Future Human Visionaries #11 — Superflux on biologically inspired design

Welcome to Visionaries, a podcast dedicated to futurological thinkers brought to you by Future Human and the V&A. We seek out people who are reimagining innovation in their field and ask them to apply their intelligence to emerging trends. Anab Jain and Jon Arden are the directors of Superflux, a design consultancy and research lab based in India and the UK. The work of Superflux focuses on how emerging technologies are changing our everyday life and environment, with the ambition of helping companies make these tools more accessible. They describe how breakthroughs in synthetic biology are informing their work, from gene sequencing projects that seek to identify the alleles that determine human intelligence to DARPA’s efforts to create ‘natural drones’ by hacking the brains of bees. How can designers shape the way advanced technologies are experienced and understood by the general public? And will their role grow increasingly redundant at a time when products can be designed anywhere in the world, and then manufactured locally and cheaply at great speed? Presented by Ben Beaumont Thomas.