Notes from a session held at the Luminous Green Retreat, 28th of April 2007
Session Leader: Jennifer Leonard
[various quotes from Massive Change written on paper, fished out of a bowl….]
[hopefully Jennifer can arrange a transcription of the audio recording to add some sense to the following notes…]
[note: there were many more quotes read….]
“High technology is great for defeating conventional military technology that is two or three generations out of date, but it doesn't solve the political problem you came to solve.”
100$ laptop → 1 laptop per child
solar electric light fund → bringing electricity & access to information
def. of information & problems with where info. comes from →
bjorn lomborg → problems with separating
solutions as nec. cross disciplinary.
gershenfeld → fabrication
bring machines to build things, rather than bringing things.
each community using fabbing tech, quite differently
solving local issues, which couldn't be anticipated by external actors
importance of local issues.
means of production rather than products
computers can be built cheaply
inbuilt obsolescence → more specialised machinery
how open should something be to encourage [,.]
deskfab as a perverse reinvention of pre-industrial personalised manufacturing.
barefoot → using tech.as we do, reusing tech.to deal with local problems, adapted to local conditions
tech which develops differently in diff. locations
regional computational geography
recreating a sense of indigenous, adaptive tech.
groworld → translocal, interconnected, how to connect local situations with indigenous knowledge
“I can imagine that there is, in fact, at least one good clean answer to how we can provide the energy we'll need for about ten billion people on the planet by 2050. I suspect that over the next ten years we will be able to get a major research program of the magnitude of Apollo to make this come to pass.”
how to become individual researchers, rather than huge centralised projects
blue green algae from hydrogen production
harvesting hydrogen from abandoned swimming pools.
DIY pondscum → hydrogen kits.
maria giardy [spelling?]
distributed research project by sending various samples to schools fr. projects
crowdsourcing / SETI at home for other things…
good way of motivating, engaging, creating sense of ownership.
more ppl involved in understanding problem and solutions,
popular power → nelson minor
UK radio programme builds up pictures of weather patterns by having ppl report birdcalls
“we are all our own research units…”
small scale enterprises → bike kitchens
“We need to find the recipe and cook it in our own kitchen, and leave the organisms alone. That to me is true biomimicry.”
sci. coverage vs. news coverage {controversy serving}
-
what is an iconic image for climate change issues {cf. ozone layer hole}
thermohaline circulation → possibly wont change, {ref. NASA}
earth day → 'earth every day' → sustain changes as lifestytle
part of ecosystem development involves mass extinctions.. .
ppl who cause the problems. are not those who suffer → encourages freeloaders
textiles
see analogies between diets/food → energy/consumption
ways to convince ppl. that doing something is better than nothing, → most people prefer substitution, rather than lifestyle changes.
ref. “state of fear” book
side conversation
-
the fire burns, there's no people, the lights are out…. but micheal can be heard from the basement where did the may bug go?
* we'll be here for a while
* possibly doomed…. most likely..
* the other side of no tommorrow
