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Thesis overview

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Finding a good editor

Here is the list potential editor I’m going to hire for my thesis book, I think I need someone with basic understanding of biology terminology and a lot, I mean tons of patient. The editors' job including high-level feedback and low-level feedback, unfortunately, my copy requires a lot of low-level feedback in terms of grammar and expression, whoever is going to be my editor, I salute you with gratitude.

Anna Skiba-Crafts

Jana Weinstein

Renee Gagoua

Frances Shipps

Ann Weaver

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Controlled vocabulary

1.Symbiosis 2.Symbiotic relationship 3.Obligate symbiotic relationship 4.Facultative symbiotic relationship 5.Parasitism 6.Commensalism 7. Mutualism 8.Ecosystem service 9.Supporting service 10.Provisioning service 11.Cultural service 12.Ecological goods and service 13.Conventional sustainable design 14.Ecological design 15.Ecological service design 16.Biomimicry 17. Bionic 18.Bionic thinker 19. Mechanic thinker 20. Synthetic biology

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As we can learn from the chart,  we actually overachieved our goal here, now my work focus completely on giving back to nature and completely demerit sustainability design. The reason I said so is that sometimes when I make products, I overlook the fact that the material or the production process I use may damage the environment. I should take the life cycle of the product into consideration before it gets released into the world and actually start to make a difference.

And the second pair here is small demographic and large demographic, I admitted that there is a change of goal here from the very beginning, to start with, I want my demographic to become the pioneer of our society like designers and scientists, I believed that only they have the ability to adopt then implement ideas. However, as my research getting deeper, I found ecological service can only be effective when human works as a collective, and sometimes giving back to the environment is not as hard as we thought, for instance, putting a log on your front lawn. Yet again, it’s also important for the public to have few role models to lead the trend. At last, base on the principle of MAYA(most advanced yet acceptable) I set my goal in the middle, I will explain this process in the later chapter.

The final set of performance continuum is about our relationship with nature, which is the core of this thesis. What is the most resilient yet healthy relationship we can have with nature? For so long us as humans--a kind of biological organism have disconnected from our natural heritage, maybe it’s time for us to admit the fact we are a part of nature instead of apart from it. It’s important for us to work with natural elements for the benefit of the environment. So the focus of my work has shifted from discussing humans’ relationship with nature as separate entities to how do we fit into nature as one of the components.

For conclusion, through the scope of my thesis, I have to think in a wider scope and reaching out to target demographic with a smaller embodiment. Think globally and act locally!

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What's the ultimate goal of this thesis? I want to say it is to save the world from humans and save humans from themselves, which is a pretty ambitious thing to do and nobody will ever believe a regular dude like me will ever achieve this goal, not in a two years master program. So let's break down the entire "saving the world" thing into few smaller pieces, and instead of using big words that nobody will understand, I'm gonna try a different approach.

After an agonizing process of systematic thinking and problem finding, I narrow down my entire thesis into three segments of problem statement: 1. There is no well-understood measurement of ecological output.

It's hard to visualize how much oxygen one tree can provide for us in a year, and what kind of difference it can make.

Bees pollinate plants and plants give us food, so how many foods one bee can provide for the family of three, there is only very generalized statistic instead of personalized data.

2. Individuals feel they can not make an ecological difference because they feel that their effort is negligible.

Wild bees can build their nest inside of a rotten log, and they are actually more resilient than we thought they are, so we can easily help them by leaving a block of the tree trunk in our front lawn.

3. Organizations that genuinely support the environment don't get enough support or publicity.

For so long we have celebrated the products that identify themselves as "sustainable" and sustainability has become an economic commodity. However, what sustainable design really do is mitigate the impact we cast upon the environment, we are still doomed. While sustainability is getting all the attention, there are this small group of people that actually give a shit about the environment-- ecological service organization. However,  lots of them are non-profit, So there is very little support for them. So, let's see where we are at now right at this moment that I'm writing this sentence. Firstly, we need to simplify problem statements individually into single objective and find their selective counterparts. Take" Organizations that genuinely support the environment don't get enough support or publicity." for instance, we can simplify this conflict into two opposites force of struggle: conventional sustainability design and ecological service design. AKA commensalism and mutualism(see the definition in the previous chapter)

So as we can learn from the chart,  we actually overachieved our goal here, now my work focus completely on giving back to nature and completely demerit sustainability design. The reason I said so is that sometimes when I make products, I overlook the fact that the material or the production process I use may damage the environment. I should take the life cycle of the product into consideration before it gets released into the world and actually start to make a difference.

And the second pair here is small demographic and large demographic, I admitted that there is a change of goal here from the very beginning, to start with, I want my demographic to become the pioneer of our society like designers and scientists, I believed that only they have the ability to adopt then implement ideas. However, as my research getting deeper, I found ecological service can only be effective when human works as a collective, and sometimes giving back to the environment is not as hard as we thought, for instance, putting a log on your front lawn. Yet again, it’s also important for the public to have few role models to lead the trend. At last, base on the principle of MAYA(most advanced yet acceptable) I set my goal in the middle, I will explain this process in the later chapter.

The final set of performance continuum is about our relationship with nature, which is the core of this thesis. What is the most resilient yet healthy relationship we can have with nature? For so long us as humans--a kind of biological organism have disconnected from our natural heritage, maybe it’s time for us to admit the fact we are a part of nature instead of apart from it. It’s important for us to work with natural elements for the benefit of the environment. So the focus of my work has shifted from discussing humans’ relationship with nature as separate entities to how do we fit into nature as one of the components.

For conclusion, through the scope of my thesis, I have to think in a wider scope and reaching out to target demographic with a smaller embodiment.

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Target audiences and experts for Symbiosis

This book is about our relationship with nature. I draw on a diversity of perspectives and projects to explore and challenge the understanding of symbiosis--an ongoing dialogue between biologists, artists, designers, and social scientists, all with very different perspectives of the hot topic issue.  I aim to provoke discussion about what place--if any- design should have in our relationship to living things. I seek ways to understand better the scientific, technological, ethical, philosophical, and social dimension of nature using design to identify the new area of inquiry.

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How do I get here?

My name is Kuan Xu. My thesis title is Symbiosis, designing at the intersection of humans and nature. Symbiosis refers to the relationship between two biological organisms. I use symbiosis as a metaphor to discuss the interaction between human and nature. So how do I got here? I majored interior design in undergrad. Interior designers’ primary job is to figure out the furniture layout of existing infrastructures, and I wasn’t  good at it, to be honest, because instead of being creative, you just need to follow a bunch of rules to make rooms look pretty. This pursuit of esthetic is a privilege, a celebration of materialism.  Although interior designers is a very lucrative job,  I can’t see it going anywhere due to its lack of social innovation, it feeds on natural resource and hedonism，just like the symbol of Ouroboros(a snake eating its tail), It will finally die out due to self-destruction.

I’m a believer in innovation and creativity. Meanwhile, I want my works to be exposed to more audience because design shouldn’t be a kind of privilege, It should be about benefits for the society. That’s why I choose to become a products designer. During the training year, I started to be exposed to the idea of sustainable design. As I further explore, I find the reason that sustainability becomes a trend is that it is commercializing preferable. A stamp on the product can lead to sells multiplying.  And the standard it abides by is not close to comprehensive. The sustainable design can only prolong the inevitable, just like pushing the snooze button on the doomsday clock. After that, I found a more advantageous form of symbiosis with nature——Ecological service design, which refers to the design that gives back to the ecological system. I would love to explore this further and use my work as a manifestation of the mutually beneficial relationship between humans and nature.

[xukuan-blog]

How do I get here?

My name is Kuan Xu. My thesis title is Symbiosis, designing at the intersection of humans and nature. Symbiosis refers to the relationship between two biological organisms. I use symbiosis as a metaphor to discuss the interaction between human and nature. So how do I got here? I majored interior design in undergrad. Interior designers' primary job is to figure out the furniture layout of existing infrastructures, and I wasn't  good at it, to be honest, because instead of being creative, you just need to follow a bunch of rules to make rooms look pretty. This pursuit of esthetic is a privilege, a celebration of materialism.  Although interior designers is a very lucrative job,  I can't see it going anywhere due to its lack of social innovation, it feeds on natural resource and hedonism，just like the symbol of Ouroboros(a snake eating its tail), It will finally die out due to self-destruction.

I'm a believer in innovation and creativity. Meanwhile, I want my works to be exposed to more audience because design shouldn't be a kind of privilege, It should be about benefits for the society. That's why I choose to become a products designer. During the training year, I started to be exposed to the idea of sustainable design. As I further explore, I find the reason that sustainability becomes a trend is that it is commercializing preferable. A stamp on the product can lead to sells multiplying.  And the standard it abides by is not close to comprehensive. The sustainable design can only prolong the inevitable, just like pushing the snooze button on the doomsday clock. After that, I found a more advantageous form of symbiosis with nature——Ecological service design, which refers to the design that gives back to the ecological system. I would love to explore this further and use my work as a manifestation of the mutually beneficial relationship between humans and nature.