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When we heard about The Incredible Shrinking Man we thought this would reveal a little brother of The Incredible Hulk. We were almost right... Arne Hendriks, one of the crew members of our favorite Platform21, explains that The Incredible Shrinking Man is about anything but being big and strong.
"The Incredible Shrinking Man is a research into the consequences of downsizing the human species. If we decide to shrink the human species to 2 feet, this will have huge consequences for the way we will live, work and play."
Crazy or not, you can join the discussion of a future with smaller people at The Incredible Shrinking Man blog that features opportunities: "Just imagine the amount of space and resources that will become available!" - threats: "What do we do with cats and dogs?" - and compelling facts such as the picture below.
"The head size of The Incredible Shrinking Man will be around 7 x 4 cm."
Aart van Bezooijen is a Dutch optimist and motivator for materials in design. He lives and works in Hamburg where he founded Material Stories (2005) to inspire and enable the best use of materials to make design more competitive, creative and sustainable.
2011 he explored sustainable solutions from around the world during the "It's Not Easy Being Green" project with graphic designer Paula Raché. He co-organized the Materials Café exhibitions at the Hannover Messe in Germany, the world's leading trade fair for industrial technology. Since 2012, he works as Professor for Material and Technology Transfer at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle growing a new materials library.
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The Incredible Shrinking Man
Actually we're not sure what the perfect size is. Sugar consumption (an increase of 2500% over the last 100 years) and overloading on proteins has made us much taller then we are supposed to be if we look at our biology. This is why more and more people are having pain in their ligaments and back problems. A 20% increase in height means a 73% increase in weight while your strength only increases by 44%. The phenomenon of island dwarfism and island gigantism might actually give some insight in our perfect size. When our natural enemies are absent we may grow to our natural height since we don't have to get bigger to be more imposing, or smaller to hide. Homo Floresiensis, lving on the island of Flores up until 12000 years ago was only about 100 centimeters.