On average, the kiln-drying process for one brick emits 1.3 pounds of carbon dioxide. Every year, 1.23 trillion bricks are made around the world. The environmental pollution associated with this process totals more than that of all aviation pollution worldwide. Fire-kilned brick has been around for over 5000 years, making it one of the oldest - if not the oldest - manufactured building material in the world. Introduced to the world by the Romans, the technology surrounding brick has changed little over that span. However, as manufacturing and technology increases, the environmental impact of the material is being unearthed. The traditional method has never changed because there was no reason to change it. Now there is. And now you can grow a brick.
Ginger Krieg Dosier, 24 year-old architecture professor with a passion for microbiology, and chemistry, and winner of the Build a Better Brick competition sponsored by Metropolis, has invented a brick manufacturing process that works sans heat. According to Bustler: "Dosier's process replaces baking with simple mixing, and because it is low-tech (apart from the production of the bacterial activate), can be done onsite in localities without modern infrastructure. The process uses no heat at all: mixing sand and non-pathogenic bacteria (sporosar) and putting the mixture into molds. The bacteria induce calcite precipitation in the sand and yield bricks with sandstone-like properties."
The brick represents a twofold advantage over the traditional methods of kiln-firing. First, the environmental impact. By replacing the most environmentally damaging part of the manufacturing process - the firing - the process is rendered almost entirely natural. The brick relies on the active ingredients to produce chemical reactions to achieve the brick's hardness and strength. Second, again by replacing the firing process, the physical infrastructure required to manufacture the brick has been reduced. Without the need for large firing kilns, the process becomes much more suited to rural and developing areas where a manufacturing operation can be set up quickly, on site and local, and without permanent structures or facilities.
See the whole process of making a brick here at Metropolis. 
As a type of unit masonry, the brick lends itself to small-scale and mass production. However, the idea of growing structural components is intriguing. Could the scale be increased, and entire building structures be grown organically from the ground up? Moreover, if the active ingredients were designed to not just activate, but multiply, could we see structures grown with the precision typically reserved for Mother Nature? Strength where required, and lightness where it is not. This would relate very well to the theories of Neri Oxman and iGem Synthetic Biology.
Seen on I09, Bustler, and Metropolis.
Dubbed Fab-Fi by it's creators at the MIT Media Lab, this rusty contraption is actually a handmade reflector for a wireless internet network in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. While traveling in the region, members of the Bits and Atoms Lab showed locals how to build the reflectors from scraps of metal, wires, and tin cans. Since then, members of the community have built enough reflectors and, in conjunction with wireless routers, have boosted the range of internet connection to many locals who would have no access otherwise with 25 simultaneous live nodes in Jalalabd.
When compared to a similar World Bank funded initiative to install internet infrastructure in the region - which took 7 years and millions of dollars worth of investment to achieve similar results - the idea that teaching concepts is sometimes the best solution. Imported infrastructure is often expensive and highly sophisticated, whereas a piece of technology developed from a concept that uses local materials and methods can evolve into an extremely potent solution. By using materials that already exist at hand, the users are most likely tapping into a material stream that is both local and readily available. As these materials are probably common to their makers, their use and manipulation is that much more of a familiar process. Furthermore, the possession of imported infrastructure is often kept to the supplying entity. With locally created technology, the process can become part of a user-generated economy - something that will do more good for a distressed region than any type of imported technology.
Seen on Gizmodo.
Cell phone tower in Pakistan. Image via Telecom PK.
The cell phone is an example of trickle-down leapfrog technology. In the past several years, the development of mobile technology has reached such ubiquity that it's use transcends social, economic, and in many cases, physical stratification. It has done so for two main reasons; innovation and cost. Through the development of traditional communication systems (telegraph, landlines, etc), cellular technology has seen mobile telecommunication devices replace the need for expensive and labor-intensive hardwired infrastructure. As the technology advanced, the cost of production and implementation dropped, and thus, reached a level of economic viability. It is these two factors, innovation and cost, that have allowed mobile phones to take root in developing societies. As WorldChanging notes: It's easier and faster to put in cellular towers in rural and remote areas than to put in land lines, and as a result, cellular use is exploding. As we've noted, mobile phone use already exceed land line use in India, and by 2007, 150 million out of the 200 million phone lines there will be cellular.
In this case, cellular phones begin their new life in developing countries as a piece of highly specialized technology that has a history of industry investment and technological refinement. The result of it's advanced stage of development is a technology that trickles down through social and economic systems and allows for it's wide-spread use.
Kiva is an organization that helps find donors for microfinancing projects in the developing world. Image via Kiva.
Microfinance, however, is an example of the potential of trickle-up leapfrog technology. Though newer than cellular technology (and not "technology" per se), Micro-finance is an economic tool that allows for banking and financial transactions to occur at a "local" level, where large capital institutions and systems are not needed. In this case, however, the technology was developed not through industry and capital investment, but through a social and economic response to a need. In places where micro-finance thrives, most of these economies generally don't have the financial backing or institutions necessary to provide large-scale lending. Of course, investment in industry, individuals, and social infrastructure is still needed for economic prosperity and development, so micro-finance responds to this need by allowing small scale loans and investment to local users for local projects and needs. It is being found that micro-finance works well in developing countries because it is a simple solution to a wide-spread problem.
Here is the potential for a leapfrog technolgy through the trickle-up effect. Where cellular phones are an example of a technology that moves from a complex process to fulfull a need in developing societies, micro-finance is a technology that is created from a response or need that has the potential to move to more complex markets and economies.
At a time when the largest and most "established" financial institutions and systems in the world are reeling from debt and irresponsible investment and loan practices, it is ironic to think that the systems in developed countries could be revolutionized through a leapfrog technology currently being sown in countries throughout Africa, India, and South America. In the United States, where such malpractice has caused a constriction of large scale investment and lending (resulting in a global financial downturn), it is being discovered that restricting finance within the system is not a viable solution to the problem and that it is still neccessary, just as in developing societies, to invest in industry, individuals, and infrastructure. It is possible that a system of micro-finance in developed societies might allow for a leapfrog oppurtunity akin to the advantage that cellular phones are bringing to developing countries.
On average, the kiln-drying process for one brick emits 1.3 pounds of carbon dioxide. Every year, 1.23 trillion bricks are made around the world. The environmental pollution associated with this process totals more than that of all aviation pollution worldwide. Fire-kilned brick has been around for over 5000 years, making it one of the oldest - if not the oldest - manufactured building material in the world. Introduced to the world by the Romans, the technology surrounding brick has changed little over that span. However, as manufacturing and technology increases, the environmental impact of the material is being unearthed. The traditional method has never changed because there was no reason to change it. Now there is. And now you can grow a brick. 
