Abstracting the Voting Layer
Our elite class – before it became a function of wealth – was designed to abstract the votes of the masses into a manageable form. A lot of people have been thinking about how best to adapt that structure. Here’s one solution:
Instead of voting for preselected candidates, you assign voting power to whoever you trust – dividing it among several people if desired, or retaining some or all for yourself.
I don’t agree. There’s a major assumption error in thinking that the scale of the system has to remain at current levels.
Fortifying Airplot
Opponents to a Heathrow airport expansion, including Greenpeace, are looking for ways to solidify their control over the parcel of land. They’re crowdsourcing the fortifications.
The structure will need to house activists for long periods of time and act as a place where the activists can live, work and communicate with the outside world. What kind of fortifications are they looking for exactly? Greenpeace says it could be a fortress, a tunnel, a tower, or just about anything else, as creativity is encouraged.
“We’re looking for a structure that is immovable and allows local residents and seasoned environmental campaigners to peacefully block the diggers,” says Greenpeace Executive Director, John Sauven. “It might be underground, it might be overground, it might be both, that’s up to the panel of experienced judges from the worlds of architecture and activism to decide.”
Oh, and there’s one other requirement, says Greenpeace: “the structure needs to be able to protect the site from the police and from the bulldozers.”
PCB Fabrication + Fritzing
When I was in Germany last summer, I arranged a tour of a small engineering firm that built high performance PCB’s for Porsche’s racing class vehicles. It was a great experience.
This small team designed, built, and shipped these complex boards, in a single office of a couple thousand square feet. I got to see some of that fabrication technology in motion – see how they printed the board, and how components were placed on the board extremely rapidly by robot arm. One guy oversaw each piece from beginning to end. Two checked for errors and shipped (or routed to the engineers for testing). It was a very lean, very innovative kind of place. 13 people. (2 partners, 1 customer service, 7 engineers, 1 fabricator, 2 quality assurance/shippers).
This is the kind of technology that can make that kind of sophisticated technology fabrication widespread – both geographically and across domains.
Fritzing is an open-source initiative to support designers, artists, researchers and hobbyists to take the step from physical prototyping to actual product. We are creating this software in the spirit of Processing and Arduino, developing a tool that allows users to document their Arduino and other electronic-based prototypes, share them with others, teach electronics in a classroom, and to create a pcb layout for manufacturing.
Post Carbon Institute
If you haven’t already, check out the entirely new and revamped Post Carbon Institute. They’ve done a lot of great work to get the right “feel” for their stuff. (Huge improvement.)
In a lot of ways, it’s the collapse school of thought. I’m not on board with that. However, their work, links, and perspective always gets you thinking. Keep on keeping on guys.
Heh, its also nice that they’ve read my stuff. 😉