permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

On 9/7/2010 11:19 PM, Chris Watkins wrote:
> Great news, thanks Lawrence. Glad to see that the work that
> contributors have put on can be built on and shared again.
>
> Looking at the front page:
>
> "In this wiki community members are using principles of permaculture
> design to build a base of knowledge for designing human habitats"  -
> I'll be interested to see what that looks like in practice, and
> whether there are ideas there for the structure of Appropedia.org. Or
> perhaps someone can give some feedback on Appropedia's structure -
> www.appropedia.org/Appropedia:CategoryTree - we've put in a lot of
> work on the categories, but they can definitely be improved. But that
> could be a whole other thread.
>
> Open source wiki knowledge FTW!
>
> Chris

Thanks for the feedback and browsing the wiki, Chris.
As Mollison said, the only limit to creating a permaculture design is
one's imagination.

Taking that literally, here are a few of my thoughts about using wikis 
for collaboration on permaculture designs and design theory and 
implementation of those designs in the field:

A permaculture knowledgebase, used for designing human habitats, should 
ultimately be a direct reflection of what is seen or to be seen on the 
ground. Using a wiki to develop such a knowledgebase offers users a 
magnificent tool for exploring a vast array of useful possibilities,
ones that arise from their research, experience and observation and 
collaboration with others.

In a wiki that becomes a knowledgebase-in-development one could have a 
magnificent interactive, coevolving whiteboard. Write up an idea for 
some aspect of a permaculture system you want to build on a site, upload 
drawings and photos, videos, audio to accompany it,
submit it for peer review, feedback and collaboration then print it out, 
take it to the field and begin work. Document the work and add that to 
the knowledgebase. In the meantime others might have submitted resources 
that apply to other facets of your project, ones that could help you 
develop a comprehensive, cohesive plan, linking elements and systems in 
your design for maximum compatibility and function and survivability.

If one spends much time developing a system on a site, such as a 
vegetable garden, ideas derived from an interactive knowledgebase could 
help one fine tune such a system in ways never imagined. To my way of 
thinking, this offers enormous long-term possibilities, would work very 
well and could even work wonders.

It has been my intention to document the entireity of my 
farm/permaculture site in the form of raw material to organize according 
to the principles of permaculture within a wiki, later adding data plus 
information gleaned from observation for substance, subsequent analysis 
and discovery of new useful knowledge, new methods, equipment and 
materials, proof of established methods, guild information, tips, 
tricks, tools, how-to and techniques for community use.

Every time I get into this I am overwhelmed with the power, diversity 
and potential of permaculture. No wonder so many folks are nuts about 
it; so many that Paul Wheaton had to create a special forum for them! <:-)>.