Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
God works in mysterious ways.
  

    
*If it comes to that, Jhane and the Japanese husband can come sleep on
my floor.  As Confucius say, the righteous will never lack for
neighbors.

*Meanwhile, on the clean-tech front... Okay, I know that this is an
important meeting.  Also, these are important people doing some of the
direly necessary green-industrial heavy-lifting.  If I wanted to be a
serious journalist or activist-player in this world, I would go hang
out at this thing.  I would interview them.  I would publicize them.  I
would help them network.

*I don't want to do it.  I don't want to talk to these people.  I know
somebody should, but my heart's not in it.  Okay, maybe Janine Benyus,
the one among the crowd whose efforts would most interest a science
fiction writer.  Other than that, I just can't go there; I'm too much
the technosocial butterfly.  I don't have what it takes to do a good
job of it, and life is too short to go around reluctantly performing
crap work.

*Maybe someone within earshot of this will go do that.  It needs
doing.

CLEAN EDGE ALERT
Events and Announcements for the Clean-Tech Community
(((Did you ever notice how every clique in the world
has become a "community"?  Somewhere there must be
a "Massive Investor-Defrauding Ponzi Scheme Community.")))


Register Now for the 5th Annual Clean-Tech Investor Summit
Only 120 Spots Remaining 


Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin latest luminary to confirm
attendance at the premier clean-tech event of the year!  (((I love the
word "luminary."  There ought to be a special dress code for
luminaries.  Perhps it involves fractal paisleys.)))


Coming on the heels of President-Elect Barack Obama's inauguration
ceremony and the largest global financial crisis seen in decades, this
year's Summit will provide a place for the leaders of clean-technology
investing and deployment to discuss new strategies as well as emerging
industries and cutting-edge ideas. 

Register Now And Save $400

There are only 120 spots left. Register now to save $400 by using the
Clean Edge code "CED400" when registering online or by phone. Be sure
to save your space today for the 5th Annual Clean-Tech Investor Summit
in Palm Springs, scheduled for January 21-22, 2009.  (((Lotta windmills
near Palm Springs.)))



Register online or contact IBF (Cathy Fenn) at (516) 765-9005, Ext.
210 or e-mail: cathy@ibfconferences.com. 

Confirmed speakers and panelists include:
Britta Gross, Manager, Hydrogen & Electrical Infrastructure, GM
(((General Motors Hydrogen Bailout)))
Christopher Flavin, President of Worldwatch Institute
(((They've watched it decline for decades)))
Dana Flanders, President, Chevron Technology Ventures
(((ate the little players ten years ago)))
Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry and Cofounder of the Biomimicry
Guild, LLC  (((a goddess)))
Kevin Walsh, Managing Director Renewable Energy, GE Energy Financial
Services  (((General Electric founded by Thomas Edison personally)))
Larry O'Donnell, President and COO, Waste Management
(((someone's gotta clean the sky)))
Marc Verbruggen, CEO, NatureWorks  (((Nice company name)))
Peter Darbee, CEO and President, PG&E
(((We shut down switches, California governors fall like ninepins)))
Peter Gleick, President and Cofounder, Pacific Institute
Reyad Fezzani, CEO, BP Global Wind & Solar
T. Boone Pickens, Founder and Chairman of BP Capital Management
(((clouds of menacing dry ice fly from his cowboy boots)))
Attention Venture-Backed Clean-Tech Startups!

Venture-backed clean-tech companies click here for the opportunity to
showcase your products/services to potential investors, partners and
customers at The Clean-Tech Investor Summit. 

The Clean-Tech Investor Summit, co-produced by International Business
Forum and Clean Edge, and chaired by Technology Partners' Ira
Ehrenpreis, is the premier clean-tech investment and innovation event.

 Held each winter in Palm Springs, CA, the event brings together
leading investors, Fortune 500 executives, entrepreneurs, and relevant
service providers for two days of high-level presentations,
conversations, and networking. The 5th Annual Clean-Tech Investor
Summit is scheduled for January 21-22, 2009. For more information,
visit www.cleantechsummit.com. 

This year's sponsors include: Deloitte, Morrison Foerster, Orrick,
Stanford Group, Hobbs & Towne, Jefferies, Accsys Technologies, Comerica
Bank, Cooley Godward Kronish LLP, Italian Trade Commission,  (((Way to
go Italia))) Mintz Levin, Page One, Sonnenschein Venture Technology
Group, American Council on Renewable Energy; National Renewable Energy
Laboratory; and UK Trade & Investment. 

Join the Clean-Tech Investor Summit LinkedIn Group. 

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Clean Edge Team
  

    
*If actual industry-booster work is too much for your frail
countercultural bones, maybe you can scribble a little.


Wanna Write for GreenBiz.com?

GreenBiz.com is looking for guest and regular columnists and feature
writers. We're seeking contributions from business leaders as well as
the journalists who write about them. If you're interested, send a
brief query to managing editor Matthew Wheeland, at
editor@greenbiz.com.

Read our editorial guidelines.  (((That would be a good idea just on
general principles.)))
  

    
*Meanwhile, on the dietary front, world peace breaks out because
Americans are too fat to get off the couch and fight.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/01/12/national/a040610S5
0.DTL

(...) 

Maj. Gen. Thomas Bostick, head of the Army Recruiting Command, said he
wants to see a formal diet and fitness regimen running alongside a new
school at Fort Jackson that helps aspiring troops earn their GEDs.

Bostick told The Associated Press that obesity looms as "a bigger
challenge for us in the years ahead" than any other problem that keeps
young people from entering the military, including lack of a GED or
high school diploma, misconduct or criminal behavior and other health
issues such as eye or ear problems.

According to Defense Department figures provided to the AP, over the
past four years 47,447 potential recruits flunked induction physicals
at the nation's 35 Military Entrance Processing Stations because they
were overweight. (...)

Obesity afflicts recruits for other physically demanding jobs,
including firefighters. Deputy Chief Ed Nied, chair of the safety,
health and survival section of the International Association of Fire
Chiefs, said fire departments are also making a "major push" to
encourage better fitness among young people who want to join.

"We draw from the same exact population that they (the military) draw
from," Nied said from his Tucson, Ariz., headquarters. "This comes from
a lack of physical education in the high schools." (..)

*No it doesn't.  It's not just high school kids who are fat.
Forty percent of the whole population is visibly afflicted.

*When I return from Europe to the USA these days, I can see
that fat Americans are not simply "fat," they look goiterous
somehow, obscurely malnourished.  The American media has been
crammed with fat-cures, exercise programs, fad diets,
for decades now. It's not a new problem.  

*American people in health-food stores are fat.   Maybe a little
less fat, but not a whole lot.  You look at the obesity
ratings and they track pretty well with Red States -- but
it can't be political convictions making Americans fat.
In America the *poor people* are fat.

*I have to suspect there's an undiagnosed determinant here.
Something very heavily  present in the American diet
that other national regions don't have.  I'm not
a nutritionist -- and I don't think American nutritionists
know their jobs, or their clientele would not be
dropping in droves -- but I suspect it must be
some omnipresent industrially food substance.

*My guess would be corn-syrups.

*I'm wondering if the roots of this obesity epidemic
started with the anti-Castro sugar embargoes.
Americans seem to have corn-sweeteners in everything.
Other countries didn't do that -- they rot their
teeth with real sugars.  

*I know this sounds like off-the-wall food paranoia,
but when you're out of the US and you return to it,
the physical state of the population is  shocking.
Especially -- and I have to say this --the recruits
for the Transportation Safety Agency.  Obviously
this is one American militia which has no problem
recruiting people who can barely heave out of their
chairs.  

*When you get off a European plane and you confront
these bloated characters prying through your luggage,
it's Kafka-esque.  It's like 1970s bande-dessinee grotesquerie
from back issues of METAL HURLANT.
  

    <scribbled>
  

    
<a special dress code for luminaries.  Perhps it involves fractal
paisleys>

Like restoring a fixer-upper with good bones, countercultural kudos
for the post (#152), Mr. Sterling.  Even John D. Rockefeller did great
work with his foundation, (((years after his frail, robber baron body
was buried))).

And if Goddess Jhane's fractal paisleys were luminous, they would be 
outrageously hip, as hippie as the Dead's upcoming spring run that's
not playing anywhere near Italy, but is not much less expensive to
attend than those digitally-designed sweaters you do such an outta
sight job of amortizing.  
  

    
From Thomas Sepe

I would say that what is needed is leadership - social skills on the ground,
in the flesh, in our neighborhoods, to organize people to work together. I
think there is a failure of relying too heavily on technology to solve our
problems, whether it is fuel cells or social networking sites.

Television, computers, all of these things are de-socializing us...
expensive technologies take energy and resources and complicated sometimes
toxic materials and processes to manufacture....

Don't get me wrong, I love my laptop... but I don't even know my neighbor's
names.... and I can guess that is true for a lot of renters in cities and
suburbs all over the U.S..... we have virtual communities... but our actual
communities what about that?

Tom Sepe
thomas@tomsepe.com
Oakland, Ca
  

    
From Colin Ashe, via Twitter:

Which vulnerable & venerable institutions *won't* collapse in 2009?
What will thrive, Cassandras be damned?
  

    
Question(s) for bruces and anyone else -- 

Any big breakthroughs on the way in personal fabrication technology? 
Will we reach a point soon (5-10 years?) where it might be feasible to
set up community fabrication workshops?  Or are we stuck with a
situation where, as bslesins put it in post #35, "making high-margin
fashionable stuff (including media and software) becomes increasingly
do-it-yourself but the boring stuff like basic supplies and
infrastructure get manufactured cheaply by international companies at
scale" for the foreseeable future?  

I'm a MAKE dilettante, and the idea of personal fabrication tech is
interesting to me...but intuitively, a world where everyone has their
own "personal fab inkjet" doesn't seem much more sustainable than what
we have now.  I could see a more community-oriented approach yielding
more sustainable results.  

I'm prepared to admit that this might just be a failure of my own
imagination, however.  Hence the questions.   

   
  

    
The wonders of the present could well be infrastructures (aka "boring
stuff") of the future.    Of course, infrastructure requires some
attention to be reliable as we have recently learned here in
Minneapolis.  

We can't expect new generations to be thrilled by the same
developments as those in the past.  In fact, the more successful and
reliable a technology is, the more we "rely" on it, relegating it to
infrastructure.  

Little honor and recognition accrue to those who provide
infrastructure and the young pick up on that fact very quickly. 
  

    
"Television, computers, all of these things are de-socializing us...
expensive technologies take energy and resources and complicated
sometimes toxic materials and processes to manufacture...."

*Well, the net and cellphones definitely are de-socializing us --
in the sense that former social structures are visibly dissolving.
Last night we had dinner for guests and we brought out
some fine silverware from the 1930s.  It was amazing how
archaic it looked and felt compared to our mismatched plates,
re-used jelly-glasses, constantly bleeping cellphones,
a digital flatscreen at our elbows, and the other
globalized bric-a-brac of our multinational existence.

*It's beautiful social technology, silverware.  Henry
Petroski wrote some very nice design-studies things
about silverware.  Silverware is pretty. 
To eat with tools almost as heavy as lead makes
you very conscious of proper table-manners.  We have
almost none.  Except that we are kind to our friends.
Everyone was comfortable; we are how we are.
The silverware didn't feel much like sociality
any more; it was a party trick, conversation pieces.

*Being de-socialized doesn't mean falling into an
asocial abyss.  The 1930s were horrible times.  If you try to
return to the sociality of the 1930s you are
heading straight for what they used to call 
"the Dark Valley."

*I don't have 1930s catered dinner parties, but I do have
stuff like this WELL conversation.
  

    
Question(s) for bruces and anyone else -- 

Any big breakthroughs on the way in personal fabrication technology?

*I recommend a look at www.fabbaloo.com for 
some remarkable coverage of this very intriguing topic.
 
Will we reach a point soon (5-10 years?) where it might be feasible to
set up community fabrication workshops? 

*Yes.

 Or are we stuck with a
situation where, as bslesins put it in post #35, "making high-margin
fashionable stuff (including media and software) becomes increasingly
do-it-yourself but the boring stuff like basic supplies and
infrastructure get manufactured cheaply by international companies at
scale" for the foreseeable future?  

*All of the above.  If you've got the gumption to put
together a fabbing hacker-space, you're kinda by
definition not "stuck."  Besides, there's a very
loose boundary between high-end fashionable stuff
and boring everyday stuff.  Cellphones were
for rich jetsetters once and now they're boring
everydayness.

*Serious hobbies tend to bore other people;
otherwise theyre not personally fulfilling activities
but a form of public entertainment.

I'm a MAKE dilettante, and the idea of personal fabrication tech is
interesting to me...but intuitively, a world where everyone has their
own "personal fab inkjet" doesn't seem much more sustainable than what
we have now.  I could see a more community-oriented approach yielding
more sustainable results.  

*I hate to plug my own work here, but you need a look
at my book SHAPING THINGS, especially the description
of what it might be like to be a "wrangler" of "spimes."

I'm prepared to admit that this might just be a failure of my own
imagination, however. 

*There's a lot of imagination in the lazyweb.  
  

    
*We're gonna have to wind this up soon. Jhane might
yet sneak in under the wire, but...

*Okay, a word to the wise here.  Don't like fractal
paisleys?  "5.11 Tactical."  Known to Merlin Mann
as "Internet pants."  The shirts are even better.
I wear Jhane Barnes when I'm acting luminous, but
I live in 5.11 Tactical shirts.

*I'm looking for the chic European equivalent of
these garments.  Haven't found any just yet.  

*But I'm patient.
  

    
bruces, thanks for the response.  fabbaloo does look like an
interesting read, and I'm intrigued by the description of "Shaping
Things" on Amazon.
  

    
robertflink -- 

You wrote :"The wonders of the present could well be infrastructures
(aka "boring stuff") of the future.  Of course, infrastructure requires
some attention to be reliable as we have recently learned here in
Minneapolis."

That's quite insightful.  When I started college, we had a T1
connection in the computer labs, but the dorms were just beginning to
be wired for access to that network.  Instead, we used a sort of
simulated modem pool through the digital phone system (ah, fond
memories of using lynx to do online research when I couldn't be
bothered to walk to the computer labs!), or, if you knew what you were
doing, you could connect to the main network through a PPP connection,
but it was definitely in "beta" when I was there, and very slow.  Any
one of those connection methods, however, compared to BBSes, AOL, and
Compuserve (all I knew about online communication pre-college), was a
huge improvement!  By the time I moved off campus, all the dorms were
wired for ethernet, and we were lucky enough to be in one of the first
neighborhoods where broadband-over-cable was being tested...

Now, I don't know what I'd do without some form of high speed internet
connection.

Of course, I think you're talking more about conventional physical
infrastructure, but the same principles apply, I think.  Someone has to
lay the wires to connect homes to the net and maintain those
connections; someone has to keep the bridges in repair to make sure
they don't collapse.  Which, I think, presents an interesting point:
creating the infrastructure requires a separate skill set than
installing it, which requires a separate (maybe?) skill set than
maintaining it.  I can change a light bulb, but installing a new light
socket is a bit beyond me.  I could learn, probably, but there's
someone out there who already knows, can do it quicker and more
cheaply, and has less of a chance of electrocuting himself.  All of
which just feeds back into the need for community...

Sorry for the rambling.  Haven't finished my coffee yet.
  

    
Thanks, Bruce, for taking the challenge to be constructive.  From all
of us old Well counterculturalists, here's a fine hat––a Merlin Mann
ether-gift––for you to wear with your Jhane fractal lumi-threads:


http://www.43folders.com/topics/monthly-pimp


Seriously, have a great '09!!
  

    
One last question: How many bruces does it take to change a lightbulb?
  

    
That's easy.   bruces has gone over to LEDs.
  

    
The milling and deposition and laser-hardened-goo machines are very clever
and very cool.  but they can't make anything that you couldn't make in 1875
given a room full of machine tools and a small casting works.  Putting that
capability in your garage is a big step forward but it's maybe 0.01% of the
way towards a universal object-building machine.  I doubt I could find a
single object in this entire office which could be made only from parts
made in such a machine, and that's assuming that I'll do the assembly work
by hand.

That is not to detract from them.  I'd love one myself.  But we're at least
as far from a small-scale self-replication-capable assembly machine as from
human-level artificial intelligence.
  

    
The big rap on ethanol is how it drives the cost of food up.  The big
rap on American's these days is the epidemic of obesity. 
And...yes...corn syrup is the number one culprit.  SO, to have more
fuel to burn and burn more calories at the same time––i.e., help solve
the energy crisis and generate a quantum improvement in the physical
health of the population, at the same time, all we need to do is...

(((have the USDA ban high fructose corn syrup in all domestically
consumed foods and drinks)))
  

    

>but they can't make anything that you couldn't make in 1875
 given a room full of machine tools and a small casting works. 

Jacob, this statement reminds me of the cartoon showing the scientists and 
the flow chart with the spot marked "And then a miracle occurs."  The 
whole point is that room full of tools.  When I went to see the Leonardo:  
500 years in the future exhibit when it was in Florence, the thing that 
stood out, in my view, was that not only did he invent things (some of 
which were actually made during his lifetime) he also had to invent the 
technology to make them, like the casting works that he had to design to 
build the Sforza horse.  It's the tools where the miracle occurs.  What 
you make with them is the sub-miracles.

On a slightly different note:  here's an example of an early community 
fabrication workshop:  http://www.bicyclekitchen.com/
  

    
Our hosts haven't mentioned it, but today a new Inkwell conversation
is starting and our formal commitment to carry this one forward ends.
Nobody's dousing the lights or locking the door, though... so carry on
if you'd like.

Here's the link for 5.11 Tactical: http://www.511tactical.com/

I can imagine a world where everything's DIY. That's where we came
from, after all. Economies may crumble but people carry on... life
persists. I was watching a bit of the Golden Globes and thinking how
massive an enterprise filmmaking has become, and how expensive... and
they're still churning them out, and crowds of filmgoers are still
showing up, enough to drive ongoing production. We haven't abandoned
the theatre experience completely in favor of our various devices,
however sophisticated the display and sound. The experience of sitting
in a crowded theatre with others sharing an experience is still
compelling. And elsewhere, I see more people aggregating in more
places, coordinating those physical experience through virtual
channels. So as Bruce says, we're no way asocial, but sociality has
been redefined and rechanneled, those energies are pouring into new
infrastructures for experience.

Derek Woodgate and I have created a think tank, called Plutopia, that
produces events instead of white papers. Our next will be at SXSW
Interactive, March 16. It's the kind of event I think we'll see more
of... there'll be bands and DJs, and many convergent art installations,
and speakers (including hopefully Bruce), and all kinds of
interestingly weird, forward-looking experimental stuff. Robots,
makers, etc. We might throw up some screens and do something with film
or high res video. People just flock to events, and the event itself is
an art form. (This isn't completely new... we learned a lot from Mark
Petrakis, aka Spoonman, and his Anon Salons... actually the "Spoonfest
Betatest" that I attended in 1993, which was a bunch of Bay Area geeks
doing cyberactive vaudeville.) And it's social, people meet at events
and hang out. Not long ago I watched an ad hoc intentional community
form in front of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band at Antone's in Austin...
for a couple of hours a bunch of people who were unlikely to see each
other again fell in love ... with the band and with each other... and I
think this is not uncommon.

When you jack into the noosphere, I guess you don't have to be
explicitly social in some defined way. A fish doesn't need a bottle of
Perrier.
  

    
Well, as Huey Long used to say during the last Depression, "Every man
a fish with a bottle of Perrier."

I see that both my banks are crashing today, because they've
lost all confidence in the loans they gave me.  Gosh, if I'd
known it was that easy to smash capitalism, I probably
woulda done it when I was a college student.


I live pretty modestly here in Turin, but compared to
Friedrich Nietzsche (he lived in my neighborhood) I have
every conceivable advantage.  I'm better fed, I'm better
educated, I have my health and even the critics are kinder.
So I guess that 2009 is the year when I knuckle down and
whip out a text to top THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.  Like
reformatting industrial civilization, that oughta be
easy.  And fun.

So long till next time.  Be luminous!
  

    
Thanks to all who dropped by, vocal or lurking. See you all next
year...!
  

    


Nau might be the line that edges towards a chic version of 511 Tactical.  I
bought several items during the big fire sale, when it looked like Nau was
going under during the spring.  I would have really regretted paying full
price for a couple things -- the "casual" pullover cotton blouse, say --
but the technical gear is almost miraculous.  Crafty understated zippered
pockets, wide range of movement in the sleeves and shoulders, beautifully
cut and sewn, and the fabrics feel and look durable without saying "I'm a
nature freak."  And no logos ineradicably cut and sewn into or printed on
the garments.

And it's all supposedly extremely eco-virtuous material, to boot, but I
really have nothing to compare that claim to.

Thanks for hosting a great, thought-provoking conversation, jon and bruce!