At Burning Man 2010, I had a vision. At the time, I tried to write down as comprehensive a description as possible of what I saw during that one, infinite fraction of a second when all the world was glass. It’s a little rambling, a little futuristic, in many ways very naïve, and in retrospect, not quite as true to the vision as I would have liked. For instance, I wrote that:

“I have a vision. A vision of an independent, self-sustaining, high technological, 100% sustainable hacker-maker settlement in the coastal mountain forests of Northern California.”

In all honesty, though, the settlement I actually saw was located in the high Nevada desert, in the rifts and valleys surrounding the Black Rock Playa, but I started second-guessing myself as I wrote, and while I now believe that such settlements are not just a possibility, but a necessity, everywhere, I find myself wishing that I hadn’t. Thus, if you choose to read on, please keep in mind that the later reference to specific geographic features of the Pacific coastline is to be taken with a grain of salt – I don’t think the actual location is going to matter much in the long run. 

Because frankly, this world is in terrible shape, and there is no more time to waste waiting around for someone else to do something about it. It is time to act. So I suggest that we, the hackers and makers, the scientists and artists, the free thinkers and open minds, the Burning Man tribe, the neocreativists, all come together to use our knowledge, our skills and our sheer numbers to build a place for ourselves, where we can show each other and the rest of the world what can be achieved through willpower, community and technology when it’s done right.

The neocreativists believe that humanism is the most rational cultural/political expression of biological selfishness, and that creating a society where basic resources such as food, water and energy are free and plentiful, so that no-one will have to struggle for survival, but may spend their time instead on manifesting the creative and innovative potential inherent in all humans, is in everyone’s best interest for two simple reasons: 1) no individual survives alone, at least not past the present generation; each of us needs at least one other to reproduce, and generally several others to survive and 2) maximising the (both intellectual and physical) potential of each individual by definition maximises the collective potential of the entire species. At present, potential genius in the developing world is continuously going to waste to the detriment of our entire species, and given the all-over pitiful state of the planet, it seems a waste of brainpower we can ill afford. We are already working to remedy this: the development of digital learning tools and automated food production technologies are some of our main focal points, and we will continue to work dedicatedly to help feed, clothe and educate every single human being on the planet.

The following part of the text is my best attempt to explain rationally how the envisioned settlement could be feasible in terms of already-existing technology, and linear progress within the realms of virtualization, automation, bioengineering and systems theory. As this was written at a time when my understanding of technology was a lot more limited than it is today, some details clearly reflect a rather simplistic, techno-optimistic attitude to the not-exactly-trivial problems of sustainable energy, water and food production infrastructure. It’s the closest thing I have to written memory, though, so I’ve chosen to leave the text unaltered – again, take it with a grain of salt.

However, until an actual settlement is in place, we need to find a way of pooling our collective resources, our brainpower, skills and competences without having to occupy the same physical space, but while still retaining the benefits of personal, face-to-face interaction. Already existing simulation software is advanced enough to establish such virtual spaces, but combined with on-going efforts in neurotechnology to develop brain-computer interfaces, these simulation platforms will eventually enable us to create true virtual reality, defined as full sensory immersion artificial environments. Assuming that all physical processes, from gravity to eye sight, may be described as (a series of) algorithms which may be expressed mathematically/logically, it seems inevitable that computer modelling will eventually enable us to simulate the real world accurately enough to prototype and test any new invention in such detail that a major part of the expenses currently incurred by any research and development process can be avoided. Since the cost of a given product is determined not just by the actual cost of production, but also by the cost of resources (time, materials, tools, energy, etc.) for r & d, presently, any r & d effort is a gamble, as said resources must be invested up front without gaurantee of success, which entails the desire to secure any potential profit return by guarding new ideas and inventions through patenting. Hence, open source virtual reality technology could help to dissociate knowledge builiding from capital because it would minimize the need for physical resources for research and development (r & d) efforts, thus freeing these from the constraints of intellectual property rights (IPR) legislation.

The increased technological and intellectual capacity which will result if international r & d collaboration is freed from the necessary secrecy of IPR and the need for physical proximity, may then be directed towards developing the necessary technology to build truly sustainable communities/societies/arcologies. Highly automated and ecologically integrated crop production systems will enable us to minimize the time and energy investments required to provide ample food for the community, and do so efficiently enough to make deforestation and land clearing a thing of the past. Furthermore, we will, at the very least, lay the ground stones for a gradual transition from our current dependency on limited inorganic ressources to a society and tehcnology based on self-perpetuating organic resources. Until this is achieved, we will recycle, reuse and reduce all limited resources as efficiently as at all possible, and continue to work on improving our recycling techniques. As for energy, the combination of wind, solar, water flow and wave energy available on the Pacific shore and along the coastal mountain slopes and ridges is already enough to provide for a very large community with present technology, and given the continual effort to increase the efficiency of wind mills, solar panels, turbines, etc., there will be ample room for expansion as our energy extraction efficiency and storage capacity continues to grow.

Unfortunately, it is entirely plausible that in spite of our best intentions and efforts, the sociological and ecological problems caused by both regional and global overpopulation that we are currently witness to will persist indefintely, if – as Malthus once predicted – any increase in resource availability is matched by an equivalent increase of population growth. Thus, it is of utmost importance that aside from the technological basis for the community we envision, we also adress the issue of the animal instincts inherent in all humans, the basic biological drives which remain in place to ensure that we continue to survive and reproduce. As most other primates, we are highly social animals, and as such tend to organize ourselves in hierachies where social status basically reflects fitness, defined as the ability of each individual to survive, reproduce and raise strong, healthy offspring in a given environment. In a capitalist society, status is strongly connected to wealth, because wealth = power = high fitness; because the accumulation of wealth is our primary way of securing our own survival and the survival of our children, but due to our almost complete dependence on limited resources, our wealth is currently accumulated at the expense of future generations, essentially causing us to act contrary to our own best interest. We live on a finite planet, with limited space and carrying capacity – we must embrace the fact that we are governed by the same biological laws as all other living organisms if we are to re-integrate ourselves in the forest ecosystems we left behind for the open savanna all those millions of years ago.

I know that we can do this. Between us, we house practically all the passed-down knowledge that humanity has accumulated throughout our collective history, simply because the unfair distribution of wealth in this world ensured that we were allocated the resources to fully realize our intellectual and creative potentials. We are the smartest, most capable people on the planet – not because we were born special, but because our parents did everything they could to give us the best possible lives. Let us not waste it!”

In addition to all of the above, I’d like to temper my blatant hippie ecotopianism with a couple of disclaimers, mainly to the effect that I do realize that the back-to-nature society I describe here, no matter how appealing, is not likely to be a viable or even achievable future scenario for the majority of the human population, and that although key issues of equal access and resource distribution were on my mind when I wrote this, I do not pretend to offer concrete solutions to these problems in the text above.

Nonetheless, I feel like it is time to start sharing these ideas with everyone who is thinking along similar lines, so that perhaps together, we might be able to create solutions that do – putting the ‘hip’ back into hippie, so to speak. Also, in the 15 months that have passed since I first started writing this, many of the elements described above have become incorporated into a tentative plan for how we might adapt some of the ecotopian ideals to urban environments, and use them as inspiration to rethink the way we live in cities. If we can’t bring people back to nature, maybe we can bring nature back to people?

]]> http://thepyre.org/2012/01/07/metropolis/feed/ 0 http://thepyre.org/2012/01/07/key-concept/ http://thepyre.org/2012/01/07/key-concept/#comments Sat, 07 Jan 2012 19:09:59 +0000 rikke http://thepyre.org/?p=70 ne·o·cre·a·ti·vism [nee-oh-kree-'ey-ti-vism]

- noun
1. a doctrine or theory holding that all means of creation are a natural birthright, and that the human act of creation is the only true form of divinity.

2. a movement dedicated to ensuring the birthright of all human beings to means of creation, including access to basic nutrional, educational, health, etc. requirements, through establishment of long-term sustainable communities based on collaborative integration of sociology, ecology, and technology.

ne·o·cre·a·ti·vist [nee-oh-kree-'ey-ti-vist]

- noun
1. a person who defines him- or herself as an advocate of neocreativism.