Body mimicking...

In a recent conversation with a friend who is an innovator in agri-business, he told a few of us, we do a lot of “body mimicking’ in our innovation. He is trained as a doctor and what he was saying was that they learn from human body in their innovative inventions.

 

In one sense is this not what we see all around, in human inventions too? Let us look at a few examples.

 

Look at the Central Nervous System.  20 billion neurones in a 2.5 m² surface area packed into small space of the skull, which controls every thought, action and emotion in our lives and the whole body! The fast and the slow memory, the random-access memory, the back-up memory etc. 

Is this not what computers and smart phones mimic? Small processors packed into a confined small space which can do much more than what it appears to have the capacity. Mimicking the neuronal networks that was there much before chips were discovered!

 

The ability of the brain to do self-learning, pick up from all the memories of the past, and put together a potential path for the future. Is this not what the AI systems do too? In a much lesser efficient way than our brains can do. 

 

Consider the Cardiovascular System. A pump that keeps pumping blood and nutrients into the last mile places of the body, with no switch to start or end, but without fail, keep pumping. Increasing speed in fear, flight or fight situations, reduce when one is resting, with no external inputs, but by excellent internal systems. The automobile industry has learnt much from this, in their innovation, to keep the engines lubricated and vehicles running. 

Learn from the Respiratory system. The bellows of the lung, that pick up good air and throw out bad air (making it simple), is a system that does not need to be reminded to do it work. That one action gives life to our body and oxygen to pump the system to work well. It takes out the bad CO² and keeps the body fluids in right pH balance too. 

Bellows have been part of many machines, musical instruments, health care products, and major mechanical industry. 

 

One of the major inventions in the mechanical world has been joints, hinges and holding structures together. Much before humans found this, it was there already.  The ball and socket, the saddle, the hinge, condyloid, pivot, gliding joints, are all part of the Musculo-Skeletal System! And human innovation of these came millions of centuries later. 

 

The Endocrine system that thrives on a feedback mechanism to keep the hormones at the optimal level, the Immune System that has a full army always ready, with front end soldiers, back-end support, memory, and rapid attack systems that can surpass even AI run defence and feedback loop and systems. 

 

We can go on and on – looking at the created human body (not evolved) and say how that mimics our innovations – this is what we want to communicate. We did it, we invented these things. But someone did it much before we did it! The creator! We only mimic what is already there! 

This is why the good book says, “We are fearfully and wonderfully made”. What we invent and innovate is just discovering and rediscovering what is already there and mimicking what is functioning well for millions of years, created by the unseen hand of the creator.