As a government-funded body charged with the task of providing technology and energy policy to the WA government, TIAC provided a forum for debate much more effective than the dry reports and Powerpoint presentations we’re used to.

Achieving the environmental gains that built in natural processes offer seems like a huge task after our history of high waste, factory-style production, but it can start with the simple question ‘how would nature do this?’ Next time you turn on a light at home (which probably uses about 120 volts of electricity) consider that the Amazon electric eel can produce three times as much power using chemicals that also are found in the human body.

It used to be cut and dried. We walked into a store and bought a 7-inch single or videocassette if we liked a song or movie. None of us had the means to reproduce it in the sort of numbers that would hurt copyright holders too much. But nowadays, an eleven-year-old on the family PC can copy and distribute anything to billions of otherwise paying customers.