As described in the TED talk Development and Complexity by Owen Barder, the Toaster Project is mentioned to be a task Thomas Thwaites attempted to pursue. His goal was to create an electric toaster completely from scratch by “finding the raw materials and turning them into parts.” After buying the most basic model of a toaster for roughly six dollars, Thwaites concluded that even the simplest version consisted of about 400 parts that he would need to recreate by hand. His first task was to create steel by going to an iron ore mine and smelting it into what he needed. Along the way he arrived at many complications such as not being able to reach a high enough temperature to melt it, until he searched the internet and found an alternative method. After nine months of hard work, time, energy, and capital, Thwaites’ toaster worked for five seconds before it burst into flames. Thwaites called this a, “partial success.” The Toaster Project is deemed significant in the world of development because Thwaites showed that the economy must be saturated with enough resources to supply the necessary parts as well as the electricity, workforce, transportation, legal system, etc. it would take if you were turning this into a business. The main point being that development is not increased output from a single individual, but the intertwining of the economy, institutions, technologies, etc. that when put together provide citizens with “the capabilities to live happy, health and fulfilling lives.”
Owen Barder begins his TED talk by stating development is “a property of the economic and social system itself.” He goes into depth on the idea that development is a “system property” rather than the sum of individual people and business’ achievements. Coinciding with Amartya Sen’s definition of development, Barder goes into further detail by firstly agreeing with what Sen has to say, but then extending the idea of enlarging people’s choices by adding the idea of complexity. This idea of complexity shows that development is an intertwining of many aspects and the process of experimentation, change, and adaptation. Rather than being one solidified definition, many complex parts are pieced together to become the purest, most strong force of development they can be.