Jason Silva: To Understand is to Perceive Patterns
“True comprehension comes when the dots are revealed and you get Steven Johnson’s Long View…put simply: Everything is connected… Chance favours the connected mind…”
These are some of the ideas film maker Jason Silva shares with his usual enthusiasm on the fastest growing network in TV history – “Current TV”.
INSPIRATION:
The Imaginary Foundation says “To Understand Is To Perceive Patterns”…
Albert-László Barabási, author of LINKED, wants you to think about NETWORKS:
Networks are Everywhere
“Networks are everywhere. The brain is a network of nerve cells connected by axons, and cells themselves are networks of molecules connected by biochemical reactions. Societies, too, are networks of people linked by friendships, familial relationships and professional ties.
On a larger scale, food webs and ecosystems can be represented as networks of species. And networks pervade technology: the Internet, power grids and transportation systems are but a few examples.
Even the language we are using to convey these thoughts to you is a network, made up of words connected by syntactic relationships.”
‘For decades, we assumed that the components of such complex systems as the cell, the society, or the Internet are randomly wired together. In the past decade, an avalanche of research has shown that many real networks, independent of their age, function, and scope, converge to similar architectures, a universality that allowed researchers from different disciplines to embrace network theory as a common paradigm.’
Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From, writes about recurring patterns and liquid networks:
The Cities of the Seas
“Coral reefs are sometimes called “the cities of the sea”, and part of the argument is that we need to take the metaphor seriously: the reef ecosystem is so innovative because it shares some defining characteristics with actual cities.
These patterns of innovation and creativity are fractal: they reappear in recognizable form as you zoom in and out, from molecule to neuron to pixel to sidewalk. Whether you’re looking at original innovations of carbon-based life, or the explosion of news tools on the web, the same shapes keep turning up… when life gets creative, it has a tendency to gravitate toward certain recurring patterns, whether those patterns are self-organizing, or whether they are deliberately crafted by human agents”
Patrick Pittman from Dumbo Feather adds:
Everything is Connected
“Put simply: cities are like ant colonies are like software is like slime molds are like evolution is like disease is like sewage systems are like poetry is like the neural pathways in our brain. Everything is connected.
“…Johnson uses ‘The Long Zoom’ to define the way he looks at the world—if you concentrate on any one level, there are patterns that you miss. When you step back and simultaneously consider, say, the sentience of a slime mold, the cultural life of downtown Manhattan and the behavior of artificially intelligent computer code, new patterns emerge.”
James Gleick, author of THE INFORMATION, has written how the cells of an organism are nodes in a richly interwoven communications network, transmitting and receiving, coding and decoding and how Evolution itself embodies an ongoing exchange of information between organism and environment.. (Its an ECO-SYSTEM, an EVOLVING NETWORK)
“If you want to understand life,” Wrote Richard Dawkins, “don’t think about vibrant, throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology.” (AND THINK ABOUT NETWORKS!!)
Geoffrey West, from The Santa Fe Institute, also believes in the pivotal role of NETWORKS:
Network Systems Can Sustain Life at All Scales
“…Network systems can sustain life at all scales, whether intracellularly or within you and me or in ecosystems or within a city…. If you have a million citizens in a city or if you have 1014 cells in your body, they have to be networked together in some optimal way for that system to function, to adapt, to grow, to mitigate, and to be long term resilient.”
Author Paul Stammetts writes about The Mycelial Archetype: He compares the mushroom mycelium with the overlapping information-sharing systems that comprise the Internet, with the networked neurons in the brain, and with a computer model of dark matter in the universe. All share this densely intertwingled filamental structure.
To understand is to perceive patterns
An article in Reality Sandwich called Google a psychedelically informed superpowered network, a manifestation of the mycelial archetype:
Chance Favours the Connected Mind
“Recognizing this super-connectivity and conductivity is often accompanied by blissful mindbody states and the cognitive ecstasy of multiple “aha’s!” when the patterns in the mycelium are revealed.
That Googling that has become a prime noetic technology (How can we recognize a pattern and connect more and more, faster and faster?: superconnectivity and superconductivity) mirrors the increased speed of connection of thought-forms from cannabis highs on up.
The whole process is driven by desire not only for these blissful states in and of themselves, but also as the cognitive resource they represent.The devices of desire are those that connect,” because as Johnson says “CHANCE FAVORS THE CONNECTED MIND”.
Geoffrey WEST on The sameness of organisms, cities, and corporations:
http://blog.ted.com/2011/07/26/qa-with-geoffrey-west/
Stephen Johnson’s LONG VIEW
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08games.html?pagewanted=all
http://dumbofeather.com/blog/post/on-slime-molds-and-sewage-steven-johnson-s-origin-of-the-idea/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/oct/19/steven-johnson-good-ideas?cat=science&type=article
BARABASI’s Scale Free Networks:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scale-free-networks
Manuel Lima’s Visual Complexity:
visualcomplexity.com
Paul Stammets Myceilum is everywhere:
http://www.realitysandwich.com/google_and_myceliation_consciousness
***********
A collaboration of /Jason Silva and /Notthisbody incorporating:
/Aaron Koblin
/entpm
/Andrea Tseng
/Genki Ito
/ItoWorld
/Dominic
/Cheryl Colan
/TheNightElfik
/Paulskiart
/Grant Kayl
/blyon
/resonance
/gtAlumniMag
/Katie Armstrong
/Page Stephenson
/Jesse Kanda
/Jared Raab
/Angela Palmer
/elliottsellers
/flight404
/Pedro Miguel Cruz
/Takuya Hosogane
/kimpimmel
/Rob Whitwort
**and some original animations from Tiffany Shlain’s film CONNECTED: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology
****
By @jason_silva and @notthisbody – Follow us on Twitter!
Our other videos:
Beginning of Infinity – http://vimeo.com/29938326
You are a RCVR – http://vimeo.com/27671433
****
Jason Silva
Jason Silva is a Venezuelan-American television personality, filmmaker and journalist who is the founding producer/host for “Current TV” the Emmy winning youth-oriented lifestyle cable network started by former US Vice President Al Gore.
“Current TV” is now the fastest growing network in TV history.
Silva was born in Caracas, Venezuela and now lives in Los Angeles, California.
Jason Silva earned a degree in film and philosophy from the University of Miami, Florida. Along with best friend, Max Lugavere, he produced and starred in a video documentary/performance piece called “Textures of Selfhood”.
“Max and Jason” have become a prolific hosting and producing duo on Current TV. Silva produced and directed a short documentary film “the Immortalists” which profiled scientists on the subject of merging technology and biology in ways to overcome our biological limitations.
This film was based the quote: “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”
Pangea Day
Pangea Day was created by filmmaker Jehane Noujaim and TED curator Chris Anderson, with the goal of using film to unite the people of the world through the power of film.
Jason Silva along with his co-host on Current TV, Max Lugavere hosted the first annual Pangea Day on May 10, 2008, a 4 hour program of film, music and speakers that was broadcast worldwide to over 150 countries with a projected audience of over 500 million people.
Read More2011 Christmas Number One, won by the Military Wives Choir’s “Wherever You Are”
Daddy's Home
“Wherever You Are” sold more copies in the last week than the rest of the top 12 in the official charts combined. It sold 556,000 copies in the last week, which makes it the fastest-selling single in six years.
Raising Money for Charity
This single is raising money for The Royal British Legion and SSAFA Forces Help (Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association). Help these charities that work tirelessly with the families of the armed forces by buying this single and play your part in making it a Christmas No 1.
The choir was assembled by Gareth Malone for a series on BBC Two. He persuaded the wives and girlfriends of servicemen stationed at Royal Marines Base, Chivenor, and Royal Citadel, Plymouth, both in Devon, to step into the spotlight.
“This is so surreal,” the choirmaster said. “Who would have guessed in those first rehearsals that we could take Christmas number one? It’s testament to the Military Wives’ hard work and the nation’s support of them, as well as the power of choral singing.
“The support of the British military for the choir has been fantastic. I’m delighted that they have found their voice. We did it!”
Malone added: “My thoughts are with all those serving abroad at Christmas time. The nation thanks you.”
A Treasury spokeswoman for the Receiver of Revenue said that a VAT equivalent from sales of the single was donated to the armed forces’ charities.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16285101
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/8977924/Military-Wives-target-the-album-chart.html
http://www.nme.com/news/various-artists/61142
The Florin Street Band: “My Favourite Time of Year”
“The Florin Street Band” was put together by contemporary composer Leigh Haggerwood to record an original Christmas song he had written called “My Favourite Time of Year”.
His idea was to have the music video in a 19th century English setting with with period costumes, snow covered streets and rooftops lit by old fashioned lantern light.
He could not get the backing of any record companies to produce it as they did not think it would prove financially viable.
Leigh decided to go ahead and produce it himself and managed to get the help of 36 musicians including the English Chamber Choir.
British director Nick Bartleet helped to make the video a reality and as plans progressed, American cinematographer John Perez offered his services as Director of Photography.the extraordinary video was shot at Blists Hill Victorian Town at Ironbridge in Shropshire. Since their release in 2010, the song and video have received an unprecedented public response through social networking websites with many people describing it as a future classic.
Text Santa
Text Santa is a charity initiative that aims to raise money and awareness for nine charities over the festive season. The producers were keen to use “My Favourite Time of Year” as the theme music for the appeal, which Leigh agreed to. The Text Santa appeal was first broadcast by UK’s television network ITV in 2011.
As a gesture of good will, Leigh decided to donate all profits from UK downloads of the song in 2011, to the nine Text Santa Charities, along with the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust which was the location of his Victorian museum video, and a supporter of the Florin Street Band.
Florin Street Website: www.florinstreet.com
The charities supported are:
Carers UK
Crisis
Samaritans
wrvs
Help the Hospices
Yorkhill Children’s Foundation
Helping Hand Charity
Noah’s Ark Appeal
Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrens Charity
Star Trek revisited: Magnetic Resonance Non Invasive Surgery
Science fiction is a fascinating area of the arts . It makes a point of literally encouraging the imagination “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
It is an ideal medium in which to explore all kinds of cultural and ethical questions, open up worlds of possibilities and demonstrate that there are no limits to the imagination except those boundaries we draw ourselves, whether personally or culturally.
Science Fiction: Life as it Could Be
However outlandish a science fiction story may be, it is worth noting that in this area of the arts, the word “Science” comes ahead of “Fiction”. I grew up watching Star Trek and always found the Star Trek medical facilities particularly fascinating, with a bed in the infirmary that told you exactly what your medical condition was, and the fact that all the medical operations on board were conducted with non-intrusive surgery. (Being quite chicken about hospitals, this had definite appeal)
“That”, I remember thinking, “is how things should be.”
One of the many pleasures of being a fan of the Science Fiction genre is that of discovering with increasing regularity that yet another of the wonderful fantasies once explored via the imagination, has now become reality.
In this video from TED talks, Dr Yoav Medan shares some of the incredible strides that have been made in the area of Ultrasound surgery – healing without cuts.
Star Trek revisited.
Focused Ultrasound Guided by Magnetic Resonance Imaging
For the last 13 years Dr Yoav Medan has been “part of an exceptional team at InSightec in Israel and partners around the world taking the idea – the concept of non-invasive surgery from the research lab to routine clinical use.”
This is a dream that has been enabled by the converging of two known technologies, one is the force of Ultrasound and the other is the vision enabled by Magnetic Resonance Imaging – Focused Ultrasound guided by Magnetic Resonance Imaging
To demonstrate the ability of the technology, Medan uses a “tissue mimicking phantom” – a piece of solid but totally transparent silicon, the size of a small whisky glass. This solid piece of crystal, referred to as the phantom is set up in the physics lab in front of an Ultrasonic Transducer this makes an ultrasonic beam that focuses inside the phantom.
You hear a click from the transducer when the energy starts to emit and you see in the center of the silicon a tiny cloudy spot begin to appear and grow as a small lesion is formed inside the phantom. None of the surrounding silicon is affected at all.
Revolutionising Brain Surgery
The significance of this becomes apparent if one considers the requirements of something such as brain surgery, which now becomes possible in a highly accurate way, without disturbing or harming any of the surrounding tissue.
Dr Medan describes this as being in his view, the “first kosher Hippocratic surgical system”
“Let’s talk a little bit about the force of Ultrasound – you know all about Ultrasound Imaging, you know also about Beta treatment for breaking kidney stones, but Ultrasound can be shaped to be anything in between because it’s a mechanical force – basically its a force acting on a tissue which it transverses
You can change the intensity, the frequency, the duration, the pulse shape of the Ultrasound to create anything from an airbrush to a hammer and I am going to show you multiple applications in the medical field that can be enabled just by physically focusing.
Harnessing Focused Ultrasound: the Missing Vision
”This idea of harnessing focused Ultrasound to treat lesions in the brain is not new at all. William Fry (1918 – 1968) discovered Focused Ultrasound. When I was born, this idea was already complete by pioneers such as the Fry Brothers (Francis (Frank) Fry – 1929 – 2005) and Lars Leksell (1917 – 1986) known as the inventor of the GammaKnife, but you may not know that he tried to perform lobotomies in the brain non-invasively with Focused Ultrasound in the 50’s.
He failed, so he then invented the GammaKnife and it makes you ponder – why those pioneers failed. and there was something fundamental that they were missing. They were missing the Vision. It wasn’t until the invention of the MR (MRI – (1984)) and really the integration of Magnetic Resonance with Focussed Ultrasound that we could get the feedback – both the anatomical and the physiological in order to have a totally non-invasive, closed loop surgical procedure.”
What the Future Operating Room Looks Like Today
Dr Medan then shows an image of what the operating room of the future looks like – today, surgeons operating using an MR (magnetic resonance) screen, with the patient in front of the Focused Ultrasound System
“I’ll give you several examples, but the first one is in the brain, One of the neurological conditions that can be treated with Focused Ultrasound are movement disorders, like Parkinson’s or Essential Tremors. What is typical to those conditions , for Essential Tremor for example, is the inability to drink or eat cereal or soup without spilling everything all over you, or write legibly so people can understand it and be really independent in your life, without the help of others.
So I would like you to meet John. John is a retired professor of history from Virginia. He suffered from Essential Tremors for many years, medication did not help him any more, and many of those patients refused to undergo surgery, to have people cut into the brain, and about four or five months ago he underwent an experimental procedure (approved by the authorities) at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville using Focused Ultrasound to ablate a point in this thalamus.
“This is his handwriting on June 20th 2011, if you can read it (he shows very shaky and almost illegible sample of writing) This is his handwriting in the morning of the treatment before the MR.
So now I’ll take you through the procedure – how non-invasive surgery looks.”
Is Your Surgeon a Man or a Mouse?
“We put a patient on the MR table, we attach a computer and link it in this case to the brain, but if it would be a different organ, it would be a different computer attached to the patient.”
The physician will then take a regular MR Scan, with the objective of delineating the general area of the treatment as a safety boundary around the target.
Once those pictures are acquired and the physician has drawn all the necessary safety limits and so on, he selects a point with the mouse on the computers, and presses this blue button called Sonicate because this instant of injecting the energy – we call it Sonication. The only hand work the physician does here is moving a mouse. This is the only device he needs in this treatment.
So.. he presses Sonicate and this is what happens – you see the transducer the light blue, the water in between the scull and the transducer , as he does, this burst of energy elevates the temperature. We first need to verify if we are on target, so the first sonication is a “glow energy” it doesn’t do any damage, but it elevates the temperature by a few degrees, and one of the unique capabilities we leverage with the MR is the ability to measure temperature noninvasively. ”
Unique Capability: Anatomical Imaging and Temperature Map in Real Time
”This is a really unique capability of the MR, it is not being used in regular diagnostic imaging but here we can get both the anatomical imaging and the temperature map in real time and we can see the points here on the graph the temperature was raised to 43 degrees temporarily. This doesn’t do any damage, but the point is here – we are right on target.”
“So once the physician has verified that the focus point is on the target he has chosen then we can move to perform the full energy ablation, like you see here, the temperature rises to 55 to 60 degrees. If you do it for more than a second its enough to destroy the targeted cells. “
“This is the outcome from a patient’s perspective. Same day, after this treatment (Medan shows the 2nd sample of handwriting) this is an immediate relief, and here you see it. “(applause from the audience)
“John is one of dozens of very heroic, courageous people who volunteered for the study, and you have to understand what is in people’s minds when they are willing to take the risk. This is a quote from John, after he wrote it, he said: “miraculous”, and his wife said “this is the happiest moment of MY life” and you wonder why. One of the messages I would like to carry over is what about descending quality of life, I mean, those people who lose their independence, they are dependant on others and John today is fully independent, he has returned to a normal life routine, and he is also playing golf, which is what you do in Virginia when you are retired.”
“You can see here this point, about 3 millimetres in the middle of the brain, with no damage on the outside, he suffers from no neurosensities, there is no recovery is needed, no nothing, he is back to his normal life.”
Medan then proceeds to give further examples of non-invasive surgery that has been successfully carried out with this new brand of non-invasive Ultrasound surgery.
About Dr Yoav Medan
Yoav Medan is Vice President and Chief Systems Architect for the company InSightec®, the pioneer and global leader in Magnetic Resonance guided focused ultrasound technology for image guided acoustic surgery.
Dr Medan is responsible for developing new platforms for the Magnetic Resonance guided Focused Ultrasound technology.
Prior to joining InSightec in 1999, Dr. Medan spent 17 years in various senior research and management positions at the IBM Research Division and was elected to the IBM Academy of Technology.
In addition to technical and managerial experience, Dr. Medan has academic experience as well, teaching at the EE department at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in addition to serving as a lecturer for Avionic Systems at the Aeronautical Engineering faculty. He is also a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Dr. Medan has widely published and holds nine IBM as well as several other patents. He was awarded the IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, the 3rd Invention Achievement Award and the Outstanding Research Division Award.
Dr. Medan received his D.Sc. and B.Sc.(Summa Cum Laude) in Aeronautical Engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and a M.B.A diploma from Bradford University, UK.
Read MorePlunderground: The Words of the Profits are Written on the Subway Walls
Artistic Lie Sense
Artists usually consider themseleves “outsiders” because they cannot reconcile their own view of reality with much that is being sold to the general public as the “acceptable norm.” Because of this willingness to “seek the truth”, they tend to see through Media Misinformation even when doing so is not in fashion.
Creating a Dialogue when None Exists
“Plunderground is a ongoing project in détournement and civil disobedience. Détournement, a now common practice continuingly being reinvented by activists and artists the world over, from the Situationaist International to adbusters. The Plunderground project has its inspirational roots both in the historical trend of this process and in the current wave of anti-capitalist campaigning, specifically the online campaign group 38 Degrees.
The project poses the question – to what extent can the citizen participate in the economo-politico process created by state capitulation to private finance? Reclaiming public space and generating a dialogue when none exists, is the perceived purpose of protest, but in what other ways can this be done?
An act of violence masterfully commands media attention through its condemnation by the mainstream, while action that fails to provide the sufficient raw material of gratuitous photo journalism produced by violence is ignored. How do we generate a sufficient debate around issues that matter and create the required perspective and social condition necessary for change when the ballot box or polling booth fail to do so?”
Lawful Criminal Damage
“The aim of the Plunderground intervention is direct and simple. Prevent the theft of UK taxpayers property, namely the evaded tax by corporate and government corruption via the use of lawful criminal damage.
Approximately 600 CBS Fire board adverts removed from the London Underground network, silk-screen printed on the reverse with mock Department of Work and Pensions anti benefit fraud ads naming and shaming corporate crooks.”
Section 5: Preventing a Greater Crime
“Section 5 of the Criminal Damage Act, Lawful excuse; proportional damage of property, with the honest belief that it is to prevent a greater crime, is not an offence in UK legislation.
Two Plunderground agents were arrested during the dissemination of the subverts.
Despite carrying and serving in advance, notices outlining exactly what, why and how was being done and that it resulted from an honest belief (bone fide) that property was under threat, they were charged for the offence of Criminal Damage.”
Not in the Public Interest
“The Crown concluded that it was not in the public interest to pursue the charge and that the Plunderground agents should not have been arrested.
They were dismissed with no further action and reimursed for the expenses.
For the purposes of the project the arrests and dismissed court action have presented the opportunity to galvanise its legal standing.
This process is not a one-off, nor is it unique to Plunderground and can be done by anyone.”
PLUNDERGROUND is an ongoing project and is an AGITARTWORKS production.
www.agitartworks.com
info@agitartworks.com
Britta Riley: A Garden in my Apartment
Britta Riley is an artist, exhibition designer, and social entrepreneur
who works with social media to create mass participation in solving
environmental problems.
Her artwork has been featured at MoMA NY,
the Whitney, the Venice Biennial, Ars Electronica, on the Discovery
Channel’s Planet Green, Good Morning America,NPR and hundreds of
other press venues.
In this video of her presentation at TEDtalks, she makes a very interesting point in contrasting what is proving to be the new enlightened way of shared world-community living, with the outdated and often damaging “bully boy takes all” mentality that seemed to have seeped into the essence of giant multinational corporate thinking, which has apparently lost sight of humanity in its haste to try to monopolise all things, at any cost.
“I like many of you am one of the two billion people on earth who live in cities, and there are days when I palpably feel that I rely on other people for pretty much everything in my life and some days that can even be a little scary.
SOS: (Open) Source Of Solutions
But what I’m here to talk to you about today is how that same inter-dependence is actually an extremely powerful social infrastructure that we can harness to help heal some of our deepest civic issues, if we apply open source colaboration.
A couple of years ago, I read an article by New York Times writer Michael Collins in which he argued that growing even some of our own food is one of the best things that we can do for the environment.
Now at the time that I was reading this it was in the middle of the winter, and I definitely did not have room for a lot of dirt in my New York City apartment, so I was basically willing to settle for just reading the next wired magazine and finding out how the experts were going to figure out how to solve all these problems for us in the future. But that was actually exactly the point that Michael Collins was making in this article, that its precisely when we hand over the responsibility for all of these things over specialists that we cause the kind of messes that we see with the food system.
NASA’s Food for Starships
So, I happen to know a little from my own work about how NASA has been using hydroponics to explore growing food in space and that you can actually get optimal nutritional yields by running a kind of high quality liquid soil over plants root sytems.
Now, to a vegetable plant, my apartment has got to be about as foreign as outer space but I can offer some natural light and year-round climate control.
Fast forward two years later.
We now have window farms which are vertical hydroponic platforms for food growing indoors, and the way it works is that there’s a pump at the bottom which periodically sends some of this liquid nutrient solution up to the top, which then trickles down through the plant’s root systems, which are suspended in clay pellets, so there’s no dirt involved.
A Creative Alternative to Corporate Intellectual Property
Light and temperature vary with each window’s microclimate, so a window farm requires a farmer, and she must decide what kind of crops she is going to grow in her window farm, and whether she is going to feed her food organically.
Back at the time that the window farm was no more than a technically complex idea that was going to require a lot of testing and I really wanted to be an open project because hydroponics is one of the fastest growing areas of patenting in the United States now, and could possibly become like Monsanto where we have a lot of corporate intellectual property in the way of people’s food.
Artist Britta Riley's practical demonstration of the power of shared creativity in her open-source Window Farming project
So, I decided that instead of creating a product, I was going to open this up to a whole bunch of co-developers. The first few systems that we created kinda worked. We were actually able to grow about a salad a week in a typical New York City apartment window and we were able to grow cherry tomatoes and cucumbers, all kinds of stuff.
But the first few systems were these leaky, loud, power guzzlers that Martha Steward would definitely never have approved. So, to bring on more co-developers, what we did was we created a social media site on which we published the designs, we explained how they worked and we even went so far as to point out everything that was wrong with these systems. And then we invited people all over the world to build them and experiment with us. So actually now with us on this website we have 18,000 people and we have window farms all over the world.
R&D-I-Y
What we’re doing is what NASA or large corporations would call R&D or Research and Development, but what we call it is R&D-I-Y, or Research and Develop It Yourself. So, for example, Jackson came along and suggested that we use air pumps, instead of water pumps. It took building a whole bunch of systems to get it right, but once we did we were able to cut our carbon footprint nearly in half. Tony in Chicago has been taking on growing experiments like lots of other window farmers, and he’s been able to actually get his strawberries to fruit for nine months of the year in low-light conditions by simply changing out the organic nutrients.
And window farmers in Finland have been customising their window farms for the dark days of the Finnish winters by outfitting them with LED growlights that they are now making open-source and part of the project. So window farms have been evolving through a rapid versioning process similar to software and with every open-source project the real benefit is the interplay between people customising the systems for their own particular concerns, and the universal concern.
Free to Anyone, Anywhere
So my core team and I are able to concentrate on the improvements that actually benefit everyone, and we’re able to look out for the needs of newcomers, so for DIYers we provide free, very well tested instructions so that anyone anywhere around the world can build one of these systems for free, and there’s a patent pending on these systems as well that’s held by the community and to fund the project, we create products that we then sell to schools and to individuals who don’t have time to build their own systems.
Now within our community, a certain culture has appeared. In our culture it is better to be a tester who supports someone else’s idea than it is to be just the idea guy. What we get out of this project is we get support for our own work as well as an experience of actually contributing to the environmental movement in a way other than just screwing in new lightbulbs. But I think that Eileen expresses best what we really get out of this which is the actual joy of collaboration. She expresses here what it is actually like to see someone halfway across the world having taken your idea, built upon it and then acknowledging you for contributing.
We Need to “Do” More Than “Consume”
If we really want to see the wide consumer behaviour change that we’re all talking about as environmentalists and food people, maybe we just need to ditch the term “consumer” and get behind the people who are doing stuff.
Open source projects tend to have a momentum of their own what we’re seeing is that R&DIY has moved beyond just window farms and LEDs into solar panels and aquaponic systems 7:20 and we’re building apon innovations of generations who went before us, and we’re looking ahead at generations who really need us to re-tool our lives now.
So we ask that you join us in rediscovering the value of citizens united and to declare that we are all still pioneers.”
For more information on window farming, see http://www.windowfarms.org/
Britta Riley’s own website: http:// brittariley.carbonmade.com
Citarum River: the Pollution of Paradise
Once a peaceful waterway rich in fish and waterside wildlife, where local villagers caught fish and used its waters to irrigate rice paddies, the Citarum River in West Java in Indonesia is a living (or dying) example of how much damage humans seem to be willing to cause to their environment.
Today it has the reputation of being one of the most polluted river in the world, and villagers who can no longer catch fish in it, pick through the pollution that carpets it, to try to earn a living.
25 million people in western Java rely on the river for drinking water and irrigation as the Citarum River traverses its 269 kilometers, passing through nine regencies and three cities. Of the 25 million people who depend on the river, 10 million live along its banks, split more or less evenly between urban and rural residents
Pollution to the river escalated with the rapid industrialisation of this area in the 1980’s, but many factories had been pouring toxic waste into its waters for generations before that.
One of the companies polluting the river,the Chisso Corporation’s chemical factory dumped industrial wastewater containing methyl mercury, into the river from 1932 to 1968. Toxins built up in fish which were a mainstay of the local diet.
The damaging effects on humans from rivers polluted by heavy metals can sometimes take years to manifest. Symptoms include numbness in hands and feet, general muscle weakness, narrowing of the field of vision and damage to hearing and speech.
In some cases insanity, paralysis, coma and death follow within weeks of the onset of symptoms.
“By March 2001, 2,265 victims had been officially recognized with 1,784 fatalities,and over 10,000 receiving financial compensation from the company. By 2004, the company had paid US$86 million in compensation, and in the same year was ordered to clean up its contamination.”
— one of the disturbing elements of the above story taken from the Jackarta Post, is that the company appears to have only been told to clean up its act in 2004 after paying out millions in compensation and after more than 70 years of poisoning the river.
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