1. What was the toaster project? What did Thomas Thwaites attempt to do? Was he successful and what is the significance of this example in the context of complexity and development?
   • In the toaster project, Thomas Thwaites, an engineering student, attempted to build a toaster by gathering the raw materials himself and assembling the toaster with only the tools he has access to. This meant finding iron ore, making steel, and molding plastic. He based his design on a toaster he bought for $6 at the grocery store. In the end, it cost him much more than $6 and months of effort to create a toaster that exploded.
   • The toaster project shows how difficult it is to create a product on your own. Even though the toaster was $6, it contained hundreds of parts, made from dozens of materials. Each of these parts were mass produced in factories designed to create them. This kind of large scale production can’t be replicated by one person, even though it seems simple at first.
   • In terms of development and complexity, the project shows how even the simplest products, like a cheap toaster, are made of a complex system of parts that take many parties to produce. This is similar to development, because development has many complex factors that affect what happens to a society, and those factors can’t be simplified.
2. According to Barder, how successful have economic models been at describing and predicting growth over the past 50 years? How did he use the Harrod-Domar model, the Solow model, the Washington consensus and the Ajoakuta Steel works to illustrate his point (reference at least two of the above).
   • Barder showed many economic models that have tried to predict growth over the past 50 years. All of them have been seen as failed attempts. Barder believes this is because the models try to simplify development and boil it down to a single factor that impacts growth. For example, the Solow model tries to boil it down to technology, and the Washington consensus tries to pinpoint ten specific types of economic policies.
3. Who was Steve Jones? What did he do at uni-lever? Was he successful? Specifically, what did he do in order to make an evolutionary jump forward? How significant were his results?
   • Steve Jones was a biologist working at Unilever to find a more efficient way to produce soap powder. Engineers at Unilever were trying to come up with a more efficient nozzle cone. Jones found a cone design that was hundreds of times more efficient. To do this, he started with the base cone, and created ten replicas of that cone with random permutations to its attributes. He then took the most efficient cone out of those ten, and created ten more replicas with random permutations of than new cone’s attributes. After repeating this process over forty times, Jones found his new and improved cone design. Jones and the engineers didn’t understand how the cone worked better, but they knew that it did work.
   • This project is significant because it shows a way to improve a complex system: evolution. Jones mimicked the processes of real-life evolution in order to improve the cone, even though there were many factors affecting its performance. This kind of thinking could be applied to development.
4. Who was Haile Sellasie? What is the significance of Kapuscinski’s book, The Emperor? According to Barder, how did Ethiopia exemplify the suppression of emergent systemic change? How do you think Sen would have described this suppression? Do you agree?
   • Haile Selassie was the last Emperor of Ethiopia, and ruled from 1930 to 1974. Kapuscinski’s book details the life of Selassie, and makes his rule sound authoritative and dark. Barder explains that oppressive societies like these would extract wealth from the people they rule in order to maintain power and to prevent change that would lead to a better society. Since the elites were so powerful, and the people were unable to improve society, they were stuck in a deadlock. Sen would point out how development was being stifled by taking freedoms away from people.

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