No Robots Please!
Exhibition: Beauty meets utility at MoMA
Nature Vol 452 (page 156) – 13 March 2008
…What makes the exhibition so electrifying is the imagination that drives these innovations. A charming example is a series of drawings inspired by artist Alan Outten, who challenged British primary-school children to design the future. Their inventions included 'Super-Human Mermaid', a genetically engineered human with the genes, gills and tails of a fish "in case the world floods due to pollution", and 'The Apple Phone', a tree with man-made seeds that "use nature as their energy source" to grow apple-like telephones, "so if you are having a private conversation, you just eat the apple". To quote Outten, I left the exhibition "with a sense that creativity and design are safe in the hands of the next generation".