[Pil-pc-oceania] Tools for transition - old idea reborn

[pacific-edge]

Wow! For a moment there I thought I had returned to 1969 with Sue's chaff
cutter, Janet's edged tools and sharpeners and Petra's peddle-powered
'little machines' appearing in recent posts. At that time there was great
interest in hand tools, all thanks to a sense of impending doom emanating
from the Cold War, a sense of alienation from mainstream culture among youth
and the simple notion that there was a good life awaiting in the country.
Hence the first intentional communities.

Maybe history is not in rewind, but a lot of the stuff - the tools - people
are writing about this subject on this listserv was catalogued in a book
that you might find if you ask your local librarian to dig it out of the
library stacks. It was pulled together by Stewart Brand in the USA and was
called 'The Whole Earth Catalog' (details below).

Apple computer CEO, Steve Jobs, said that: "the Catalog was a conceptual
forerunner of a Web search engine." And Wikipedia alludes to the Catalog's
continuing influence: "In late 2006, Worldchanging released their 600-page
compendium of solutions, 'Worldchanging: A User's Guide to the 21st
Century', which Bill McKibben, in an article in the New York Review of Books
called "The Whole Earth Catalog retooled for the iPod generation." The
editor of Worldchanging has since acknowledged the Catalog as a prime
inspiration."

In later decades the ideology of the counterculture, as it became known -
the primary readership of Brand's book - fed into the pioneering of the
Internet and personal computing, especially into digital communications. By
ideology I mean collaborative communities and the like. Brand founded the
pioneering online communications group WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link)
and was active in the starting of the digital culture magazine, 'Wired',
around ten years ago. In this way, the ideology of the counterculture fed
into the digital culture that emerged in the late 1980s and the 1990s, an
interesting evolution, but one made clear in the book 'From Counterculture
to Cyberculture'. 

The last edition - the Mellenium Edition - of The Whole Earth Catalog was
published in 1995. What is interesting through the editions of this book
that spanned the decades after 1968 was the juxtaposition of hand tools with
the hi-tech of the day. There was no contradiction perceived between these
very different tools. They were seen as being on a continuum rather than
being polar opposites. Both fitted the notion of 'intermediate technology'
or 'appropriate technology' (AT) introduced by British economist, EF
Schumacher. Although the main focus of AT was in developing countries, it
gained a following in the West.

Sometimes, I wonder if we make an unwarranted mental division between manual
tools and hi-tech tools, the useful products, that is.

Schumacher defined AT as technology that improved the efficiency of
traditional technology but was more affordable, locally maintainable and
appropriate in scale, maintenance and use to the communities applying it.
There persists a belief that AT is hand or animal powered technology, but
this is untrue. I looked up the definition in Wikipedia and it stated that:

"It could be argued that "appropriate technology" for a technologically
advanced society may mean a more expensive, complex technology requiring
expert maintenance. However, this is not the usual meaning of the term...
One approach to the term, among advocates of voluntary simplicity (sometimes
termed neo-luddites by others), is that "appropriate technology" is
technology whose risk/cost/value tradeoff is compelling enough to justify
continued use. Examples might include a clothesline, small kitchen gardens,
home composting, better thermal insulation, or commuting by bicycle rather
than automobile... ".

The article discusses the fact that AT also refers to hi-tech "when those
technologies are, in fact, the technologies best fitted to their
applications." Such would seem to support Schumacher's idea. The article
continues: "Use of radio broadcasts, cellular telephones or distance
education might be considered appropriate "high technologies."

Indeed, the experience of Grameen Telecom (a creation of Bangladesh's
Grameen Bank that pioneered micro-lending in that country) supports the use
of mobile phones as an appropriate technology on account of their lower
infrastructure costs where no telecommunications system exists, such as in
areas of Bangladesh. Likewise, email carried on the existing high frequency
radio network is an appropriate technology in isolated areas of the Solomon
Islands where there is no telecommunications system. It forms a partial
livelihood for the email operator and was installed by the People First NGO
and the TerraCircle (www.terraccirclee.org.au) consultancy to link farmers
with pest management advice via PestNet.

Wikipedia goes on: "Another commonly encountered approach to the term
"appropriate technology" is when it is used to describe specific
technologies, like wind power, that provide an alternative to fossil fuels.
Also, the term is sometimes used to describe things like the telephone,
radio and television that can reduce the need for travel or replace print.
Such usage is controversial, as, very often, windmills or electronics may
rely on very high technology elsewhere, in their production.

That last point is relevant to this listserv - we who use it for notifying
events or to converse are reliant on hi-tech research and industries such as
computing, electronic telecommunications, digital technologies and the space
program.

"Which technologies are truly "appropriate" was a matter of debate among
those who pioneered the concept and is still a matter of some debate",
Wikipedia continues. "Appropriate technology can benefit from the latest
research, as with the cloth filter which was inspired by research into the
way cholera is carried in water. It may use very recent technology - for
example, a type of white LED lights is used by the Light Up the World
Foundation in remote areas of Nepal, due to their low power requirements and
high reliability.

"Mobile telephony is appropriate technology for many developing countries,
as it greatly reduces the infrastructure required to achieve widespread
coverage."

Interesting stuff, particularly the statement about the clothes filter
copied from a model existing in nature. This is known as 'biomimicry' and
takes the Permaculture idea of copying nature further by basing tools and
technologies on natural processes. The model of the gecko's foot inspired
Velcro, for instance, and greywater reedbed filter systems simulate natural
wetlands. In Permaculture, biomimicry usually stops at using biological
resources such as trees and other plants to achieve objectives in design,
however the idea is being taken a great deal further as the above examples
illustrate. Likewise the earlier work of John Todd and his associates with
'living machines' - integrated water filtering, biomass production, fish and
food plant production systems housed in a single building, a synthesis of
models drawn from nature.

In the listserv conversation somebody wrote: "I've always thought that
sustainability seemed to work at the village level, rather than the
household level... it would probably be better for one person to devote
sufficient time to it to become moderately expert and then to do everyone's
'smithing' work to keep up that level of skill... while others developed
different 'appropriate technology' skill sets."

This is the lesson of human history and can only happen when people organise
in villages, towns and cities because proximity is a necessity for this type
of cooperation. To hark back to the time I alluded to at the start of this
letter, one of the learnings that emerged from the counterculture ideology
of self-sufficiency was that it was largely unworkable. A level of
specialisation in skills was desirable, especially skills that were in
demand locally and that were tradeable.

This is exactly one of the topics tackled in Tom Hodgkinson's great little
book, 'How to be Free'. Hodgkinson has other good ideas that would appeal to
people in this online conversation.

TRANSITION OF MELTDOWN?
There seems to be the assumption that a peak oil-fueled 'transition' would
be a calm affair, however this is not necessarily so. We can only speculate,
of course, but a lot of the things like the urban homesteading skills being
discussed might not be possible if a worst case peak oil transition leads to
rapid economic decline. Then we have economic depression and we do know what
happens then, as the Great Depression of the 1930s showed - malnutrition,
homelessness (if you owe the banks a mortgage and your oil-dependent job
ends, then you lose your home and any possibility of urban homesteading), a
long period of unemployment, rising crime and social conflict.

While I am more optimistic of Australians successfully handling a severe
decline than Americans, and much prefer David Holmgren's ideas for
transition society (though David's model urgently needs to be extended to
medium density living - ie. no backyards), I don't think a transition is
necessarily something to look forward to (especially if we really believe in
Permaculture's second ethic).

What would be useful is an online discussion of the creative energy descent
model David promotes and the 'green technology' model, as this, I think, is
quite relevant to our society. Clearly, Schumacher's notion of appropriate
technology has plenty of room for green technology as well as manual tools.

A starting point, were the book still in print, would be Ernest Callenbach's
1975 novel, "Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston". It is a
novel in the ecological utopianism genre and brings in notions of green
technology (1975 level - just add the Internet, online communications,
mobile telephony etc) that had a substantial impact on counterculture
thought (Permaculture had not yet been born when it was written but was
growing in the womb of Mollison's mind). Another book by Callenbach,
"Ecotopia Emerging", describes the ecological state and how it developed.
Interestingly, Callenbach's fictional state does not eschew the hi-tech of
the day and recognises the importance of green technology to a sustainable
society. 

"Nine Nations of North America", Joel Garreau's 1981 book in the same genre,
alludes to the bioregional model that first had currency in Permaculture in
the late 1980s when it was influenced by ideas from Peter Berg's Planet Drum
Foundation in San Francisco and the writings of Bill Mollison. It is also
about a fictional ecological state based on renewable resource use. Both
writers have inspired the seccessionist Cascadia movement in Western USA.

Well, there were certainly precedents for the ideas that were later
articulated by Permaculture. Like most good ideas, Permaculture emerged from
a context ready to receive something like it. And despite some
Permaculturists in the past saying that 'we have to get rid of our hippy
past' and the like, Permaculture is the product of its time and that was the
time of the counterculture, intentional communities, the nascent
grren/environment movement. So much is history.

But what we need now is to understand that, although the ideas about tools
expressed by correspondents on this listserv do have an historic precedent
30 plus years ago, today we face new challenges and need to seriously
consider the technological configurations that will take us through these.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Whole Earth Catalog: first published 1968 and occasionally thereafter;
Portola Institute, USA.

Ecotopia: Callenbach, Ernest, 1975; first self-published & Bantam Books
(1977), USA.

Ecotopia Emerging: Callenbach, Ernest, 1981.

Small is Beautiful - economics as if people mattered: Schumacher EF, 1999;
Hartley & Marks Publishers, UK. ISBN 0-88179-169-5.

How to be Free: Hodgkinson T, 2006; Penguin Books UK. ISBN-13: 978 0 241
14321 6.

The Nine Nations of North America: Garreau, Joel,1981; Houghton Mifflin.
ISBN 0395291240.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
RUSS GRAYSON
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instructional manuals/communication services for international development

PO Box 1045, Manly, NSW 1655 AUSTRALIA
info at pacific-edge.info
P: 0414 065 203
www.pacific-edge.info

TerraCircle international development team, Oceania
www.terracircle.org.au

Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network
www.communitygarden.org.au
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