Subject: [permaculture] Innovation in the Urban Wilderness: Lightweight Infrastructure Meets Cooperative Strategy
Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2008 02:00:32 -0500
Globally, nationally, regionally, locally networked, smartlinked and
streamlined
production and services marketing and distribution networks. Possibilities
for the future. - LL
======
http://iftf.org/features/reports.html
Innovation in the Urban Wilderness: Lightweight Infrastructure Meets
Cooperative Strategy
(SR-1050, December 2006, Technology Horizons Program)
"Every day brings new evidence of the planet's urban transformation. And this demographic transformation to a world of
cities is only halfway complete: by the time it has run its course in 2050, one of every three people worldwide will be
living in a slum. But there are reasons for hope in the world's slums, as these extreme environments are creating
crucibles for innovation. While multiple forces threaten to destabilize these newest and largest cities, they are also
driving adaptations that combine new technologies and new forms of organization. Lightweight information and
communications technologies like mobile phones will be the key tool in the struggle for survival in the slums of the
21st-century megacities. They are being deeply intertwined with new grassroots models for social and economic
cooperation. In a virtuous circle, these new cooperative models are enablers as well as outcomes of lightweight
infrastructure. They are forging a powerful symbiotic relationship with the outputs of science and engineering R&D. But
why should companies care what happens in the slums of the third world? Put simply, these places will become critically
important incubators of new lifestyles, technological practices, and business models."
An excerpt of interest to permaculture students:
"Lightweight infrastructure is a broad category of technologies that are
enabling us to build
networks for moving people, processing goods, and communicating and sharing
information
that are very different in scale and function from the industrial
infrastructures of the 20th
century. Where 20th-century networks were built upon simple materials like
steel, concrete,
and copper, lightweight networks utilize smarter, more dynamic substrates:
nanomaterials,
frequency-shifting radios, and increasingly complex bioengineered substances.
In terms
of scale, 20th-century network infrastructure was regional or even national
in scope—
tomorrow’s lightweight networks deliberately serve very small user bases, but
interconnect
in smart ways to create large distribution grids. In a sense, lightweight
infrastructure is a
return to small-scale production and consumption of the pre-industrial age,
but employing
all of the technological advantages of industrial engineering. Instead of the
well or reservoir,
a portable desalinization device. Instead of the hearth or power plant, a
backyard fuel
cell or a hand-cranked generator (see Table 1). (For more characteristics of
lightweight
infrastructure, see text box, “Recognizing Lightweight Infrastructure” on page
4.)"
[permaculture] Innovation in the Urban Wilderness: Lightweight Infrastructure Meets Cooperative Strategy,
Lawrence F. London, Jr., 01/04/2008