On his tour, Foster was shown food computers filled with plants. Food computers have already been sent to schools in the Boston area to be used in teaching kids about agriculture, and to a refugee camp in Amman, Jordan. The BBC recently included the devices in a segment on food technology, calling Harper “a powerful voice in the exploration of our future food systems.” His book, The Future of Food: How Digital Technology Is Changing the Way We Feed the World, will be published in January by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The Wall Street Journal published an article in October describing Harper’s vision of the future of agriculture. Food computers were featured last year on 60 Minutes. Harper’s TED Talk has been viewed more than 1.8 million times. That kind of potential is seductive to journalists, funders, and anyone with a concern about the warming planet. The precise climate in Bordeaux could be recreated in a box in the Sahara - or on Mars. People could grow food in cities or in deserts, reducing the likelihood of famine and the need to ship it around the world. Second, food could be grown anywhere, no matter how hot the weather gets. “What if you could take this apple, digitize it somehow, send it through particles in the air and reconstitute it on the other side?” Harper asked in a 2015 TED Talk. First, it could turn farming on its head by creating “recipes” for plants’ optimal growth conditions. The food computer promises a revolution on two fronts. They are presented as the cutting edge of modern agriculture, distilled into a box. Food computers can be large enough to hold trees and small enough to sit on a desk. The machines can control their own climates, Harper has said, and collect data on how the plants are faring. The devices are tricked-out containers with multicolored LEDs that grow plants hydroponically, meaning without soil. It was momentous, he wrote, “to have an absolute architectural icon tell me the exact same thing happened to him and not to worry, as ‘genius is often misunderstood.’”ĭuring the tour, Foster was shown a series of “food computers,” whose futuristic feel and world-changing promise were turning Harper into a star. Harper himself had been trained as an architect, but as he admitted later on Instagram, he almost didn’t graduate from architecture school. He was there to learn about Harper’s high-tech agriculture project and to “explore future links” between the Media Lab, where Harper works, and the architect’s foundation. Norman Foster, the renowned architect who designed Apple’s circular headquarters, had come to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s research facility in a Boston suburb last June for a tour. It was a validating moment for Caleb Harper.
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