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permaculture - RE: CD-ROM "A Designers Manual"

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  • From: Michael Totten <mpt@crest.org>
  • To: Christopher Robinson <cr4@axe.humboldt.edu>
  • Cc: April Sampson-Kelly <askpv@ozemail.com.au>, "'Permacultire Mailing List'" <permaculture-mg@amani.ces.ncsu.edu>, "'william thornton'" <wjta@hooked.net>
  • Subject: RE: CD-ROM "A Designers Manual"
  • Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 23:12:59 -0400 (EDT)

Having been involved through out non-profit group in producing 4
interactive multimedia CD-ROM discs, plus a 2-floppy interactive
multimedia program, and also being part of the growth and maintenance of
probably the largest non-governmental Internet site on sustainable energy
development, i come to a very different conclusion than Christopher's
no-cd approach.

we find that cd-rom is far outpacing web
access, let alone fast web access, in many developing countries. The
National Academy of Sciences study on African digital tools, for example,
finds the CD-ROM drive to be the fastest growing peripheral after the
computer. At $100 a drive, you simply can't beat an off-line device
when you're caught in an environment with few phone lines, all of which
are highly unreliable and skittish, and cost a lot.

Second, you can now press a CD-ROM for $1 each (the recent cost of our
Greening of the White House CD-ROM released on Earth Day), and inhouse
you can press prototypes and pre-releases on your own CD-Recorder now
costing a little more than $1,000.

Downloading 700 MB of info is pretty imposing, even w/ a T1. Yes, when
Ethernet speeds become available it would be superfluous to press CDs,
but that's a fair number of years for most of the planet. In the
meantime, using all digital storage media makes sense -- floppys (poised
to leap from 1+ MB to 100+ MB if Sony gets its market share), CD-ROMs
(the R&D innovations in the pipeline promise steady increases on the
amount of storage on a disc to eventually 10x current levels), and by
email/Internet.

Now, admittedly, one could just leave off the videos, and focus on text,
graphics, photos, and w/ the spread of Javascripts and Shockwave,
interactive spreadsheets and graphic exercises. But I, for one, would
love to see the video that I saw of Masanobu Fukuoka teaching people his
natural farming method become available as soon as possible, and i only see
that possible on a CD-ROM. Likewise, i would love to get the courses
given by Max Lindegger, Leah Harrison, and a host of others on video slices.

admittedly, getting material up on the web is easier than producing a
good cd-rom, but we tend to think its worth pursuing both paths.

Michael Totten, Director
Center for Renewable Energy & Sustainable Technology (CREST)
****NEW ADDRESS****
1725 K Street N.W., Suite 402, Washington, DC 20006
Phone: (202) 289-5368 Fax: (202) 289-5354 Email: mpt@crest.org
Web: http://solstice.crest.org/
FTP: ftp.crest.org Gopher: gopher.crest.org

On Tue, 21 May 1996, Christopher Robinson wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> Having followed the CD-ROM thread somewhat, I wanted to mention
> the HSCP goal of producing interactive "hyper-media" projects on
> permaculture, appropriate tech, sustainable ag, watershed restoration, and
> related topics.
>
> Anticipating the continued growth and data acceleration of the net, we
> hope to distribute the productions on the web (or it's future
> manifestation) for potential clients to download direct. We believe the
> need to "burn" the script to CD will become an unnecessary step in getting
> the content to folks who want it. (No, I not going to stick my neck out
> with an exact time frame prediction).
>
> Very best of luck!
> Christopher M Robinson
> The Humboldt Sustainable Community Project
> The HumboldtNation <http://www.humnat.org>
> admin@humnat.org
>




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