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- | === luminous green reader 2010 === | + | ==== luminous green reader 2010 ==== |
expansions on the previous [[sampler]] and [[recommended reading]] pages... | expansions on the previous [[sampler]] and [[recommended reading]] pages... | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== To begin with... ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Luminous Green is a series of gatherings about possible futures; about a human world, that is enlightened, | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Even though it's clearly impossible and intellectually fraudulent in some strict sense, *somebody* ought to “predict the future.” I mean, not just do demographic models and some dry corporate trend forecasting, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | If one fathoms deeply one's own neighbourhood and the everyday world in which he lives, the greatest of worlds will be revealed. -Masanobu Fukuoka | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | Our present global crisis is more profound than any previous historical crises; hence our solutions must be equally drastic. I propose that we should adopt the plant as the organizational model for life in the 21st century, just as the computer seems to be the dominant mental/ | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== On resilience ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Resilience is the ability to absorb disturbances, | ||
+ | key concepts of resilience | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | "The greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." -Confucius | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | Resilience theory, first introduced by Canadian ecologist C.S. “Buzz” Holling in 1973, begins with two radical premises. The first is that humans and nature are strongly coupled and co-evolving, | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | The problem is we are not ever going to return to our original shape or position. There are philosophical reasons for this: you can’t step in the same river twice. There are practical reasons for this: technology and politics are constant change, and technology produces all kinds of acceleration. But, simply, the future, whatever it is, good or bad, is not going to look like the past. Resilience is a comforting concept. It says “you can take a licking and keep on ticking.” It says “you will recover and restore your original shape after a crisis.” It’s fundamentally nostalgic. You wish for the way things were, and you put things back that way after the storm has passed. My friends, the storm is not going to pass. The storm is called life. We want systems which do not suffer from cascading failures. We want systems which keep working through trouble. We want systems which are easy to fix when they break. But we want systems that aggressively and relentlessly adapt to their environments – good and bad – and any opportunity to prosper therein, not just systems that can recover from being whacked. Resilience is passive. We need to move beyond it before the concept gets too dug in. | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | At the outset of 2010, volatility is the watchword of the day. Some things are certain: economies will grow, greenhouse gases will accumulate, more people will be born than will die across the planet. But how exactly consumption, | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== From a birds eye view... ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | “Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.” -Paul Hawken | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | The accelerating crisis in climate change and the realization that humans are the primary cause of this change has raised questions about ownership and responsibility. Who ‘owns’ the climate change crisis and who is responsible for mitigating and reversing it if possible? The overwhelming response to these questions by governments internationally has been to propose a market solution—in essence, to sell the atmosphere. http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | "The problem is, the children of 2050 will look at that future world, with all its problems, and see home: and they' | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | “We are going into a very interesting new era when it comes to global governance, | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | " | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | Things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. -Albert Einstein | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Nature is gone. It was gone before you were born, before your parents were born, before the pilgrims arrived, before the pyramids were built. You are living on a used planet. If this bothers you, get over it. We now live in the Anthropocene ― a geological epoch in which Earth’s atmosphere, lithosphere and biosphere are shaped primarily by human forces. | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Change in Numbers [anfischer.com] is an informative extension of an existing public display that features the actual ambient temperature in the city. The additional display calculates and shows the difference in temperature to historical statistical weather data of the past. In this case, the display calculated the difference of the month February to the same month about 50 years ago. By doing this, it aims to raise the public awareness of anthropomorphic global warming. | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Much of the current thinking about the sustainability of our lifestyles is predominantly future focused – in 2020, by 2050, in 5, 15 or 50 years – things will change for the better (according to neo-liberal optimism), or for the worse (according to some scientific projections, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | The benefits of future predictions may be more in thinking in the larger scope/scale than in the accuracy of any one prediction. This is like the idea that planning is worthwhile even if a specific plan need to be taken with a significant quantity of salt. -Bruce Sterling | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Johan Rockström, Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre warns that transgressing planetary boundaries may be devastating for humanity, but if we respect them we have a bright future for centuries ahead. Nine boundaries identified were climate change, stratospheric ozone, land use change, freshwater use, biological diversity, ocean acidification, | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | Podcast on planetary boundaries: http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | " | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Power shifts ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Stewart Brand built his case for rethinking environmental goals and methods on two major changes going on in the world. The one that most people | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | In all honesty and boldness I think we (the Developing World) have grown accustomed to the top helping the bottom and because of that we’ve grown lazy. We don’t even think things can be both ways. We can help them! I believe there is a need to re-educate ourselves as developing countries and gain agency. Let’s clean the mess in our rooms after we play; our rooms being the whole world. Furthermore, | ||
+ | Dx1W - http:// | ||
+ | The Ghana ThinkTank - http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | The Barefoot college in Rajasthan, India is a unique place, run by unique people. It is rooted in tradition, with a vision that reaches far into the future. It is an embodiment of Gandhi’s philosophy – a place where education is distinct from literacy, where women flourish, children run a parliament, and people with handicaps are not disabled. On Barefoot campuses there is no waste, water is harvested and sunlight turned into power (literally and metaphorically). In Barefoot campus programmes traditional crafts meet information technologies, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Frugal life, mother, simple life, conservation, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Sometime later, The bomb craters, Made good fish ponds -Michael Filimowicz | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Herman Koëter the former chairman of the EU agency for food-safety EFSA and the OESO says in a Dutch Newspaper today that Europe is still dumping low quality food and still exports insecticides like DDT to Africa. For instance: fish with too much dioxin or mercury is regularly exported. The Brussels based non-profit Orange House Partnership attempts to train regulators in Afrika, China and other non-western countries, in knowledge about food safety issues and about chemicals in food-chains. This should allow them to be less vulnerable to the sales-pitches delivered by Western companies and to improve the quality of their own produce. | ||
+ | article in dutch: http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Today I witnessed a municipality truck with five officials in South Delhi, picking up vendor carts at random. They took away the utensils and the stock. Other officials decided to use their sticks to beat up vendors and break their eggs. They finally drove away with apparent glee. I had been acquainted for several weeks with one of the vendors they attacked. (…) Meanwhile, my vendor is back the next morning. I am impressed and inquire how many times this has happened, and he says with defiance, “three times in the last two months.” (…) The cart is from his friend, a fresh juice vendor. The fresh juice business is not very popular in winters. There are no eggs today since all were broken in the clash. I am told that the eggs will arrive soon. Meanwhile he lights a fire with the waste paper lying around to warm up the place for everyone. http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Food, fuel & energy in a technological world ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | You are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | The possibility of marrying craft with computerisation, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | We propose that the current climate of industrialized destruction be countered by industrialized reseeding of the oceans. Our work particularly examines the technologies that should exist to carry out this wish. The primary idea we are researching is the construct Bio Ocean Balls (BOBs). Consisting of a mass of larvae from micro to macro sized organisms, BOBs are released into the marine environment where they melt and disperse. This influx of biodiversity into once sterile areas rapidly creates a complete ecosystem. http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Green aversion to technologies such as nuclear and genetic engineering resulted from a mistaken notion that they are somehow unnatural. "What we call natural and what we call human are inseparable," | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | Recommended reading from the Whole Earth Discipline by Stuart Brand: http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | "Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste [...] the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy." | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | According to the US Department of Energy (Energy Information Administration), | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Nanosolar (http:// | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | The European Union is backing projects to turn the plentiful sunlight in the Sahara desert into electricity for power-hungry Europe, a scheme it hopes will help meet its target of deriving 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources in 2020. [...] initial volumes would come from small pilot projects, but the amount of electricity would go up into the thousands of megawatts as projects including the 400 billion euro Desertec solar scheme come on stream. | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Purple Pokeberries and Fiber Could Provide Low-Cost Solar for Developing Nations | ||
+ | Civil War soldiers used the dye from purple pokeberries to write letters home. Now, the bright-colored weeds are being used for a far more modern purpose. Researchers at Wake Forest University’s Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials created low-cost, fiber-based solar cells that work more efficiently when coated with a layer of pokeberry dye. Scientists hope the cheap solar cells combined with a common plant will help provide inexpensive electricity to developing nations." | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Fuel - (1) Algal Turf Scrubber (http:// | ||
+ | Note the possibility of running 100% butanol in an unmodified or slightly tweaked gasoline engine. Now that is still being worked on, but the energy density and lack of corrosion problems seen with ethanol are *very* promising. | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | We could be generating huge amounts of power from sewage. The process is fairly simple — just ferment sewage to produce a fuel called biogas. Biogas is almost entirely methane, and so is natural gas, so the two are essential interchangeable. The potential to produce biogas is almost entirely overlooked by most countries — except Sweden. In Sweden, 25% of all energy use is derived from biomass. | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Can etherialness be a feature of cooking? (…) It refers to the immediacy of service required for a dish that has been put together for rapid consumption, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Permaculture design principles: | ||
+ | *[1] Observe and interact; beauty is in the eye of the beholder | ||
+ | *[2] Catch and store energy; make hay while the sun shines | ||
+ | *[3] Obtain a yield; you can't work on an empty stomach | ||
+ | *[4] Apply self regulation and accept feedback; The sins of the fathers are visited on the children unto the seventh generation | ||
+ | *[5] Use and value renewable resources and services; let nature take its course | ||
+ | *[6] Produce no waste; a stitch in time saves nine / Waste not, want not | ||
+ | *[7] Design from patterns to details; can't see the wood for the trees | ||
+ | *[8] Integrate rather than segregate; many hands make light work | ||
+ | *[9] Use small and slow solutions; the bigger they are, the harder they fall | ||
+ | *[10] Use and value diversity; don't put all your eggs in one basket | ||
+ | *[11] Use edges and value the marginal; don't think you're on the right track just because it is a well beaten path | ||
+ | *[12] Creatively use and respond to change; vision is not seeing things as they are, but as they will be. -David Holmgren | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | One Acre Fund (http:// | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | At our Mountain View headquarters, | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Look beneath the technical sophistication, | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | Organic food metanalysis. (http:// | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | Since the Italian Futurist meals and Manifesto of the early 1930’s, food has continued to operate as both a medium and subject of contemporary art. It is unsurprising that, given the current global food crisis, the politics of food have become an important cultural force and that there has once again been a surge of contemporary works dealing with food. | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | “We’d tried Pepsi and Virgin Cola and various others too,” says Brandon, “but they weren’t really a positive alternative. They were acceptable, but they weren’t Coke. And people really want Coke.” After conducting various taste tests, they felt the preference had less to do with flavour than the power of the brand. (…) “Given that most of the Cube’s customers come because they like the place’s DIY attitude, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | Greetings from...Your Brightest Possible Future (Vauban District Freiburg) Yes, there is this whole Vauban scene, as if some Teutonic wizard had ransacked the dreams of every idealistic urban planner in the free world and stitched together all the bits and pieces of walkable, mid-rise, mixed-use, transit-friendly, | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | If examine today' | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ----- | ||
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+ | “I consider ‘weed’ to be a politically incorrect term. There is no biological definition of the term weed. It’s really a value judgment. | ||
+ | If we saw this motley collection of plants differently, | ||
+ | ... | ||
+ | Nothing is native to the city, The modern city is a new kind of habitat — one that provides pockets of livable spaces in surroundings that can be harsh, inhospitable, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Life ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. -Janine Benyus | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | I once read that about 70 per cent of textile designs are floral prints. Most certainly, the history of textiles showcases the visual representation of nature as a primary creative inspiration. With recent developments in material science we can now move away from iconic representations of nature and start to design, fabricate, and recycle as efficiently as nature. The world of biomimicry has become a key inspiration for the future of design strategies and methodologies… http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | What would the impact be if categories of human explorations were seen not as “economies” – or systems of exchange – but ecologies, in which we played a rightful part? What if, in place of technological categorizations of human activities, we reflected on our lives through a social lens? http:// | ||
+ | |||
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+ | ---- | ||
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+ | A new study by researchers from a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has revealed that people who seed their life with frequent moments of positive emotions increase their resilience against challenges. "This study shows that if happiness is something you want out of life, then focusing daily on the small moments and cultivating positive emotions is the way to go," said Barbara Fredrickson, | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | We have come to the point at which there is no other way than to bring about a movement to bring nothing about” - Masanobu Fukuoka | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | How resilient are you? – a quiz. | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | For most of the 20th century, nutritional science aimed to define an adequate diet. (…) Toward the end of the century, it became clear from laboratory studies and comparisons in health statistics in different countries that the major diseases of the adequately nourished developed world – cancer and heart disease – are influenced by what we eat. Nutritional science then began to focus on defining the elements of an optimal diet. So we discovered that minor, nonessential food components have a cumulative effects on our long-term health. And plants, the planet' | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | Successfully coping with a stressful situation can prime one for dealing with subsequent stressful situations that are not controllable. The brain circuitry that underlies this transfer of resiliency includes the prefrontal cortex and brainstem. | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | "This study offers valuable evidence that green space does more than ' | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | It seems as if writing with moss, represents an unusual synthesis between advanced civilisation and nature. It is a chance for us to speak as individuals and artists, but also to be the spokesperson of organisms which have no voice in our world. | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | A working eco-travel monitoring system will resemble a sort of stock market. It can be a way of increasing the perceived value of pristine nature, whose only value at present appears to be seen just in terms of its natural resources. Realising the enjoyable assets of nature can drive conservation forward. http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | The first and probably most precious resource that people can share is time. A quite successful effort in the exchange of “free time” has emerged in Italy, mediated by public institutions, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
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+ | “Pleasure is what makes life valuable. It is what provides the motive among sentient creatures to engage in life-sustaining activities” – Herbert Spencer | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Suddenly I realize | ||
+ | That if I stepped out of my body I would break | ||
+ | Into blossom. -James Wright | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====Viridian Principles 2.0 (abridged)==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Futurist Principles=== | ||
+ | |||
+ | * **Embrace Decay** - Entropic processes should be closely studied, harnessed for industrial use, and even aestheticized. | ||
+ | * **Planned Evanescence** - the product and all its physical traces should gracefully disintegrate and vanish entirely. | ||
+ | * **Eat what you Kill** - take pains to fully comprehend the thing you have rendered obsolete. | ||
+ | * **The Future is History** - Be when you are. | ||
+ | * **History Accumulates** - invent better ways to manage our increasing wealth of history | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Moral Principles=== | ||
+ | |||
+ | * **Look at the Underside First** - point out malfunctions, | ||
+ | * **Design for Evil** - Every design process is incomplete unless it takes into careful consideration what could be done with the product by a dictatorial megalomaniac in command of a national economy, secret police and large army. | ||
+ | * **Design for Old** - The 21st century will have a historically unprecedented demographic structure. | ||
+ | * **Superstition isn’t Inspiration** - There’s no effective substitute for experimental verification and verifiable results. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Political Principles=== | ||
+ | |||
+ | * **Viridian Inactivism** - Activism is an attention hog. Find the things you are doing that intensify problems, and cease doing them. Seek command of your own life. | ||
+ | * **Do Less with Less** - We should struggle valiantly to find alternative sources of energy, but it’s just as gratifying to simply become less frenetic. What exactly are we doing at the moment that is worth ruining the climate for? Relax. | ||
+ | * **There’s No One so Green as the Dead** - If you feel helpless with guilt because of your bad environmental habits, pause and think of the very brief time in which you employ the Earth’s resources, and the long, long eons in which you’ll just be raw material again. | ||
+ | * **The Viridian Grandfather Principle** - Viridians prefer to carry out green activities than living people can do well | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Principles of the Avant-technogarde=== | ||
+ | |||
+ | * **The Biological isn’t Logical** - The living world was not designed by a teleological, | ||
+ | * **Augment Reality: Aestheticize all Sensors** - Sensors, instrumentation, | ||
+ | * **Make the Invisible Visible** - Advances in instrumentation can be used to change the zeitgeist | ||
+ | * **Less Mass, More Data** - If you always know where something is, you don’t have to chain it up. Physical resources should be replaced with information where possible. | ||
+ | * **Tangible Cyberspace** - introduce computer generated artefacts and processes into the deepest and most intimate textures of the physical world. Make the screen permeable, and turn ‘computers’ into worldly, sensual entities. | ||
+ | * **Seek the Biomorphic and the Transgenic** - “Nature” is over. What does it mean when you look into the garden and the garden looks back? | ||
+ | * **Datamine Nature** - There is a wealth of aesthetic novelty to be found in previously invisible aspects of nature, such as cellular metabolism, noninvasive medical imaging, hybridomas and chimeras, artificial life entities and chemosynthetic life forms. | ||
+ | * **Grow Complexity** - look for patterns that are both tasteful and previously impossible. With computers it is absurdly simple to create any level of busyness and complexity. Without human aesthetic intervention, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Research Principles=== | ||
+ | |||
+ | * **Walk Through the Walls of Knowledge Guilds** - The boundaries that separate art, science, medicine, literature, computation, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | === Related reading suggestions from workshops in 2007, 2008 and 2009: === | ||
+ | |||
+ | * http:// | ||
+ | * http:// | ||
+ | * http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | |||