permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflondon@mindspring.com>]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2001 09:45:51 -0500, "Nick Routledge"
<fellowservant@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Several remarks from Toby particularly caught my attention. First, his
>suggestion that we ponder "features" as a defining concern in design
>direction struck me as sensible. Second:
>
>>   Or are there so few
>
>> >guilds--maybe only a couple of dozen?-- that a
>
>> simple listing would suffice?
>
>My sense is is that a huge brake on guilding work is that the very
>structure of conventional media (such as print) is "at war" with the type
>of descriptive structures actually needed to explore and propagate wisdom
>around "topics of interconnectness" such as guilds. Take this remark from
>hypertext theorist George Landow:

>"many who write on hypertext...argue that we must abandon conceptual 
>systems founded upon ideas of center, margin, hierachy, and linearity 
>and replace them with ones of multilinearity, nodes, links, and 
>networks. Almost all parties to this paradigm shift, which marks a 
>revolution in human thought, see electronic writing as a direct response 
>to the strengths and weaknesses of the printed book." 

>Does that sound like a permie speaking, or wot? More on that theme at:
>http://www.scribble.com/world3/meme1/conn6.html

>Or, as Kevin Kelly, ex-editor of WIRED and the Whole Earth Review, puts
>it:
>As Brian Eno, the musician, wrote of Bolter's work, "[Bolter's thesis] 
>is that the way we organize our writing space is the way we come to 
>organize our thoughts, and in time becomes the way which we think the
>world itself must be organized."

>Hypertextual databases address this organizational wrinkle rather
>elegantly - quite simply, the very structure of the web (an interconnected
>reality) makes it possible to describe an interconnected archetype (such
>as guilds) where print _literally_ cannot. Put another way, a web-based
>guilding db could actually provide the trigger for a guilding revolution,
>whereas I sense a simple listing won't.

>Finally, Toby's remark about:

>> >-Analog guilds that mimic natural plant
>> >communities.

>is perhaps a key concern. Given the fact that in designing a hypertextual
>guilding database we are fundamentally designing a marriage of structure
>and meaning that _describes by imitating_ the dynamics of life, there's
>absolutely no reason why, if designed well, the analog (or archetypal)
>dimension to this db may well prove one of its most powerful features.
>What's more, there's every reason, for example, why a db description of a
>plant community may not only suggest analogs for designs of other plant
>communities using completely different plants, but that the analogs may
>well be wholly translatable to the work of others than the permie
>community: to the work of those studying fungi, animals, indeed to the
>work of "social physicians," for example,  exploring relationships in

>human communities. (Some months ago I ran a google search on plant guilds
>and up popped a piece on "the return of social guilds" by an Islamic
>theologian.) Get the drift?

If countries would embrace the Fertile Crescent concept again (no
connection to Islam) which encourages exclusive agricultural use of
the most fertile land encircling  a populated area (i.e. often a
crescent-shaped area) then GUILDS of homestead gardeners, market
gardeners and market farmers could begin to organize, operate and
flourish by offering, by direst sale, high quality fresh food to the
urban area(s) nearest them, bypassing middlemen, brokers, retailers,
wholesalers, shipping, warehousing and refrigeration.

>So, my sense is that if we can keep one eye on the archetypal angle, then
>the strength of a guilding db may well be that it provides an influence
>that reaches far, far beyond plant communities. Our strength, of course,
>is that we have Nature's integrity as a model to drop "Gaian mind" into
>the grand db mix.

This is a very inspiring statement, well articulated, Nick. Thanks.



L.F.London ICQ#27930345 lflondon@mindspring.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech  london@ibiblio.org