From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [permaculture] Fwd: semantic wiki on permaculture?
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 23:33:54 -0400
Forum subscribers:
I am forwarding to the list email I received today from Pietro Galgani
expressing interest in the work a number of us have been involved with
over the years in creating an interactive online permaculture
knowledgebase. His own work can be seen at http://ie.tudelft.nl,
The Industrial Ecology Wiki.
Is anyone in this list still interested in developing a permaculture
knowledgebase or database? Options immediately at hand for our use
include either http://permaculture.info The Permaculture Information Web (a MediaWiki) or permaculture
plant-animal relationships & guilds database run by The Permaculture
Institute
and managed by Rich Morris, webmaster of PFAF,
and/or http://ibiblio.org/permaculture where I have an installation of
MediaWiki + Semantic Mediawiki and Wordpress.
I would like to get these projects going, i.e. revived and moving
forward. At the same time I think it would behoove us to have a look at
all of or a goodly sampling of similar projects currently in development
so we can 1) use them to best advantage 2) link them together (somehow
this is where the Semantic Web comes into play).
Interesting site we might want to consider participating in include:
Others in development:
- Paul Wheaton mentioned creating a wiki; status of this project?
Eventually, my projects at ibiblio using MediaWiki, Semantic MediaWiki,
Wordpress; I hope to add BBPress and SMF Forums also.
http://ibiblio.org/permaculture http://ibiblio.org/marketfarming
Please suggest more high priority sites to add to this list.
...:LL
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: semantic wiki on permaculture?
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 23:49:50 +0200
From: Pietro Galgani <peppox@hotmail.com>
To: <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
Hi
I stumbled upon a forum thread on permies.com about a plant database for
permacultural designer, and I found it very interesting, as I've been
thinking about exactly the same thing for the last 4-5 months.
I'm studying in the Netherlands in a MSc in Industrial Ecology. It's a
science which was born less than 20 yrs ago that studies sustainability
form a complex system perspective. In the past year I've learned (among
other things) about permacultural design and about the Semantic web, and
I couldn't help but connecting the two things together. with my class we
did a project where we created a wiki-db using mediawiki, semantic
mediawiki and the semantic forms extension, you can check it out at
ie.tudelft.nl. It's a very simple db and it's even unfinished, but
(apparently) it was presented at some proper conference and academics
were quite impressed. This is not to say how good it was (it was not),
but that I really think that the potential applications of semantic
technologies are beyond our imagination.
Today i was reading the permaculture manual by mollison and i couldn't
help thinking: what if everyone's observations,design,guilds could be
collected in one place that just keeps growing? It could make things so
crazily easier for any organic farmer with an internet connection!
But really the potential is even bigger. PC makes a lot of sense
sustainability-wise, but it's hard to put in practice because it's so
knowlege intensive. The technology to speed up the information flow is
there, the expertise too, it could really become as simple as googling a
recipe. (ok not quite but still much simpler)-you would still need to
get your hands dirty and spend time outside, but all the information
gathering would be just instant.
I think that the big part of the challenge is to find enough motivated
people to kickstart a project like the one that was being discussed, but
I also think that they are around.
What is going on with those ideas you started discussing in the forum?
Hope to hear from you soon
Pietro
[permaculture] Fwd: semantic wiki on permaculture?,
Lawrence F. London, Jr., 09/16/2010