permaculture

[Tripp Tibbetts <slowfoodguy@yahoo.com>]

In my intro ecology course at Florida we had an ecosystem simulation program 
that allowed the user to design the species composition, fire frequency and 
intensity, etc.  It would then run an accelerated succession sequence, and 
the user could watch the system evolve, burn, grow and decay.  The ultimate 
goal of the "game" was to design a stable system that wasn't over-run by any 
particular species, or burned up by fire.  The longer you could get the 
system to survive in dynamic equilibrium the better.  Even this rudimentary 
version of what you're discussing was pretty exciting to watch!  And compete 
with!  Much more fun than Farmville.  I'm always inviting my friends who play 
that crap over to help me garden.  Invariably denied.  Maybe I should design 
a helmet that would enclose the view within a PC screen and lash a mouse to 
their hand.  I could even pretend to do their bidding...for a bit.  But I 
think they'd be disappointed to find out
 that raspberries take a bit longer than 3 hours from planting to harvest...
 
I might be able to get my hands on that simulation program if someone wanted 
to use it as a construct.
 
Tripp



The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow.
-Chinese proverb
 

--- On Thu, 12/17/09, Patrick <forgeadams@yahoo.com> wrote:


From: Patrick <forgeadams@yahoo.com>
Subject: [permaculture] John Ross permaculture post
To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Thursday, December 17, 2009, 6:41 AM


John Ross is a military theorist/futurist/blogger who I enjoy a lot. He tends 
to write about geo-politics and a more hard nosed take on ecological design. 
He recently posted this.
    
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/12/the-food-game.html
Monday, 14 December 2009



            THE FOOD GAME
    
    
        
            Most
people wouldn't associate growing food with a game.  It's hard work (as
the summers in my youth working on our family farm attest to).  Despite
this preconception, gaming software (and particularly MMOs -- massively
multiplayer online games), might be a way to supercharge local food
production.  Connect these data points:Analysis:  Farming as a MMO 
gameThere's a new game (both my kids and some readers pointed this out to 
me), called Farmville,
that's gaining considerable popularity.  It works as a Facebook add-on,
and is easily downloaded via Flash.  It turns virtual farming (from
planting to reaping to going to market) into a fun social experience.
 The game now sports 60 million active users.Analysis:  
PermaculturePermaculture,
the use of designed ecosystems to produce food, might be one of the
best ways to add food production (and a large variety of other outputs)
to a resilient community.  Here's why.  Traditional farming is input
intensive.  From manual work (both machine and human) to energy
(pesticides to fertilizer), inputs drive output.  In contrast,
permaculture uses natural ecosystem function to replace many of these
tangible inputs to provide outputs on par with traditional farming.
 The problem is designing the ecosystem of a permaculture
plot to achieve high rates of return (output/input).   In short, brain
work has the opportunity to replaced brawn but it's tough to do.Synthesis:  
The MMO + Permaculture BootstrapSo,
as with most activities/industries that have replaced brawn and
physical inputs with brain work and ideas, it probably needs some
software to get it going (where Moore's law and network dynamics can
help accelerate its productivity over time).  Unfortunately, the
current state of software that aids the design of permaculture plots is
pretty dismal.  The best people can do is cobble together
mapping software, 3D landscape modeling software, and some auto CAD.  
Of course, it is possible if the resources were available (my team of
developers could do it), to build software that enables people to
design, optimize, and share permaculture plots, that misses a great
opportunity.The real opportunity is to build a learning system
via software, one that naturally trains the people that use it, gets
better and more sophisticated over time, and is fun.  The only way I
know how to do that is build a game.One of the first things to do, is build a 
simple Farmville type social game that helps people learn permaculture design 
principles:Conservation.  Efficiency of inputs.  Repeating functions.  
Redundancy.Stacking functions.  Multiple uses for the same thing.Reciprocity. 
 Outputs of one part of the system are inputs for
another.  In other words, cascading processes maximize the energy yield
of the system.Local scale.  Minimal organizational overhead.  Match 
production to local need.Diversity.  Lots of different ecosystem participants 
increases resilience.
As the game grows, it could move to a much higher level.  For
example, gaming software that offers the ability to add connections to
the real world (satellite imagery/topography of actual plots), has high
end graphics (for more immersive and detailed plot design), and
provides models/simulation (to test new configurations).  In fact, if
done through a game, the upfront training requirements for using this
new functionality would be nearly zero (for new and existing users).  I
could go on and get much more detailed on this, but I suspect you get
the picture.
        
        
                    
        
    
    
            
                Posted by John Robb on Monday, 14 December 2009 at 02:09 PM | 
Permalink
            




      
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>From alienbuddha@gmail.com  Thu Dec 17 13:24:40 2009
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I must be an idiot, but why do so many people's posts have so many question
marks in them? Is it like some formatting thing where spaces get turned into
question marks? It makes me think they are like Deadheads, as in:

Hey man? How's it going? Do you got any acid?