“The Pop-up Community” … a new social mindset!

tractorCQ 1 Comment

Interesting insights, Clay. It’s refreshing to discover others thinking along these lines.

I believe from what I’ve seen that spontaneity will play a big role in future communities of place. I haven’t yet made it to Detroit, but it’s on my list of urban adventures I’d like to include in my list: Memphis, St Louis, Nashville, New Orleans and Chicago. I have limited my scope to the Mississippi Basin in hopes of understanding why North America has not capitalized on its amazing topology akin to earlier civilizations that emerged around the Nile, the Amazon and the Euphrates. America seems to have developed from sea trade and its economy appears to favor the coasts.

In the big mid-western cities, I’ve seen forward-thinking groups that had formed naturally and became quasi-institutional within their urban cultures. Smaller cities, especially college towns, have exhibited some of the qualities you describe. What I’m waiting to see is resilient mobile elements that are capable of intentionally nomadic modes of influence that could interweave rural and urban frames together in a balanced way. There is so much fertile land and natural waterway infrastructure between the Rockies and the Appalachians but not near enough human presence to fully work it.

What I think is needed is a mobilization of intact support from the coastal regions to offset the menacing forces that are exploiting the nation’s mid-section for the wrong reasons and propagating a wrong mindset. At least in New England and the West Coast, proper notions of sustainability have entered the collective consciousness. The Midwest, I’m afraid, is under the cloud of 20th Century reductionism, inappropriate producer-consumer relations and the megalomania perpetrated by Big Ag, Big Oil and Big Business. Sustainability evangelism via something like ‘pop-up communities’ could help.

Thanks for the inspiration!

Forging tools for the new music industry

tractorCQ Leave a comment

Our strategy is to eventually develop Linux sound servers in favored venues and start capturing the live scenes.

I’m finding the “right” people for my fan base, support network and band. The cooperatively-owned server places “command and control” capabilities straight into the hands of our awesome team. We host ourselves from a fully functional Internet-aware Venue, thus creating an outlet for our creative energies in real-time.

I think A&R people, artists, venue developers and many others will like the free or really inexpensive tools we’re forging. Our fans are the real captains of this new industry. Connecting with one another is what matters.

Here is a sample form that we may use to plug your venue into the future OzOneFarm.net

Go back

Your message has been sent

 

Next Level or Point of No Return

tractorCQ Leave a comment

OzoneFarm has been an imaginary domain since my wife zeroed all my accounts and kicked me to the curb back in 2003. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to reconcile with her or her world, but my world of ideas and ideals is still quite intact. The ship is anchored over Fort Defiance  near Cairo, Illinois and there it shall remain anchored until we at least or at last succeed. I’m in Chicago working on some “cultural infrastructure” for use in the 23rd Century. By 2020, everything should be in place and running, if they let me live that long.

Thanks to the resilience of the Internet itself, at least a bare-bones version of Yeoman’s OzoneFarm will “exist” in some form never again to be sabotaged, sidetracked, deleted, lost, dismissed, denied or even discouraged by those who lack anything from a the most basic understanding of sustainability to the complete inability to entertain a single original thought.

Here’s a link to the current working draft of the executive summary, introduction and some primary ideas:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-CEmIJKsso0o/UcMnTygDzAI/AAAAAAAAASY/kWG1d35UvZY/d/2013-06-20

Next: DTOM: Dialog/Transaction Object Model (Don’t Tread On Me) – Patent not needed.

Arduino for sensor-actuator networks

tractorCQ 1 Comment

Arduino may easily do the jobs I was talking of earlier this year. As rainfall begins, the network across the topography will sense it, open some channels and close others and the dance will begin. Capturing the excitement and energy of a any event from a summer shower to a thunderstorm …

Go back

Your message has been sent

Business as UN-usual

tractorCQ Leave a comment

Truth in business online and off is finding its way through all of the hype and deception. The Internet gives creative people a platform devoid of the dire need for hard physical capital like the “old system” required even just to get the first feelers out. We’re using as many free services as we can to build a base of triple bottom line businesses – people, planet, profit. But in the 21st Century, profit has a different meaning altogether from its classic definition formed in greed and self-interest.

Many other terms are changing their definitions as the context shifts modes from the reckless to the sensible. We have collectively found the need for what sustains and helps us survive our own past madness. We are waking up to what should have, could have and would have been  35 years ago through a series of wake-up calls to what shall, can and will happen if we are to survive. What we have discovered is that Nature has given us abundance that we were simply too blind (or blinded) to see. We are made not only to survive but to thrive.

“Growth” is not for markets, companies or even social networks. It is again for the Natural world – trees, grass, flora and fauna and the ecosystem itself – as it was for Early Humankind. Scarcity was a modern myth. Now, we’re seeing people and ideas coming together through openness and sharing via the Public Domain, the Creative Commons, Open Source Licensing and other tools that show the willingness to express love and kindness through our work and insights. Rather than locking ideas away as ‘intellectual property’ or ‘trade secrets’ many of us have decided to buid and use the “Commons” approach and share everything we can. We have discovered that security – social, financial, even physical is at best a set of illusions based also in myth. Open, honest effort to build real community is true security.

“Business” is the art of staying on task; remaining focused yet open; being ready for unexpected change; becoming adaptable to emergent and divergent realities; accepting gifts; receiving instruction; listening to expressed needs; recognising unique skills:::

“Profit” is the act of receiving that which is given. The gift of life cannot be “earned” but it must be appreciated and nurtured through mutual respect and tender loving care. Profit in business has nothing at all to do with making money or building private wealth any more. When we value our world, it will take care of us. We are learning now to add value to our built environment that honors the natural environment that was here when we arrived and will remain when we’re gone.

See the rough draft of Business as UN-usual on Facebook.

tractorCQ Leave a comment

I’m a Christian Communist. I believe the Second Coming of Christ is the coming together of everyone who is meek enough to be open. That’s a pretty strange view to some, but it’s the simplest way to put it. Jesus is the Ultimate Celebrity. Everyone will know it’s Him.

open collaboration's avatarOpencollaboration's Blog

How to create a virally social movement that brings together the world

SYNTHESIZE

1. Bring together people of different worldviews, different demographics, different political views on an issue of interest, or conflict. These can be food issues, neighbourhood violence issues, economic issues, governance issues, cultural difference issues, race issues, etc..

2. Use a facilitated method like Non-violent Communication, Dynamic Facilitation, Bohmian Dialogue, Deep Democracy, Insight Dialogue, or any of the methods coming out of the Synthesize movement to bring people together

3. Blog about the results of this facilitated dialogue as part of the Synthesize movement. Write about if for a magazine.

4. Connect with others in the Synthesize movement. Share info with others who do a Synthesize circle. Also once people start Synthesizing and posting their results we can search on the internet for who has blogged/written about Synthesize and reach out to them through social networks and other…

View original post 134 more words

Hillbilly Laptop

tractorCQ Leave a comment
yellow pencil

An ordinary yellow pencil

Using a piece of stout string or chain, attach a regular pencil to a nice heavy clipboard that holds a good thick yellow legal pad and what do you have?

But you’ll need an operating system. Doodles of inventions, poems, notes, renderings of all sorts, quips and quotes. Heck who needs an iPhone or a Droid? No need for batteries or even a cloak and dagger account with a telecom giant. Who can be trusted?

Ecosystems Services, Agroecology and the WikiBus

tractorCQ Leave a comment

Dana Drugmand in the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet blog writes about “An Ecosystems Services Approach to Water and Food Security” : UNEP and IWMI Advocate Agroecosystems to Improve Food, Water Security | Nourishing the Planet. I’m hoping to activate a portion of a “corridor” that follows the Mississippi and its major confluence points especially St Louis, Cairo, Memphis and New Orleans since those are the ones I have “boots-on-the-ground” experience with. I especially wish to link-up ecologically aware efforts in a most pervasive and inclusive way.

For example:

  • St Louis: Kelley Greene Bio-diesel stops at the Soulard Market and fuels up the Wiki Bus. The Wiki Bus goes by The Whole Wheat House and picks up a team consisting of some Seasoned Wheaties and some new summer recruits that have already been screened, trained and assembled. Next Stop:
  • Cape Girardeau: To Family Friendly Farm to help with a massive pasture sweep and eggmobile class. After a fun and productive two or three days working, playing and touring Cape with the Fosnocks it’s on to:
  • Carbondale Illinois: We’ll tour R. Buckminster Fuller’s old stomping grounds and learn about Earthships and see what’s up in and around C’dale. Several EcoFarms and Villages dot the Southern Illinois landscape from what I’ve seen. And so on up and down the line.
  • Your town here
  • Cairo, Illinois is our hub. Airship Parked Here

The WikiBus offers ecosystem services to a whole range of businesses that are tuned to a new set of standards (quite above those of the US Government and its Bedfellows). Running on 100% biofuels, the refurbished school bus (later – larger commercial buses) are scheduled and routed with the whole ecosystem in mind through a highly interactive real-time web interface (a laptop on board) that is aware of wireless access points along the way.

Commercial venders, food co-ops, CSAs, urban permaculture projects, rural ecofarms, ecovillages, universities, … this list can grow massively… can each tune into the OzoneFarm Network and fill in its own blanks.

The Buses also serve as poverty alleviators for severely disadvantaged urbanites who need a break from the concrete jungle and some solid capital for starting their own gigs. (Everybody’s gotta have a gig – 2 Thessalonians 3:10 – for the organizationally religious). So the Expected Question is never answered the same way twice.