The Designed World — Physical, Informational, Bio-related Systems
How do physical, informational and bio-related systems interconnect to shape modern PNG life?
- Define physical, informational and bio-related systems with examples
- Explain how these categories interconnect
- Write a short classification essay using PNG examples
Overview
The 'designed world' is everything humans have built — roads, phones, hospitals, farms. It is useful to sort these into three big families: physical (construction, transport, energy), informational (telecom, banking, media) and bio-related (agriculture, medicine, food). PNG runs on all three, and they depend on each other.
Physical systems
Roads, bridges, houses, cars, dams, power grids — everything that moves matter or energy. In PNG, the Highlands Highway is a physical system that keeps trade alive across provinces.
Informational systems
Phones, internet, TV, banks, government records. Digicel's mobile network and BSP's core banking system are informational systems that let people communicate and transact.
Bio-related systems
Farms, hospitals, food processing plants, water supply, sanitation. A coffee plantation in Jiwaka and PNG's malaria control programme are both bio-related technological systems.
Interdependence
A coffee farmer (bio-related) uses M-Pesa on a phone (informational) to sell beans that travel down the Highlands Highway (physical). Break any one of these and the others suffer.
PNG designed-world gallery walk
- Bring in one photo/article about a technology from a PNG newspaper or website.
- Post it on the classroom wall and label its family (P / I / B).
- Write a 200-word essay: 'How my example depends on the other two families.'
- Which family does the PNG mobile network belong to?
Reveal answer
Informational.
- Give one example of a bio-related system in PNG.
Reveal answer
A commercial oil-palm plantation, or the malaria control programme.
- Why do we say the three families are interdependent?
Reveal answer
Because most useful systems combine matter, information and biology, and each supports the others.
Describe how a hospital in your province depends on all three families in one day of operation.