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“High technology is great for defeating conventional military technology that is two or three generations out of date, but it doesn't solve the political problem you came to solve.”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
  • issues should not be separated → malaria/AIDS/sanitation/education/etc+
• 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
  • quilts rather than a globalised blanket.

“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}
• http://realclimate.org
• 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.. .
  • 6th extinction → encourages the 'natural' extinctions/cycles
  • dinosaurs busily offsetting their carbon emissions.
• ppl who cause the problems. are not those who suffer → encourages freeloaders
• textiles
  • very difficult to establish a EU wide 'eco-label' due to varying standards.
  • becoming more a part of their corporate profile
• 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

• seed saving/banks http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/ag387e/ag387e00.htm
• 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