metabolo.org - sustainability

Hayden Hamilton, CEO of GreenPrint, answers questions | Grist | InterActivist | 30 Jul 2007

gva — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 11:35:45 -0400

"GreenPrint software ... analyzes each page of every document sent to the printer and looks for typical waste characteristics (like that last page with just a URL, banner ad, logo, or legal jargon) and then eliminates wasteful pages automatically."

Biomedia: GVA @ Beal Institute’s Weekly Show+Tell, March 29, 2007

gva — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:35:43 -0400

With the encouragement of Alexander Manu, Director of the Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity, I am scheduled to present highlights from my ongoing graduate work toward a Master of Science degree in Integrated Digital Media. Beginning at 3:30 pm I'll present for an hour, at the Beal, 100 McCaul Street, 6th floor, Toronto. I'll start with work from last semester (History of Media + Philosophy and Media). Later on, in another session, I will cover the current semester (Media Law e.g. copyright, trademarks, free speech, libel etc and a Media Studies course on the Situationists, Guy Debord, détournement, post-situationist mashup culture etc). So tomorrow,

I'll show a short film entitled "Biomedia: A Work in Progress" that uses quotations from the 1st century AD Roman philosopher Lucretius and images of several thousand ant species from the Creative Commons site
Antweb.org

I'll outline my history paper, to be delivered at the Mexico City Media Ecology Association convention this June: "Biomedia: Past, Present, Future"

Abstract: This paper traces a historical thread from the biomechanical insights of early cybernetics and Norbert Weiner's visionary "communication machines," through Marshall McLuhan's little recognized but highly poetic and influential use of cybernetics, to the dawning opportunities for biomimetics in communications media presented by our burgeoning, massively interconnected socio-technical networks. The paper seeks to articulate the case that media theorists and practitioners should recognize “biomimetics” as a twin or mirror of “cybernetics” -- hence as a discourse integral to the intellectual heritage of their discipline. It interrogates and broadens the increasingly popular term "biomimicry" to acknowledge historical precedents and parallels including “bionics” and “biomimetics.” Finally, it seeks to reveal an emerging need and opportunity for a new biology of media -- or “biomedia” -- as a legitimate and promising realm for future communications research and practice that is fundamentally sympathetic with the most advanced contemporary thinking in ecological and social sustainability.

Keywords:Biomimetics, bionics, communications, cybernetics, media, sustainability

Report from Massive Change Global Visionaries Symposium

gva — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 22:19:23 -0500

Just returned from the Massive Change Global Visionaries Symposium in Chicago. As a co-creator of the Massive Change exhibition I wanted to see it in the first US showing. Another aim was to study the public event and possibly seek out some of the speakers for a symposium I'm co-organizing with colleagues at the Beal Institute. The event was eye opening and highly enjoyable.

Overall my favorite speakers were Stewart Brand, futurist and author of the Whole Earth Catalog, The Clock of the Long Now, and How Buildings Learn; Gunter Pauli, founder and director of Zero Emissions Research Initiative of the United Nations University in Tokyo (Zeri.org), founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales, and Mary Czerwinski, cognitive psychologist and principal researcher at Microsoft. Brand and Pauli were certainly the most dynamic.

Other speakers were Gregg Easterbrook, senior editor of The New Republic and author of The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse; Dayna Baumeister, cofounder of the Biomimicry Guild; Hazel Henderson, futurist, evolutionary economist, and syndicated columnist; John Todd, biologist and ecological designer, and Reginald Modlin, Director of Environmental Affairs for Daimler Chrysler.

Stewart Brand presented first and he was superb. Soft-spoken and persuasive, he is a master inter-disciplinarian and unromantic humanist. His presentation was the only one with visuals, very polished with dense information demographics, many photos, sound clips, transitions, etc. Not as typographically sophisticated as Al Gore's show but equally dense. Brand focused on the city, its pivotal place in the pantheon of human creativity, its long history and the dynamic economic and demographic forces transforming it worldwide, in every continent and across all income strata. Overall he gave a picture of optimism about the creativity and resourcefulness of human communities to solve problems.

Gunter Pauli, based in Tokyo, described some of his initiatives in designing radically green urban / industrial communities at very large scales. Much of his work is in the developing world, e.g. Gaviotas in Colombia. These communities can leapfrog past current toxic practices and install new infrastructure that uses closed-loop, "waste=food" principles to achieve high employment, zero emissions, ample food production, etc.

Here's a helpful third party commentary [http://www.planeta.com/planeta/02/0209gaviotas.html]:

Pauli, in some ways a younger version of [Paolo] Lugari, has some spot-on things to say. He is most definitely on The Right Track. Kind of a permaculturist-social-justice-guy with a penchant to use fairy tales to illustrate his points....
...ZERI's focus is on taking things that are considered "waste" and finding new uses for them.
...The trick to "zero emissions" is to use the "waste" of one of the five kingdoms as food for another.

In person Pauli is outspoken and imaginative, frequently alluding to his work with children and seeming to celebrate these same qualities in them -- they don't filter their ideas of what's possible. Not an easy personality, but much better than that. Pauli was on stage with Reginald Modlin, Director of Environmental Affairs for Daimler Chrysler, who was cagey, dry, and sycophantic. No surprises and few big ideas from the global manufacturing giant.

Next were Dayna Baumeister and John Todd. One very interesting moment of that talk arose through a question afterward by Stewart Brand regarding GMO's -- actually he scooped me as I was going to ask the same question. Brand pointed out that certain bacteria swap genetic material all the time, and that many scientists who understand biology thoroughly, including stellar minds like E.O. Wilson, are less disturbed by GMO than others who are not trained in biology. Todd gave a thoughtful answer that GMOs are a distraction in that he's more interested in the symphony of ecological relationships, rather than the admittedly interesting soloists or featured organisms.

Jimmy Wales and Mary Czerwinski offered slightly differing views on emerging digital media. Most telling comment in that session came from Wales who imagined that the open, volunteer-driven model of wikipedia would be a temporary architecture that would soon have to be replaced by a more restricted and conventional model. To his surprise, the need to install controls on the model never materialized. In fact he continually has to explain to the media that the organization's controls are less restrictive than they imagine. Simple rules, like requiring individuals to be members for four days before they can edit, have effectively dampened most of the troll-like behaviour in the system.

In the last session Hazel Henderson held court and Gregg Easterbrook held his own. Henderson captivated the audience with ideas such as unmeasured value creation within the "love economy," and the need for broader alternatives to the money-based economic indices, like triple bottom line and the Calvert Henderson index. Both speakers dealt with notions of wealth and politics, and the overall picture was one in which material prosperity has shown steady increases in recent decades. The passing of Milton Freidman was noted and some audience members noted that we've never really tried pure market economics because of massive subsidies for entire industries, including oil and gas.

A Science of What Can’t Be Done

gva — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 22:01:41 -0400

My friend David Coole recently took his masters in architecture and has been advising me about the graduate degree experience. After building an impressive career in film and video production, including supervising post production for Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, he decided to enroll in architecture school.

In a recent discussion he proposed a necessary new science: a science of what can't be done. After decades -- centuries really -- of the science of what might be possible, its time, he thinks, for a science of the not possible.

Alchemists for centuries attempted to turn lead into gold. Others attempted to create a perpetual motion machine. For years the belief exceeded the practice. Only after a scientific theory proved it wasn't possible did the resignation sink in.

What do we currently believe might be possible some day, and what damage and waste are flowing from this?

David believes that if we maintain an unflagging belief, for example, that we are just a short distance from undiscovered methods for remediating our destruction of the environment, it gives us licence to continue business as usual. Where has all the discussion of superconductors and other fantasy technologies taken us?

Let's say we could go back 1000 years and ask: is it possible to have a clear, room temperature solid? It's easy to think could not have imagined glass. No cameras, no eyeglasses, no airplanes, no windows, no , etc.

I'm intrigued by this for another reason. We can't truly discuss one -- what is possible -- without knowing about the other -- what isn't. We are beginning to understand more about our own cognitive and physiological limits as we build a fuller picture of what our forebears inherited and gave to us -- that is, to what point has evolution delivered us thus far?

We need to understand that we are not at the end point of an evolutionary process. We are embedded in a co-evolutionary process. We're not done, and we're not alone. Those facts are the starting point of a new science of the what can't be done and why.

Green Machine (Radical Ecofactories) | Fast Company

gva — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:16:01 -0400

"Gunter Pauli's radical eco-factories completely eliminate pollution. They also rewrite the rules for growth, productivity, and profit."