Visionary and practical ideas submitted to the Buckminster Fuller Design Challenge every year.
March 04, 2009
November 16, 2008
Bicycle Generator Gym
Multiple bicycles can be grouped together to power generators. This technology already exists, and should be expanded so that every apartment building, office, or group of households, has a bicycle grid gym. People can exercise while creating and storing up the energy their households will need. This may also foster community as it takes a few people together (the more the better) to get power enough energy. Also could be a way for kids to burn off some extra energy and/or train for races.
At Burning Man in 2007 a group of bicycle generators was used to power strobes that illuminated a sculpture of larger-than-life-size hanging white monkeys; once enough bicycles were involved, the strobes timed so that it looked like the monkeys were spinning.
Alternate energy can be fun!
TelecomMutiny to TeleCommunity
In many cases, offices are less and less necessary for actual work. The strong personal work ethics and distributed tools of the job (cellphones, laptops, the internet) have combined to create a situation where many kinds of work can be done better and in less time, away from the office. Yet offices remain the norm. Often it seems that offices persist in order to placate the power dynamics within. However, offices also promote a reliance on oil (commuting, power uses, furniture and other infrastructure, operational costs) that will reduce their cost-effectiveness in the future. Additionally, offices provide a perfect disease vector, especially for respiratory diseases like viral influenza, and ReDs.
To correct these problems, office workers need to become telecommuters. If "permission" is not granted, they need to band together and mutiny. If one person stays home, they might find themselves permanently at home. But if the entire office stays home, yet stays connected and actually works, then that becomes a model for future economic activity.
There are already existing laws on the books protecting employees from being fired for union organizing. With alliances with sympathetic attorneys, big labor, community activists, and freelance techies, these protections could be extended to telecomMutineers, so that they become teleCommunities.
"Curry Favor" franchises
Capitalism is not dead! Street-vendor curry carts, called "Curry Favor," could be franchised out to local managers. Curry Favor would offer cheap, tasty food, and perhaps be powered by solar panels on their roofs. The carts would have the advantage of mobility, so that vendors could travel to where the foot traffic was higher, or more in the case of flooding or other disasters. They might also provide employment for youth, with a future (cart ownership, regional management).
This builds on the street food vendors prevalent in developing countries, but with an important twist. The stands would be franchises to inspire the local vendors to ultimately own their stand, and to maintain the public trust that comes from using a recognized brand. Coordinated site visits and standards would need to be developed so that people know that in any Curry Favor anywhere the food is cheap, fresh, and spicy, and the carts do not provide a vector for bacterial transmission.
Finally, the carts may become neighborhood gathering places, in that people may find it more convenient and cheaper to visit the cart than cook individually. This could allow for "Mayor of the Neighborhood"-type roles in the community, as historically described by Luc Sante in his book Low Life (about street life in New york City over the past several centuries), where the cart vendor would know everyone and what's going on, and could be the basis for organizing and real-world local politics.
Outdoor Dances
Another way people can overcome social barriers is by dancing, especially trying to learn a dance you don't know. There is something about acting silly together that breaks down fears and creates bonds, in a more organic and lasting way than by attending required or voluntary community organizing meetings, which let's face it, can be grim. Open community dances can be organized in unexpected places, like city plazas or bridges.
And guerrilla-type dance pieces can occur anywhere, on a trolley, on the subway platform, on fire escapes on buildings, to give people a moment of levity, humor, or beauty in their everyday routine.
Hooping for Hope
As displaced persons form refugee wedges into existing communities, fear and suspicion will increase. One way of dispelling xenophobia and fear of change is an activity where people can have fun together.
Hula Hooping is a fun, apolitical activity that almost no one has a natural talent for, but which almost everyone can do after a little instruction (and acquiring the right DIY hoop)! Hooping can be done in a park, at How-To days (see previous post), in a plaza, a playground, or a dance or public concert. I have attended two weddings where people hooped at the reception!
New Currency
Currency is money; money is one of the most important ways we measure value. It is customary to think of money as paper bills (or, a few generations ago, coins). But paper bills are just a symbol of value: a piece of paper or other object is assigned a value, and a value is a virtual thing. You cannot hold it or fold it. With the increasing virtualization of money, its virtual nature is becoming more apparent. We use credit cards and ATM cards constantly. We bank and shop online. We evaluate our social worth via a "credit score."
But there are other ways to measure value, even now. In order to knock money off its throne as the ultimate value metric, all that is needed is for many people to agree to it. That is not trivial, but it is conceptually simple. Values are set in an interplay of the personal and the social, the details and relative strengths of which are all open to debate, creation, alteration.
Altruism could certainly be enabled by an overhaul of the valuation
system, and this would be increasingly necessary in a world of strained resources, where even first-world dwellers are going to ahve to live very differently, and where our systems will continue to break down if the very wealthy hold onto their wealth. Some other virtual
measure must be developed where people want to have more of it to gain
higher value for themselves, but which involves a voluntary
redistribution of some resources.
However, any new value system would need to be given a sexy name and be marketed well. Branding is key in virtual valuation schemes!
Bubble-up ratings
Voting, enthusiasms, and other categories that require public input could benefit from coding "bubble-up" interactive ratings engines, where comments can be incremented dynamically and immediately, so that the most popular things, or things of most concern to the community, can be displayed first. This can help with the "list fatigue" generated by community bulletin boards, ideas pages, or other multiple-participant sites.
LED-wear
Small LED lights could be affixed to baseball caps to enable work at night or in underlit areas, without using the electrical grid. This already exists, and people can be taught to make them themselves online or during local How-To Days.
Useful Screensavers
Utilize the technology behind the SETI@HOME screensavers to utilize distributed screensavers on PCs in lieu of supercomputer access. This already exists, and could be repurposed to fit the data sets and results required. A sign-up program could begin in advance of the actual need, so that the distribution network can be grown to an appropriately large size, in time.
Searchable Stories/Reportage
Google Maps mashups, and annotated Flickr photographs, provide a new way of storytelling for today's information-inundated audiences. Short reports (linking out to longer pieces, if necessary) can appear in popups as a location or pictorial element is moused-over.
These already exist, should be more aggressively used in portal or aggregation websites. Long scrolling lists of anything are essentially unreadable after the first two or three entries.
Not Just For Storage Anymore
Storage units could provide temporary shelter for refugees, as populations in transition respond to environmental and social upheaval. Many of them already have heat and electricity. Famously, Hiro Protagonist (the protagonist of neal Stephenson's Snow Crash) lived in a storage unit.
This is already happening, in a furtive, desperate way. The right publicity and oversight could eliminate the shame factor and leverage these underused structures for displaced populations. The key word is temporary, though; no one wants to get stuck in a storage unit forever.
$100 Laptops, and a New Currency
The One Laptop per Child program is sponsoring an initiative where you can buy 2 laptops, keeping one and giving one for free to a child in a developing country. This type of initiative should be expanded to other useful objects. Charities already exist that can leverage their networks for acquisition and distribution.
In order for this to work, people with more resources would have to give. Altruism might be enabled by an overhaul of the valuation system. Right now we measure value in money. But money is virtual; this has never been more obvious as cash transactions become rarer than credit, and as online commerce continues to grow. Some other virtual measure must be developed where people want to have more of it to gain higher value for themselves, but which involves a voluntary redistribution of some resources. It would need to be given a sexy name and be marketed well, branding is key in virtual valuation schemes!
DIY and 'How-To' Days
How-to information should be distributed and publicized via a variety of channels, like makezine, about.com, and the 'how to' channel on youtube. These already exist and should be publicized.
Online help should be augmented with local 'How-To' days where anyone with a skill offers to teach interested parties. How-To days should also be fun, with local food and snacks (potlucks, stone soup, local farm produce, bake sales), entertainment for kids, and lots of practical assistance. Everyone knows something, everyone can teach something!
Take Back the Night
Volunteer groups of women that provide safe neighborhood environments for women at night, and raise awareness about violence against women. These already exist, should be expanded to all communities as people start driving less and walking more, and aggressively expanded into communities and cultures that discriminate against women (violence, prevention of education, forced 'modesty', etc.).
Smartphone apps should be developed to summon an escort or broadcast an alert.
Shared Transportation
Shared transportation resources need to spread to lessen dependence on oil. These systems already exist and should be expanded to every community:
