggling question mark lingered in the back of my mind. So I made time (33 minutes of it to be precise) and space (in a quiet room with no distractions) and began trying to understand more about my friend Sarah.
Years have passed, and this podcast about trees is still my favourite of all time ~ a source of adrenaline rushes of wonderment and stirs of poignancy. Not only does it illustrate the integrity, and social skills of trees ~ so too does it raise the question of how much we have still to learn from this newly discovered chamber, this underground think-tank.
Enjoy this adventure with award winning scientist Jennifer Frazer and Radiolab, where silently and unobtrusively, trees barter, nurture relationships, build business links, nurse one another back to health, and at the last calling ~ decide which of their best friends to gift their assets and bodies to.
This discovery begs the question ~ what does being intelligent truly mean?
Our aesthetic has changed beyond recognition here in the UK during the past decade. The affordability of Ikea opened up a new way of living for the average Brit. This ethos of bringing nature into the home has spread like wildfire, bringing with it the Swedish attributes of understated and organic calm and serenity. It goes without saying that this has a positive influence on mindset and well-being.
What this also means is that a greater degree of sustainable wood is being used, which means that as far as our Scandi purchases go, older forests with their ancient nervous systems are left to their own devices.
So in a world where sustainable and recyclable materials are gaining favour above the drabber and environmentally unfriendly staples such as concrete, here are some advances in the twining of wood and automation.
It would be rude not to mention leaves now. Knowledge of ancient cultures and methods led to a great hypothesis in Germany. Can the traditional process of stitching together leaves in order to create biodegradable plates be automated? The answer was a resounding yes. Perhaps one day our barbecue preparations will lead us down the aisle to a twenty pack of guilt-free leaf plates as opposed to a set of plastic or paper plates. As for the nature of festivals and food vans, their landscape (as well as the landscape left on fields after they’ve been and gone) may be set to change forever.
We may be increasingly challenging deforestation, though what remains is a growing population to feed. So how do we meet these seemingly mutually exclusive needs? How do we preserve the homes of wildlife as well as the integrity of the soil beneath our feet and the quality of our air, whilst incorporating agriculture and its produce as a fundamental part of our lifestyles?
Enter indoor and vertical farming ~ where without dependence on seasons, without use of pesticides, without the clearing of forests, and with 95% less use of water, the highest yields of vegetation are being grown. Here automation using hardware and bespoke software is providing a vision for the future of urban farming. Urban farming of course also means that food is being grown nearer to the consumer, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of transport.
In terms of saving on land footprint whilst also reducing costs, it’s interesting to note that vertical farming mimics the vertical storage and stacking of Ikea warehousing.
“70% of our fresh water contamination comes from agriculture. 70% of our fresh water usage goes to agriculture.”
80 million views?! Has the world lost its marbles?! No, no it hasn’t. The world has donated its marbles to art. This is a beautiful mechanism, and surprise surprise, it was lovingly imagined and created by Swedish duo Wintergatan. Lowly wood enters the arena of modern music in a spectacular and playful design. See what you think!
Now here’s a short snippet of Sofia Helin reflecting on playing Saga Noren in The Bridge. Once again the Swedes made strides, creating a protagonist openly perceived as being on the autism spectrum.
The intensity and intellect of Saga would be difficult to match, with the most cleverly written plots illustrating the complex interplay between two different ways of being ~ how challenging and yet how productive Saga’s partnerships are with her colleagues.
In the field of engineering we’re no strangers to the spectrum, and it’s been heartening to note during our 16 years the perception of such characteristics has shifted. Our meticulous and forthright contingents are no longer relegated to back rooms, isolated to perfect their specialisms.
Increased awareness and acceptance, alongside less discrimination, confusion, and fear, has thankfully brought about a much greater degree of appreciation and solidarity.
In this fast, ever changing, ever challenging world, integration and team-play are allowing many more projects to succeed as we pool and share knowledge. All hands on deck ~ long may this continue.
Rounding up this post, here’s some food for thought about RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). In an era of celebrity and hero-worship, it becomes easy to perceive individual people or countries as being somehow perfect. Of course, this defies logic. With that in mind, it’s interesting to note that to date, several Swedish companies have micro-chipped in excess of 20,000 employees. As a simple example, whereas wearable technology such as Apple watches harvest information about activity and health for the user, employee chips may lead to the monitoring of our most private workings to employers. Are corporations to be trusted with so much power?
Will this vision of turning humans into technology free the user, or enslave them?
We’ll be releasing posts with a new hashtag #HopeTech, which means that there’ll be a new landing page pulling together all the HopeTech posts going forward. We hope to stay abreast of all the latest strides and shifts being made around the globe, because we believe that to know, understand, and appreciate these advances is to inform and shape our own perspectives on our industry.
Research shows that negative press is most addictive, so the value of building, maintaining, and sharing progressive projects can’t be underestimated. Check in with our new landing page for a spot of hope ~ and of course, if you come across something not-to-be-missed please do let us know and we’ll create a post for it with a credit to you (or keep it anonymous if you’d prefer).
We may be prone to black-and-white thinking, and all-or-nothing ideology. There tends to be a focus on end results, rather than the authentic processes involved in achieving our goals. In a time when it’s easy to lose hope in the future of our planet, it’s important to see tech being used to turn the tide. All is certainly not lost.
Over a billion animal skins including cattle, alligator, and snakes are used each year by the leather industry. Contrary to popular belief, the skins are not bi-products of other industries ~ they are the sole purpose for the animals’ existence. Space is tight, conditions are appalling, quality of life is minimal.
From an environmental perspective, the deforestation and desertification caused by clearing land for cattle, for growing soya feed for cattle, the water usage to water cattle, the slurry waste of keeping cattle, and the emissions of not only cattle itself but so too for their transport ~ is monumentally destructive.
Tech is providing hope for the transition of this industry.
Society does change for the better under positive influences and trains of thought. In the past couple of decades, opportunities for children in technology have been greatly improved.
Children are less dismissed and undervalued, with kids’ tech clubs and competitions being more widely encouraged. Energy is energy is energy ~ and every person and idea matters. Indeed, it took a group of young minds and their science project to figure out a way to recycle billions of pounds of styrofoam. What an amazing achievement!
From improving testing kits, to bettering care for hypo attacks, we’ve been managing diabetes for a long time. We’re now looking towards prevention and reversal ~ and the method for reversing type-2 diabetes is much simpler than you may imagine.
Below is a walk through from a manufacturer who deals with the production of diabetes test strips from beginning to end. This is a multi layered process for a multi layered product involving gold, laser cutting, and an imperative vision system.
Our upcoming project profile will be about our control system development on a test strip machine here in the UK, where working with costly raw materials in the medical field demands a high level of accuracy to minimize waste and ensure quality standards.
Diabetes UK illustrates below the prevalence of, and risks for, diabetes sufferers in our hospitals ~ highlighting the need for bespoke individual approaches to care and safeguarding. In an age of increasing diabetes diagnosis, from enabling clients to accurately monitor their levels conveniently themselves, to improving hospital infrastructure, as with most things ~ a holistic approach is beneficial.
Working alongside this is an awareness of new trends, particularly among young females with type 1 diabetes, of abstaining from insulin in order to lose weight. In real terms, managing diabetes wholeheartedly requires a close ear to information being collated by youth services as well as securing the funding required for ongoing youth services.
1 in 5 diabetes inpatients have a hypo attack in hospital ~ how come?
Last but certainly not least, join Dr Sarah Hallberg for 18 minutes capable of creating profound change. Consistently exceeding national benchmarks for weight loss in the USA without surgical interference, and using years of experience in obesity research, she’s been highly successful in reversing diabetes and other metabolic diseases.
“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”
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Modern life tends to be a fast paced journey with unexpected twists and turns. Gone are the days of consistency and routine. Most people are no longer at the direct behest of war, famine, or environmental disasters ~ what is left is a daily roll call of chop and change, perforations of time and space.
Your perfectly planned trip is delayed, there’s a jam on the motorway, the trams are down, the underground,,, let’s not mention it. The meal you ordered won’t arrive at the specified time because there are no drivers in your area, your friend’s read you messages though not replied, the software update on your phone’s more of a hindrance than a help, there’s a block of flats being built obstructing your garden views, the villa you booked for your group holiday’s just fallen through, the early night you planned won’t be happening because your neighbour has other ideas ~ and these are just some examples of relatively trivial and common daily uncertainties. Add a dose of uncertainty or destabilization regarding relationships, employment, health, personal safety, or your child’s education, and it’s easy to see how people can fall at risk.
Though of course the little things can add up too, and at times we can feel helpless and overwhelmed. We are contactable at all times, living in greater proximity to one another, and so the notion of sanctuary is prevalent.
The statistics for suicide in Japan (the second highest in a developed nation) remind us that wealth does not render us immune from emotional unrest. Financial pressures, a sense of bombardment by the myriad of things we each need to monitor and manage, alongside isolating technology are enough to offset the developments we’ve made.
Many moons ago whilst using Tokyo as a hazard case study for Geography A-level (earthquakes, fires, tsunamis, floods, storms), it stuck with me that technology, alongside it’s contributing noise and light pollution were also considered as hazardous factors.
It’s no surprise that at times the idea of control can become appealing. How do we reduce the scope for human error or interference in our endeavours? How do we meet deadlines and targets with factors beyond our control delivering curve-balls? How do we carve out some personal space? How do we escape? Technology provides havens of infrastructure which can help us to organise, to develop, and to cope.
However, time and again it’s proven that the strength of human connection and bonding is what allows us to feel truly present in this world. Check out this wonderful video by In A Nutshell about the correlation between addiction and lack of emotional support, whether it be an over-dependence on substances or technology for example ~
So as appealing as it may be to programme subservient band members, who’ll forever dance to our tune and never fall in love or get distracted ~ for interaction, intimacy, growth, and vibrancy, we’ll always require our fellow beings.
There lies a clue in what we’re missing, the notion of human “beings”, and not human “doings”. Meditation and mindfulness are increasingly taking centre stage in schools and workplaces to help alter our perspectives on pace, and to air more on the side of spontaneity and uncertainty than rigidity and routine.
Ironically and increasingly, currently it is technology, gadgetry, and apps which are providing a gateway back to self with familiar and accessible interfaces to facilitate acknowledgment, awareness, rethinking, and retraining of our behaviours and propensities.
This wonderful music video by Nigel Stanford ingenuously uses Kuka robots to play the drums, guitar, piano, and to even mix the decks! Following on from a longstanding fear of code taking on a life of it’s own and turning the tables on it’s master, the message of this video might quite simply be, “be careful what you wish for.”
In this Ted Talk, psychologist Guy Winch offers a unique and refreshing perspective on addressing and healing emotional wounds, in a world where rumination and analysis can ignite and embolden anxiety. Mindfulness involves acknowledging emotional pain and treating it with TLC as opposed to denial or punitive measures.
As ever, the kindness and tenderness we begin to apply to ourselves we will eventually be able to afford to others. In time, these values tend to be extended to greater society ~ challenging the notion that consideration and support are finite resources which rely on the exclusion of our most disenfranchised.
We’ll end with a clip from Flight of the Conchords for some comic relief. Happy New Year, wishing everyone a year of creativity, connectedness, and contentment ~ whatever your jam may be.
We’re here to turn dreams into reality at 2M, facing challenging ideas with playful solutions. Contact us with your wish list, come join us for a cup of coffee, and let’s see where the journey takes us.
We’re turning to apples for our next How it’s Made adventure, checking through weighers, cleaners, waxers, dryers, labellers, sorters, packers, and baggers, with a medley of conveyors connecting the apples’ pathways. I’m guessing we’ve all seen an apple tree or two, along with pear trees and blackberry bushes here in the UK. I recently visited Sweden, a country which hosts fruit trees and berry bushes in most of its gardens. This is closely linked to a school system which encourages play in the wild outdoors and educates children about plants from a young age.
It’s great to see this ethos spreading across the globe in more urban surroundings, with herb gardens springing up as well as rooftop bee hives from London through to New York. Production, the means of production, and the knowledge required, are shifting to the common man, aided by a wealth of information at our fingertips through online sources, bloggers, and tutorials, as well as socially conscientious chefs with much outreach. Though the population demands a steady provision of food at the same time, and I’d struggle to think of anyone who doesn’t step into a supermarket at some point during the month for part of their produce.
With Halloween around the corner, perhaps you’d like to warm up on your apple-bobbing skills? Or maybe reflect on the 5-a-day fruit and veg recommendation that you may or may not be getting? For me personally, I’m casting my mind back to the classic Granny Smith apple, which was a firm favourite in the school playground before snack machines and chocolate bars.
So while we turn our hand to rosemary and thyme from our window sills, following the advice of our favourite chefs, or to helping re-boost the bee population through rooftops free from pesticides, what’s clear is that we’re both more interested and more invested in the natural world around us. The perfect alliance here might be to be aware of where we can take the food we do not use from our supermarket hauls ~ here’s a good link for those in the Manchester area for instance https://manchestercentral.foodbank.org.uk/give-help/donate-food/
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If robots and their human owners have set their sights on running hotels, then humans need to become even more human to make themselves irreplaceable.
The social and interpersonal impact of technology shouldn’t be taken lightly, and as with most things the recommendation of moderation is a sound one.
Some days though, the self service aisle at the supermarket is more appealing. This notion is now entering the world of art, cuisine, and various facets of the service industry.
We believe that nothing replaces the human touch, however pieces like this are interesting experiences which at the very least highlight the value of human interaction by presenting a polar opposite alternative.
Perhaps one outcome of robot facilitated service experiences will be the revaluing and reprising of the human experience.
Robot Art ~
Robot Barber ~
As we begin to internalize the technological kingdoms we have built,
as we progressively become more superhuman, what will differentiate us from machinery?
Robot Chef ~
Robot Hotel ~
I personally set up my first email account at the age of 18. It’s a matter of time before an 18 month old toddler tries swiping my face to alter the interface ~ better luck next time kids!
Our minds and our reflexes are changing. The technological advances of the past 20 years are breathtaking and mind-boggling.
As with any habit or dependency, it takes time to figure things out. There’s often a full flux before reconsideration of our approach.
It’s exciting to think that, hopefully in the next 20 years, the fusion of technology and physical and emotional well-being will be optimized as we re-asses and re-align our goals.
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Dreamers make the world go round
To date, the 2M project desk as helped turn many a pie in the sky idea into working installations. We’re not quite sure how this reputation came about, though we do enjoy it a lot.
With funders including the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, and the Energy Entrepreneurs Fund, our client Kite Power Systems are developing an electricity producing system flown by kites.
Imagine two kites flying over 400m in the sky. Now imagine they’re dancing together, passing one another in figures-of-eight, one rising as the other dips, and vica-versa. Imagine that their movements turn a turbine which produces electricity.
Now imagine that this is reality. Below you’ll see a visual of the merits of kite power, including the vast difference in the sea moorings necessary for kite power and wind turbines.
This is one of the factors which gives kites the potential to generate energy at half the cost of wind power.
Join KPS for some test runs below, meanwhile research and testing continues in all aspects of this design ~ from control and safety, to durability and flexibility.
Research and development of new ideas is our business ~ if you’d like to book an initial consultation drop us a line by clicking the Enquire button.
Beer’s intellectual. What a shame so many idiots drink it.
Now that we have your attention, let’s cast our minds to the burgeoning business of micro breweries. In the aftermath of the recession, simple activities became luxury experiences. Greater attention was afforded to the simple things in life whilst the majority of the population adjusted to a different interpretation of disposable income.
Craft beers continue to be a way of enjoying the finer things on a budget, with the number of UK breweries rising by 10% last year to around 1,700. There’s much opportunity for local influence and interpretation, as well as for entrepreneurial flair. There is of course a deep science to perfecting this craft , so the opportunity to lessen the headache of production and financing is of course very welcome to the budding brewer.
Welcome to Carmichael’s Mobile Bottling solution. With inbuilt 2M control systems, this fleet delivers the bottling line straight to the brewery. The beers are bottled conveniently on site, enabling the client to finish their product. Given that bottling lines cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, it’s easy to see how freeing this development is for more unique and delicious concoctions to enter the public realm.
With the ability to Accumulate, Label, Rinse, Fill, and Crown, this nifty solution compliments the ethos of not only the breweries it serves, but so too of the consumer buying the beer down at the local bar or pub. Slowly but surely, these independent brands are taking position on supermarket shelves too – beckoning a shift towards real variety at our fingertips. Finally, different labels are beginning to mean different producers not all owned by the same big firms.
If you would like to enquire about the services of Carmichael’s Mobile Bottling, please contact 0131 445 7205 or drop a line to info@c-m-b.co.uk. If you’d like to speak with us about your own development ideas, please don’t hesitate to contact us via the Enquiry button.