Subject: [permaculture] the next generation of Pc Design resources.
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:52:58 -0500
(1) I was inspired by the person who talked about downloading the
pirate digital copy, as a more portable version
of the physical tome they had already purchased. So, I went ahead and
got one (also as a supplement) and...
...last night I set my computer to run OCR (Optical Character
Recognition) on the massive PDF, and now...
TA DA! ...I have a *fully searchable* PDM!
Given the rudimentary nature of the index in the back of the PDM, I'm
kind of giddy to have a fully
digitized version.
This - searchability - is one argument for having a digital copy
available, however the intellectual property rights are managed.
Searchability is one good thing, and another is to have the
information well-organized at the outset...
(2) In my own ongoing fantasizing about the next generation of Pc
resources, manuals, and encyclopedias, I keep returning to the
documentation of existing, traditional, and otherwise proven
practices. (This is something that the good folks over in the
agroecology
millieu have put a lot of really great energy into.)
Drawing on every pattern and technique we can document with very high
degree of confidence,
we can synthesize that knowledge into a relational database of proven
practices,
organized around the Holdridge Life Zones. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holdridge_life_zones
)
...with a few modifications and added dimensions.
a. An additional dimension of population density (or an index of
population density and impervious cover), as an urban-rural gradient.
b. Proximity to coastlines and inland seas - these variables don't
seem to be captured well by Holdridge's zones.
So, as you document and describe Indonesian waste-water aquaculture,
or Mayan taungya successional polycultures, or Ethiopian homegardens,
or European coppice systems, or Mongolian transhumance, or Serbian
urban orcharding, you file them under their appropriate Life Zone and
level of urbanization.
Then I can go and look at the time-tested GLOBAL best practices for
food production
for, say, cool temperate desert scrub with 1000-2000 people/sq. km.
[Side note: The fact that the categories at higher population
densities will have *very little in them* points toward where the
greatest needs for innovation are.
When teaching, I generally say that in rural areas, we *mostly* know
what we need to do - that our work will consist of 70% recovery of
existing and historical patterns, and 30% innovation.
And in urban areas, with population densities never before seen in
history, it's just the opposite - 30% recovery and 70% innovation.]
Anybody want to work on this with me?
Maybe someone already working on Pc database design?