| Home Forums Library Media Gallery Glossary Links |
 |
I just got off the phone with Reverand Tom. I'm very glad to have met such a brilliant and passionate man who deeply cares about where we are going. He has put forward a tremendous body of work that I believe finally addresses so many of our planetary problems head on. I have yet been unable to find serious argument with any part of his proposal. It is both visionary, and should be taken as such, but also a deeply thought-out and rigorous plan for making concrete and meaningful, positive change in the world The best part of Tom's ideas is he embraces ALL, and leaves no one out. His plan does not require some fundamental force in our society to change - whether it be good or evil, great or small. Rather Tom, like an Aikido master, lovingly colloborates with these forces for the benefit of all. Whether they be the super rich elite or the poorest child.
What Reverend Tom is proposing is nothing short of pure unbounded love fueled by hyper-rationality and spiritual gusto.
So what's next? I believe Tom is right. We are on the verge of a total breakdown of everything we know. All of our old systems our on the verge of collapse. Everything will break down. But not in a bad way. This breakdown will merely be a reshuffling of the deck, an economic renewal towards something greater - a new holistic system of planetary stewardship and radical accelerating transhumanist hyper economics into the cosmic frontier. It benefits everyone. And the only way this is going to happen is through macroscale engineering projects which the super-rich will decide is what they want to do next. Why? Because they will have to if they want to survive, and because it will be exciting for them. It will allow them to go to the next frontier. All the automation in the world is not going to be enough for the super-rich to bootstrap themselves to the stars. Not even nanotechnology is going to save them. They are going to need as many people as they can all participating in the greatest projects of our generation, of any generation. They will produce enormous wealth for those at the top, and more wealth for all us that we have never seen before. It's a win-win situation for all of us. To get a good idea of some of these starter macro-scale engineering projects, please Tom's articles, Collective Empowerment (pdf) and New Section XVI.
Please be nice to Tom. He is a super nice guy. Disagree, debate, argue, but please be nice. Tom is not crazy, only a brilliant, sensitive and caring man wishing to help, and I believe he is just the one to do it. Let's give him a chance.
I told Tom that his ideas are a few steps ahead of most people, and probably at least a step or two ahead of even the most astute Future Hi reader. What he has presented in these preliminary documents are first drafts, raw manifestos to get the ball rolling. Let's see where we can go next.
Thanks to Harlan, maker of 11:11 Diamond Portal (Burning Man 2004/05), for reminding me of the upcoming Bioneers Conference coming up next month (San Rafael, California, October 14th-16th, 2005). There will be nearly 100 speakers there. I can't think of a more important conference to attend.
Here is the schedule lineup:
FRIDAY PLENARIES
9:00am - 1:00pm
What Life Knows: New Ideas from Biology that Could Change the World
JANINE BENYUS
You Are Where You Eat: Growing Urban Food and Community
WIL BULLOCK
From Russia with Snow Leopards: The Future of Wilderness Protection
VYACHESLAV TRIGUBOVICH
Global Warming: A Climate of Fear and Opportunity
BILL MCKIBBEN
An UnReasonable Woman: UnReasonableness and Where It Gets You
DIANE WILSON
FRIDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS
2:45pm - 4:15pm
Nature's Recipe Book: Re-Imagining Industrial Chemistry (A1)
Food Security: A Blueprint for Sustainable Food Systems (A2)
Social Entrepreneurship: Making Dreams Come True (A3)
The Coming Plague: A Public Health Response to Infectious Disease (A4)
Beauty Made Me Do It: Art and Social Change (A5)
Connecting the Drops: Watershed Protection (A6)
Busted: Whistleblowers, Power and Democracy (A7)
Interactive!
Revolutionary Communication In Theory and Practice (A8)
New World Water Tour of ‘Toxic City’: Anti-Oppression Training & Alliance
Building (2 session workshop)
FRIDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS
4:30pm - 6:00pm
High Noon: Showdown over Global Warming (B1)
Eater Beware: Food Safety (B2)
Click Here: Movement Building on the Internet (B3)
Mission-Driven Companies: The Inside Story (B4)
First Peoples: Protecting and Restoring Indigenous Cultures (B5)
Restoring Balance: When Women Lead (B6)
Wild Heart: Wildlands and Wildlife Conservation (B7)
Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities (B8)
Interactive!
Herb Walk with 7Song (B9)
New World Water Tour of ‘Toxic City’: Anti-Oppression Training & Alliance
Building (2 session workshop)
FRIDAY EVENING
7:00 - 8:30pm
Young Bioneers Mixer
7:30 - 10:00pm
Bioneers Moving Image Festival
SATURDAY PLENARIES
9:00am - 1:00pm
Intelligence in Nature: A Predator's Inquiry
JEREMY NARBY
Bold Precaution: The Precautionary Principle Gains Traction
CAROLYN RAFFENSPERGER
Greening the Inner City: Jobs, Health, Justice and the Environment
OMAR FREILLA
Beyond Framing: How Deep Neuro-Linguistic Programming Communicates
THOM HARTMANN
Who's Got Next? Cultivating Feminine-Centered Leadership in a Hip-Hop Era
RHA GODDESS
SATURDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS
2:45pm - 4:15pm
Diversity at the Table: Food Justice and Access (A9)
Blogs, Wikis and Indies: Citizen Media and the Fate of Democracy (A10)
Power Play: Innovative Anti-Corporate, Pro-Democracy Strategies (A11)
Campaigning Women: Building an Environmental Health Movement (A12)
Urban Dreams: Remaking Cities for Sustainability (A13)
Connecting the Dots: Defending Indigenous Lands and Cultures (A14)
Peace Technologies: The Art and Science of Compassion (A15)
Interactive!
Both/And: Cultivating a Common Home in the Scorched Earth of Politics (A16)
Educator's Forum: Educating Our Children For a Sustainable World
SATURDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS
4:30pm - 6:00pm
The Eco-Agricultural-Industrial Park: The Intervale Project (B10)
Fast Food, Slow Food: From Addiction to Health (B11)
What's the Story? Reframing Progressive Media (B12)
Corporate Rights vs. Human Rights: New Directions in Challenging Corporate Power (B13)
Better Safe Than Bankrupt: Precaution Pays (B14)
Restoring Cultural Balance: Raising Women's Voices (B15)
Nature's Treasures: Preserving and Restoring Large Ecosystems (B16)
Interactive!
Pan-Global Indigenous Peace Technologies (B17)
Seeding the Present: Youth Taking Action
SATURDAY EVENING
6:30 - 8:00pm
Food and Farming Community Reception
7:30 - 10:00pm
Bioneers Moving Image Festival
8:00 - 9:30pm
Visionary Activism (C1)
8:00pm - midnight
Drumming and Dance Party
SUNDAY PLENARIES
9:00am - 1:00pm
Field of Plenty: A Farmer's Journey to the Frontiers of American Agriculture
MICHAEL ABLEMAN
Return of the Ancient Council Ways: Indigenous Survival in Chiapas
OHKI SIMINE FOREST
Restoring Los Angeles: Healing the Nature of Our Cities
ANDY LIPKIS
The Fifth Revolution: Teh Evolution of Ecological Design Intelligence
DAVID ORR
"And, there are those of us who straddle..."
BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS
2:45pm - 4:15pm
Ecological Design: Nature's Operating Instructions (A17)
Certified Orgasmic: Fertility from Soil to Markets (A18)
Larger Than Life: Food and Farming at the Movies (A19)
From Value to Values: Fair Trade and the Marketplace of Relationship (A20)
The Politics of Psychoactive Plants: Religious Freedom, Shamanism and Sacred Plants (A21)
Embracing the "Other": Cultural Diversity and Resilience (A22)
Money Talks: Transforming Attitudes Toward Money and Philanthropy (A23)
Interactive:
Transforming the Mainstream Media: Training and Practice (A24)
Interactive:
Herbal Street First Aid with 7Song (A25)
Art in Action: Igniting the Power of Community and the Spirit of Joy (2 session workshop)
SUNDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS
4:30pm - 6:00pm
Mystery, Complexity and Ambiguity: Native Education for Sustainability (B18)
The Future of Green Building (B19)
Genetic Roulette: Tinkering with Creation (B20)
Cooperatives: The Economics of Mutual Aid (B21)
Young and Wired: Youth Media, New Voices (B22)
Reclaiming Faith: Spirituality, Religion and Keeping the Faith (B23)
Deep Water: Saving the Oceans (B24)
Art in Action: Igniting the Power of Community and the Spirit of Joy (2 session workshop)
VAYA CON GAIA - CLOSING CEREMONY
6:30PM
Hall and Exhibits close at 8:30pm
Wow, thanks again to Eye of Gaia, I just stumbled on this:
42 hours of recorindgs, both audio and vido, as well as all of it having been painstakingly transcribed and made available on the web. What a blessing!
What really sucks about these recordings however is they appear to have been DRM'd on Real Media (.rm). I'm uncertain why they would go through so much trouble to get it out on the net for free, then keep it from replicating freely without DRM. What gives?
If anyone knows how to rip Real Media to some non-DRM format, please comment below.
Thanks to Bird on the Moon, I came across this rare and brilliant piece that expresses all that I try to, only much better. The article is by Dave Pollard. Below I've tried to excerpt some of the most salient points:
Part 1: All About Power, and the Three Ways to Topple It (Part 1):
Most of what has been written about change -- by political theorists as well as business gurus -- is about revolutionary change. It is about creating a sense of popular urgency for change. Writers on social and business innovation, by contrast, are (perhaps subconsciously) writing about change that incapacitates. Clay Christensen speaks candidly about 'disruptive innovation', the kind that catches successful businesses off guard, just like a virus or undetected parasite, and brings it to its knees. A huge amount of money and energy is being spent these days -- on so-called 'anti-terrorist' programs, on physical and computer security, on fighting file-sharing, on patenting anything even vaguely innovative to prevent a competitor bringing it to market, on the search for vaccines and cures for AIDS, BSE, Avian Flu etc., on anti-fraud measures like Sarbanes-Oxley -- all designed to fight incapacitating, rather than popular, revolutionary, enemies. Actions that are aimed to incapacitate are called guerrilla (meaning 'little war') actions. Since the Vietnam war debacle in the 1960s the very term has struck fear in the hearts of the power elite, because they know that, in today's heavily concentrated, centralized, interconnected, 'grid-locked' society, this is where they are most vulnerable, most powerless to defend themselves.
Some non-violent ways we can incapacitate the power elite, using this 4-step process:
and introduce 'innovations' that make our world a better place to live. The focus will be on new technology, new infrastructure, new models and new processes that replace the vulnerable ones that are the causes of so many of today's global problems -- and ensuring that these replacements are Open Source, and stay in the hands of all the world's people.
Part Two - Free Information, Freedom from the Grid, and Peer-to-Peer Bio-Innovation:
In a brilliant and famous Wired interview with Freeman Dyson by Stewart Brand, Dyson identifies "a return to village culture" as the most important opportunity of the 21st century, driven by three technologies: global access to free information, local energy self-sufficiency, and biotech, which together could "gentrify" (bring affluence, population stability and ecological awareness to) the villages. Dyson predicts the "collapse of the market economy" will bring about this opportunity, in 'rising from the ashes' style. He's a great believer in technology, and impatient with and pessimistic about our political and economic systems, but he has faith in human ingenuity, and the power of multiple, coordinated small-scale experiments.
| But suppose if, instead of waiting for the collapse of the market economy and the crumbling of the power elite, we brought about that collapse, guerrilla-style, by making information free, by making local communities energy self-sufficient, and by taking the lead in biotech away from government and corporatists (the power elite) by working collaboratively, using the Power of Many, Open Source, unconstrained by corporate allegiance, patents and 'shareholder expectations'? |
The first part of this guerrilla undermining of the corporatist-controlled 'market' economy -- the 'making free' of information -- is already underway. The war for free information between corporatists and people is occurring on multiple fronts: The attempt by large corporations to patent everything so it cannot be used by the people without paying an exorbitant and prohibitive fee; the attempt by large corporations to ban file-sharing without first paying extortion to the intellectual property 'owner' (little of which actually goes to the artist); the attempt to make more of the information on the Internet 'pay for itself'. But the people are winning this guerrilla war.
Related Entries
The Coming Liesure Society
Counter Culture 2.0
Left Brain Revenge, Right Brain Liberation, Leisure Society
Future Hi pal Alex Steffan of World Changing (my favorite blog) has written an excellent piece about how cities can thrive in a post-oil world. He has given me permission to re-post it here. [link to original post]
~~~
The kind of city we're building is a pivot point upon which prospects of a
bright green future turn. As we come to the end of cheap oil and run up against evidence that carbon is changing our planet more suddenly than most would have thought, we're realizing that the pattern of suburban sprawl which for the last forty years has dominated North American cities (and influenced cities around the world) was a really dumb idea. Whatsmore, those suburbs themselves face real challenges, and may in their current incarnations be doomed.
On an urban planet, these sorts of dangers raise disturbing questions. Much
hinges on the pace of innovation and the speed with which we embrace needed reforms. Can we replace an economy whose every fiber vibrates with the logic of cheap oil and careless pollution with one which runs on renewable energy, heals our surrounding ecosystems and creates no waste?
I think we can. James Howard Kunstler strongly disagrees. In a recent
speech, Kunstler savagely (and in a strange way, somewhat joyfully)
announces that we're screwed:
"The world - and of course the US - now faces an epochal predicament: the global oil production peak and the arc of depletion that follows. We are unprepared for this crisis of industrial civilization. We are sleepwalking into the future. ...Right here I am compelled to inform you that the prospects for alternative fuels are poor. We suffer from a kind of Jiminy Cricket syndrome in this country. We believe that if you wish for something, it will come true. Right now a lot of people - including people who ought to know better - are wishing for some miracle technology to save our collective ass. ...
The future is therefore telling us very loudly that we will have to change the way we live in this country. The implications are clear: we will have to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do. The downscaling of America is a tremendous and inescapable project. It is the master ecological project of our time. We will have to do it whether we like it or not. We are not prepared.
I think Kunstler's wrong, dead wrong, but I encourage you to read his remarks anyway, because some bits Kunstler's terriblisma are probably a fair representation of some of the disasters the developed world will face if cheap oil ends and we've done nothing to prepare ourselves. (Other bits are factually wrong, and others still are just plain silly, part of the weird anti-modern apocalypse dance that environmentalists find
themselves so prone to these days.)
But I don't think we will, in fact , meet this crisis with inaction. I think
we will meet it -- many are already rushing to meet it -- with guts, vision,
intelligence and innovation. And one of our central tasks is the creation of the
post-oil megacity.
(more...)
Given that we live on an urban planet, and given that the predominent urban form is (or is soon to be) the megacity, we need to figure out how to create the systems, technologies and practices which will make a bright green future work.
People like Kunstler don't believe that's possible. Or they believe it is possible, but think we aren't up to the job. Nonsense. We haven't created them all yet, true, but upgrading one's civilization isn't a job you finish overnight. I would argue, however, that we're developing some of the key pieces already:
smart growth and smart places, calming traffic and creating livably
compact cities, like Vancouver;
Large-scale renewable energy projects combined with smart grids and distributed power;
Green buildings, especially homes and workplaces which are greatly more efficient, filled with bright green products and appliances;
Sustainable transportation systems;
New methods of industrial production, leading to a second industrial revolution where waste is food and lifecycle thinking is common;
Innovations in urban form, including the greening of the city by reweaving the natural and built.
The list could go on and on. The point being: this is all stuff we know how to do now. We can rebuild it. We have the technology... or at least the ability to create the technologies. There are hundreds of examples on this site alone. And what we can do today is only the beginning. Yes, the situation is serious and the consequences of failure grave, but we're also growing more and more able to deal with that situation.
What we lack is the vision and the will. The vision we're starting to get -- every day a new plan for rebuilding some key sector of the global economy on new, radically more sustainable lines crosses my desk (take, for instance, Lester Brown's vision of a gas-electric hybrid/ wind power economy). The will is taking a little longer. But I don't think we'll get that will by promoting apocalyptic scenarios.
I think we'll get it by imagining a future worth fighting for, and cities worth building.
I was just watching a show called Extreme Homes on HGTV, which features some of the most cutting edge and innovate homes on the planet. This morning they featured the Butterfly House. The entire house is a kinetic sculpture of a butterfly.
Butterfly house is a refurbished family home inspired by the life cycle of the butterfly. An experiment in zoomorphic design, the house traces each change from larval stage, represented by the walkway, to the chrysalis, captured by the staircase and conservatory, and finally the winged canopies - the emerged butterfly.
Although this is more of an kinetic art architectural experiment, I think it demonstrates that our living spaces can become a lot more dynamic, fluid and responsive, resembling living things more and more. Combine this kinetic architecture with other sustainable technologies, and our architecture can become a seamless part of the natural environment.
Here are some more pictures of the house:
Ok, I might be pissing in the wind here, but over the last couple of years I've become more eager and passionate about community building - both online and off. I started Future Hi with the hidden purpose of bringing like-minded, progressive thinkers together under the banner of 'visionary futurism'. What exactly is visionary futurism?
If my experiences at Burning Man have taught me anything is that utopia is not only desirable, it is achievable. All that I have believed about the desirability of sustainable communities, alternative economics/currencies, the leisure society, accelerating technology, creativity, genuine freedom, authentic happiness and spirituality, I see embodied in some form at Burning Man.
What impressed me the most is that all these people come together with such passion and hard work to make this event possible. Although credit is due to its founders and organizers, the real magic happens on the playa itself... the unpredictable, the unexpected, the sublime. The real burning man is all the individual people and communities coming together the way it does… the Dionysian, spontaneous, orgiastic explosion of spirit becoming manifest on the blank canvas of the playa.
Why then can't this be re-created and sustained every day? Some would say politics, economics, the rigidity of the legal code, conservatism in our communities, lack of coordination, all of the above.
Despite these obstacles, I have come to believe that personal utopia is possible. For most people Burning Man is utopia for the short time they are there.
Here are my questions for you the readers:
1) What can Future Hi do specifically to get this idea going? Is the email list I just created a good start? I felt the blog format is too limited for this purpose. I created the email list so that anyone could start a topic. Would creating a wiki or forum be better? Does anyone know how to start a wiki? I think a Future Hi wiki would be a good idea anyway.
2) What specifically is needed to create sustainable communities that are not dependent on any kind of centralized commodity (i.e. petroleum, government issued currencies, Wal-Mart and other corporate goods, centralized agriculture, etc.)? I don't think this has to be a black and white issue, rather the more a community can depend on itself the more sustainable and stable it is. Is this correct or faulty thinking on my part?
3) What are the major obstacles from this happening?
4) is this whole idea flawed from its lack of global thinking? What I mean by this, is it too selfish to focus on community building that only assists those in this community who share similar goals, or is genuine transformation only possible by embracing and building global systems that support the same thing (i.e the internet, social software, the semantic web, alternative digital currency technologies, etc.)? In other words is our own personal utopia better built by staying within the mainstream culture and changing from within? Is working towards more personal goals in this regard doomed?
Is this our future?
or this?
or something else altogether different?
Peak Oil is getting more and more attention these days. Most people either think that Peak Oil is decades away so we have nothing to worry about, or it is now upon us, or soon will be, and that society as we know it will collapse. Most of the latter think progress will not continue and we will not be able to transition to an alternative energy economy. They say most people, at least in the developed world, will die and those that are left will be living like the Amish; making do with what scraps they can find (Think The Postman). Do you agree, disagree? Why?
Some people say that we must transition to a hydrogen economy. Our pals over at World Changing, just posted an overview of the hydrogen economy, with some good links. I have become more skeptical of the hydrogen economy, in light of some of its proponents saying we may have to depend on centralized nuclear power to make it feasible. For me, that is two strikes against it - nuclear (with all of its waste), and centralized (controlled by elites). My opinion is that the more decentralized and ecologically sustainable our energy infrastructure is, the more democratic, and politically and environmentally stable our world would be. I'm hoping we can transition to an alternative energy infrastructure before it's too late.
Is it too late for a Design Science Revolution?
Do you think that we will transition past Peak Oil into a transhumanist future? How? Or is the future going to look like the Amish in rural Pennsylvania? Do you think that this whole question is the wrong question? Is Peak Oil a myth?
My main reason for starting this open forum is to hear from people who can provide a third point of view - one that acknowledges the peak oil problem, while providing a way out that does not consist of going back 200 years and living like the Amish.
Let the conversation begin.
Bucky Fuller was apparently a man before his time. The following quotes were from his book Critical Path, published in 1982:
It is now possible to give every man, woman and child on Earth a standard of living comparable to that of a modern-day billionaire.
This is not an opinion or a hope -- it is an engineeringly demonstrable fact. This can be done using only the already proven technology and with the already mined, refined, and in-recirculating physical resources.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
This will be an inherently sustainable physical success for all humanity and all its generations to come. It can be accomplished not only within ten years but with the phasing out forever of all use of fossil fuels and atomic energy. Our technological strategy makes it incontrevertible that we can live luxuriously entirely on our daily Sun-radiation-and-gravity-produced income energy. The quantity of physical, cosmic energy wealth as radiation arriving aboard planet Earth each minute is greater than all the energy used annually by all humanity. World Game makes it eminently clear that we have four billion billionaires aboard our planet, as accounted by real wealth , which fact is obscured from public knowledge by the exclusively conceived and operated money game and its monopolized credit system accounting.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
We find all the no-life-support-wealth-producing people going to their 1980s jobs in their cars and buses, spending trillions of dollars' worth of petroleum daily to get to their no-wealth-producing jobs. It doesn't take a computer to tell you that it will save both Universe and humanity trillions of dollars a day to pay them handsomely to stay at home.
If his words rang true then, they do even more now. So the prevailing question is, why hasn't humanity taken his advice, and is there hope that we ever will? I think the answer is yes. The biggest problem that continues to persist is exclusively conceived and operated money game and its monopolized credit system accounting. And that is where the rules of the game are slowly starting to shift.
The network-enabled emergence of participatory capitalism and the subsequent transparency of modern day accounting, motivated in part by Enron and Worldcom, and the increasing ease in which customers-investors will be able to move their money towards trusted (reputation-system powered) parties will turn the tide on this, and bring us closer to a leisure society.
If we ever hope of creating a sustainable planet-bound civilization without then it seems only obvious that we'll need to work with rather against the biospheres processes. There are many archictects who are working hard to bring our civilization back into harmony with the environment. Emilio Ambasz is an architect who has designed buildings that do just that. They are passively solar, evaporatively cooled, extremely energy efficient, seamlessly bringing the built and natural environment together. All the rain water falling onto his building is either collected for the buildings flora or recycled for drinking water by it's inhabitants. Additionally, much of the buildings waste is processed using Living Machinery.
As you can see from this model below an entire mixed-use project could easily disappear, providing an urban solution that has little or no impact on the local ecology, and retains the natural beauty of the area.
