• for: definition, definition - heat dome, Pacific Northwest heatwave

• paraphrase

  • This event was widely described in the media as a “heat dome”, wherein
    • subsidence/adiabatic warming,
    • “trapped air”, and
    • sensible heating
  • are the dominant mechanisms driving the anomalous heat.
  • This conceptual model ignores the role of upstream diabatic heating,
    • which our analysis
  • shows is a significant heat source.
  • This “heat dome” phrase is not a common phrase within the scientific community

• comment

  • the authors do not refer to this event as a heat dome, as is popularly used in the media because diabatic heating was involved

• for: weather prediction, climate prediction, Pacific Northwest heatwave, comment, question, question - Pacific Northwest heatwave
• paraphrase
  • near-term forecasts of this event were good, albeit underestimating the magnitude of the maximum temperatures.
• comment
• question
  • could appropriate measures have been in taken, our were the predicted temperature so far off that appropriate measures could not be recommended?
  • in particular, with the mass dieoff from the marine heatwave of an estimate billion marines organisms due to:
    • low tide,
    • high surface air temperature and
    • elevated ocean temperatures,
  • could interventions have been organized such as:
    • increasing dissolved oxygen levels in parts of the ocean dense with sea life or
    • soaking shellfish exposed to extreme sea surface temperature?
  • what are the future impacts in terms of biodiversity loss and extinction?

• for climate change - impacts, climate departure, extinction, biodiversity loss, marine heat wave, ubc, Pacific Northwest heatwave
• paraphrase
• stats
  • An unprecedented heatwave occurred in the Pacific Northwest (PNW)
    • from ~25 June to 2 July 2021,
    • over lands colonially named
      • British Columbia (BC)
      • Alberta (AB) in Canada,
      • Washington (WA),
      • Oregon (OR) in the United States.
  • Near-surface air temperature anomalies reached up to 16–20 °C above normal over a wide region (Fig. 1),
    • with many locations breaking all-time maximum temperature records by more than 5 °C (Fig. 2a).
  • The Canadian national temperature record was broken 3 days in a row, at multiple locations,
    • with the highest temperature of 49.6 °C recorded in Lytton, BC, on 29 June (Figs. 1b),
    • 4.6 °C higher than the Canadian record prior to this event.
  • The new record temperature was reportedly the hottest worldwide temperature recorded north of 45° latitude,
    • and hotter than any recorded temperature in Europe or South America.

• for: marine heat wave, fish dieoff, fish kill, extinction, climate departure, climate change - impacts
• title: The unprecedented Pacific Northwest heatwave of June 2021
• date: Feb. 9, 2023

• for: fish kill, climate change - impacts, climate departure, fish kill - Australia

• for: climate change - impacts, extinction, biodiversity loss, fish kill, salmon dieoff, stats, stats - salmon, logging, human activity

• paraphrase

• stats

  • None of the 28 streams Cunningham and his colleagues studied hit summertime highs warmer than 25.9 C,
  • the point where warming water can become lethal.
  • But in four rivers, temperatures climbed past 20.3 C,
    • the threshold where some have found juvenile coho stop growing.
  • In some watersheds, deforestation rates climbed to 59 per cent.

• comment

  • deforestation may be a contributing factor but there are also other variables like changes in glacial melt water

-for: salmon survival temperature, stats, stats - salmon, salmon dieoff, climate change - impacts, fish kill - paraphrase -stats - One study found once temperatures climb past 20.3 C, - salmon stop growing because they can't get enough food to satisfy their metabolism.

• for: climate change - impacts, complexity, fish dieoff, salmon dieoff, convergence, ecosystem - logging, convergence - climate change and logging

• for: emptiness, CHD,

• for: Indyweb - potential application, TNFD - biodiversity data

• for: sustainable consumption, individual change, impact of environmental awareness, Custora
• comment
  • individual consumption choices have an impact, but far from enough
  • system change is also required on policy and structural level
  • voluntarily reducing our income could be one way

• for: inequality, carbon inequality, carbon inequality - eu
• title: The unequal distribution of household carbon footprints in Europe and its link to sustainability
• authors
  • Diana ivanova
  • Richard Wood
• date: July 6, 2020
• source: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainability/article/unequal-distribution-of-household-carbon-footprints-in-europe-and-its-link-to-sustainability/F1ED4F705AF1C6C1FCAD477398353DC2#article

• for: degrowth, polycrisis, simplification
• title: Critics of ‘degrowth’ economics say it’s unworkable – but from an ecologist’s perspective, it’s inevitable
• author: Mike Joy
• date: Aug. 15, 2023
• source: https://theconversation.com/critics-of-degrowth-economics-say-its-unworkable-but-from-an-ecologists-perspective-its-inevitable-211496

• summary: The author makes the claim that state capture lay at the root of our polycrisis. Effectively addressing state capture is a leverage point for rapid whole system change,
• for: state capture, leverage point, rapid whole system change, saving humanity, lobbying
• title: Saving humanity: here’s a radical approach to building a sustainable and just society
• author: Mark Diesendorf
• date: May 18, 2023
• source: https://theconversation.com/saving-humanity-heres-a-radical-approach-to-building-a-sustainable-and-just-society-205566
• reference: book
  • The path to a Sustainable Civilization

• for: definition, definition - state capture, state capture
• definition: state capture
  • when governments, public servants, the media and the majority of decision-makers and influencers become captured by vested interests.

• for: state capture
• paraphrase
  • main categories of state capture
    • funding of political parties by corporate interests
    • revolving door jobs between government and corporate interests
    • concentration of media ownership
    • influence of "think tanks" funded by vested interests

• for: sustainable living, regenerative living, greenhouse living, greenhouse
• title: Living in a Greenhouse
• description
  • The Tills are a couple that operate a nursery and also built their home into the same greenhouse

• for: W2W, inequality, 1%, oligarch, elites, kleptocrats, civil society - exploitation, TUSN, Transnational Uncivil Society Network
• title: How the kleptocrats and oligarchs hunt civil society groups to the ends of the Earth
• author: Peter Rinko
• comment
  • This article explores the research work of Alexander Cooley, John Heathershaw and Ricard Soares de Oliverira who coauthored the paper

Transnational Uncivil Society Networks: kleptocracy’s global fightback against liberal activism - reference - https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5e5a3052-c693-4991-a7cc-bc2b47134467/download_file?file_format=application%2Fpdf&safe_filename=Cooley_et_al_2023_transnational_uncivil_society.pdf&type_of_work=Journal+article

• for: climate communication, polycrisis communication, Canadian fires, Canadian wildfires, Canadian forest fires

• quote

  • Across the region,
    • roads buckled,
    • car windows cracked and
    • power cables melted.
  • The emerald fringes of conifers browned overnight,
    • as if singed by flame.
  • Entire cherry orchards were destroyed, the fruit stewed on the trees.
  • More than 650,000 farm animals died of heat stress.
  • Hundreds of thousands of honeybees perished,
    • their organs exploding outside their bodies.
  • Billions of shoreline creatures,
    • especially shellfish,
  • simply baked to death,
    • strewing beaches with empty shells and a fetid stench that lingered for weeks.
  • Birds and insects went unnervingly silent.
  • All the while the skies were hazy but clear, the air preternaturally still, not a cloud in sight.
  • The air pressure was so high they’d all dissipated.

• author: Anne Shibata Casselman

• date: Aug, 2023

• source:

  • https://macleans.ca/society/environment/canada-in-the-year-2060/

• comment

  • this description is so visceral that it should be made into a short movie,
  • a new communication format more powerful than mainstream media presently uses is to record the actual substantial and visceral impacts with video and show to the public

• for: Canada's future, climate future - Canada, climate communication, polycrisis communication
• quote
  • What follows is a portrait of Canada in a world warmed by two degrees. This is not what our country will look like if the world fails to reduce emissions—this is our future even if we do.
• author: Anne Shibata Casselman
• date: Aug, 2023
• source
  • https://macleans.ca/society/environment/canada-in-the-year-2060/

• for: Canadian forest fires, tipping point, forest fire graph, graph - forest fires - Canada,
• comment
  • graph that shows the unprecedented forest fires turning forests from carbon sink to carbon source

• for: science and spirituality, business and spirituality, spirituality and sustainability, Tom Greenwood, annotated,
• comment
  • annotated this article:
    • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftomgreenwood.substack.com%2Fp%2Fis-spirituality-the-missing-pillar&group=world

• comment
  • critics will argue that such internal paradigm shifts take decades rather than years
  • see the paper showing time scales of different types of social tipping points:
    • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnas.org%2Fdoi%2F10.1073%2Fpnas.1900577117&group=world
  • However, what his not been researched is the combination of different types of social tipping points and how specific combinations might actually accelerate action.
  • Applying the social tipping point complex contagion findings of Damon Centola to cascading tipping points, where deep inner transformation can play a strategic role, is a possibility worth investigating
    • reference
      • https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=damon+centola

• for: science - religion, science - spirituality, science and religion, science and spirituality, Isaac Newton - spirituality, Isaac Newton - religion

• comment

  • don't forget Isaac Newton!
• reference
  • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Frsc.byu.edu%2Fconverging-paths-truth%2Fbrief-survey-sir-isaac-newtons-views-religion&group=world

• for: definition, definition - mentalism, hermetic philosophy
• definition: Mentalism
  • things are created from and expand from the mind
• paraphrase
• quote
  • There are different ways that you can interpret this,
    • but in its simplest form it means that
    • everything that we do in life begins with a thought or a feeling.
  • The thought or feeling always precedes the action. / Comment: This is part of the philosophy of Deep Humanity that entangles inner transformation with outer transformation /
  • Therefore the inner world, the spiritual world, drives the physical world. It is a mirror. / Comment: A Deep Humanity way to express this is to say that the outer world is a reflection of the cumulative inner world's of humanity/
  • Everything that humans have ever done throughout our entire history
    • has begun as thoughts and feelings,
    • which then manifested as actions in the physical world.
  • Our society is therefore shaped by the interaction between
    • our inner worlds and
    • the laws of nature.
  • We cannot change the laws of nature
    • and so if we want to change the world,
    • we must focus our attention inwards. / Comment: Again, this is reflected in the Deep Humanity phrase: A stimuli occurs, the heart feels, the mind thinks, the body acts and an impact appears in our public, shared reality/

• for: quote, quote - spirituality, quote - Tom Greenwood, triple bottom line, spirituality and business

• paraphrase

• quote

  • spirituality is not even a fourth pillar of sustainability,
    • but is instead the foundation upon which the pillars of
      • people,
      • planet and
      • profit
    • must be constructed.
  • To succeed on the triple bottom line,
    • we must build a strong spiritual foundation.
  • To do that, we must look inwards.

• comment

  • We could express this succinctly in a new phrase:
    • The bottom line of the triple bottom line is spirituality

• for: quote, quote - dogma, quote - wonder, quote - spirituality, quote- Tom Greenwood
• quote
  • I think if we stripped away
    • the social stigma and
    • stereotypes,
  • we would find that most people have some personal beliefs about
    • life,
    • death and
    • the universe
  • that could be considered spiritual.
  • In fact, I would bet that
    • the number of people who never wonder about any of these things would be close to zero.
  • Spirituality then, is really the exploration of the other half of life
    • that our society isn’t comfortable exploring.
  • And that’s where it gets interesting.
• author: Tom Greenwood
• date: aug. 23, 2023

• for: quote, quote - dogma, quote - wonder, quote - spirituality, quote- Tom Greenwood
• quote
  • The problem is that in rejecting the dogma,
  • we too have created dogma.
  • A dogma that shuts down our natural human inclination to explore the mysteries of life,
    • of our own inner worlds and
    • of our deep connection to nature and each other.
• author: Tom Greenwood
• date: aug. 23, 2023

• for: comment, comment - emptiness, emptiness
• comment
  • in fact, there is a way to talk about these things in a philosophical way by using the concept of emptiness, commonly found in Eastern Religions
  • The interesting thing about the concept of emptiness is that even though there is a strong tradition of it in Eastern religions, it inherently defies all attempts to classify it under any of
  • these categories:
    • religion,
    • spirituality,
    • science,
    • philosophy or
    • language.
  • It is part of all of these, yet does not belong solely to any of them.
  • emptiness can be used as a tool and organizing principle to delve into the unnamable quality of life

• for: definition, definition - spirituality
• definition
• paraphrase
  • spirituality is simply
    • the process of exploring the mysteries of the self and the universe, and
    • believing that there is more to life than material survival,
    • even if we don’t know what.
    • If the material world is what we can observe with our five physical senses,
    • the spiritual world is everything else.
• author: Tom Greenwood

• date: Aug. 23, 2023

• comment

  • Tom'w working definition is similiar to neuroscientist David Eangleman's definition of possibilian and possibilianism
• reference
  • David Eagleman's Possibilian website:
    • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.possibilian.com%2F&group=world

• for: insight, insight - spirituality - business, quote, quote - spirituality and business
• adjacency
  • spirituality
  • business
  • comfortable
• quote
  • I have to admit that it feels uncomfortable even writing this. Somehow we need to get comfortable talking about spirituality.
• author: Tom Greenwood
• date: Aug 24, 2023
• source
  • https://tomgreenwood.substack.com/p/is-spirituality-the-missing-pillar?r=wsvz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

• for: quote, quote Satish Kumar, quote - spirituality
• quote
  • all good regenerative businesses are built on four pillars: ecological, social, spiritual and financial
• author: Satish Kumar

• for: human DOing, Deep Humanity, DH, quote, quote - DH, quote - Deep Humanity, quote - human DOing
• quote
  • I've been wondering if we are too focused on systems and actions
    • that we can do, rather than on ourselves as human beings and
    • what we can be.
• comment
  • this is aligned to the Deep Humanity notion of the difference between:
    • human DOing vs
    • human BEing

• new trailmark: - new trailmark
  • replace "for" with "adjacency"
• adjacency
  • between
    • sustainability
    • failure,
    • root causes
• source: reason why the author started asking the question:
  • what's missing in sustainability that makes it unachievable after decades of trying?

• for: definition, definition - triple bottom line, triple bottom line
• adjacency: definition, John Elkington, triple bottom line
• definition: triple bottom line
• author: John Elkington

• for: spirituality and science, spirituality and sustainability, spirituality - missing link, Isaac Newton
• title: Is spirituality the missing pillar of sustainability?
• author: Tom Greenwood
• date: Aug. 24, 2023

• for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • • for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • When I wrote my treatise about our system
  • I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity;
  • and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose..
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Principia, ed. Stephen Hawking (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002), 426–27.
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Original letter from Isaac Newton to Richard Bentley, 189.R.4.47, ff. 4A-5, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, UK; found on the Newton Project website: http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00254; spelling and punctuation modernized.

• for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • This Being governs all things,
    • not as the soul of the world,
    • but as Lord over all.
  • . . . The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect
  • . . . and from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a
    • living,
    • intelligent, and
    • powerful Being.
  • . . . He is not
    • eternity and
    • infinity, -but
    • eternal and
    • infinite;
  • he is not
    • duration or
    • space,
  • but he
    • endures and
    • is present.
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Principia, ed. Stephen Hawking (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002), 426–27.

• for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • Does it not appear from phenomena
  • that there is a Being
    • incorporeal,
    • living,
    • intelligent,
    • omnipresent,
  • who in infinite space
  • sees the things themselves intimately, and
  • thoroughly perceives them, and
  • comprehends them wholly.
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Opticks, 4th ed. (London: William Innys, 1730), 344; spelling and punctuation modernized.

• for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain?
  • And whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world?
  • Was the eye contrived without skill in optics?
  • And the ear without knowledge of sounds?
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Opticks, 4th ed. (London: William Innys, 1730), 344; spelling and punctuation modernized.

• for: spirituality and science, spirituality - science, science and religion, Isaac Newton - spirituality, Isaac Newton - religion
• title: A Brief Survey of Sir Isaac Newton's Views on Religion
• author: Steven E. Jones
• source:
  • https://rsc.byu.edu/converging-paths-truth/brief-survey-sir-isaac-newtons-views-religion
• comment
  • Newton was a serious theological scholar who was driven to use science to validate his conception of God
  • Newton's scientific work is therefore a testament to the union between the deepest, common aspiration and motivations for science and religion, that is universal wonder of being

• for: spirituality, defintion, definition - possibilian, defintion - possibilanism, possibliian, possibilianism, David Eagleman, philosophy, quote, quote - David Eagleman, quote - possibilian, quote - possibilianism
• definition
• paraphrase Possibilianism is a philosophy which rejects
  • both
    • the idiosyncratic claims of traditional theism and
    • the positions of certainty in atheism
  • in favor of a middle, exploratory ground.
  • The term was first defined by neuroscientist David Eagleman in relation to his book of fiction Sum.
  • Asked whether he was an atheist or a religious person on a National Public Radio interview in 2009, he replied
  • quote
    • I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now.
  • end quote
  • In an interview with the New York Times, he expanded upon this:
  • quote
    • Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet
    • we know too much to commit to a particular religion.
    • A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story
      • (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true.
    • But with Possibilianism I'm hoping to define a new position
      • one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities.
    • Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind;
    • it is not interested in committing to any particular story.
  • end quote

• for: fossil capitalism, progress trap, intersectionality, social norms, social norms - waste, externalization, capitalism

• title

  • Waves of Abandonment
    • The Permian Basin is ground zero for a billion-dollar surge of zombie oil wells

• summary

  • a story that illustrates the intersectionality of fossil capitalism
    • progress trap
    • exploitation
    • tragedy of the commons
    • fossil fuel industry
    • gold rush
    • externalization
    • fossil capitalism

• Comment

  • Yet another example of capitalism's tendency to externalize manifests at the most basic level.
  • The tendency to treat nature as an inexhaustable garbage dumping ground seems to be built into our culture's economic norms taught to us by most parents and society at large.
  • There are not enough parents that teach their children to love, respect and feel that they are an intrinsic part of nature.
  • The externalization our society teaches us in the form of destructive, widely-accepted social norms of waste such as::
    • having the concept of waste and garbage
    • garbage taken out once a week
    • waste bins everywhere
    • keep our backyard clean, but at the expense of trucking out our garbage to some unknown place
  • has been enculturated into us from early age

• for: polarization, political polarization, conflict, water, violence, trump
• Paraphrase
  • current example of polarization
    • The January 6th US insurrection on Capitol Hill
    • COVID-19 pandemic
    • climate change,
  • warn us of the dangers posed by unchecked polarization.

• for: climate change - belief, climate change - communication
• title: Climate change is hitting close to home for nearly 2 out of 3 Americans, poll finds
• source
• https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/climate-change-is-hitting-close-to-home-for-nearly-2-out-of-3-americans-poll-finds

• for: misinformation, disinformation, fake news, quote, quote - Greg Shatan, quote - misinformation, progress trap - misinformation, progress trap - digital technology, indyweb - support
• quote
  • The instinctual BS-meter is not enough.
  • The next version of the ‘BS-meter’ will need to be technologically based.
  • The tricks of misinformation have far outstripped the ability of people to reliably tell whether they are receiving BS or not
• author: Greg Shatan
  • lawyer, Moses & Singer LLP
    • not to mention that it requires a constant state of vigilance that’s exhausting to maintain.
  • I think that the ability and usefulness of the web to enable positive grassroots civic communication will be harnessed,
    • moving beyond mailing lists and fairly static one-way websites.

• for: gig economy, progress trap, unintended consequence, quote, quote - unintended consequence, quote - progress trap, quote James Mickens
• quote
  • the gig economy is enabled by technology;
  • technology finds buyers for workers and their services.
  • However, given the choice between
    • an economy with many gig workers and
    • an economy with an equivalent number of traditional middle-class jobs,
  • I think that most people would prefer the latter.
• author: James Mickens
  • associate professor of computer science, Harvard University

• for: progress trap, quote, quote - progress trap, unintended consequence, quotation - unintended consequence
• quote
  • Technology and social innovation intended to overcome the negatives of the digital age
    • will likely cause additional negative consequences. Examples include:
      • the decentralized web,
      • end-to-end encryption,
      • AI and machine learning,
      • social media.
• author: Larry Masinter -internet pioneer, formerly with Adobe, AT&T Labs and Xerox PARC, who helped create internet and web standards with IETF and W3C

• for: progress trap, unintended consequences, Indyweb - justifiication
• description
  • a great source of quotations by thought leaders on the unintended consequences of technology,
    • in other words, progress traps
• comment
  • also a lot of rich material to justify the Indyweb's design ethos

• for: quote, quote - David Bray, quote polycrisis, indyweb - support, People-centered Internet Coalition, polycrisis
• quote
  • I believe we are arriving at multiple simultaneous breaking points.
  • The most obvious is of course the climate crisis, but also consider the mounting levels of
    • inequality,
    • of pollution and of
    • despicable charlatanry exhibited by those in positions of power.
  • These simply cannot go on if we are to survive as a civilization.
  • Since civilization is resilient, the odds are that we develop tools to support a saner society and bring those tools to bear.
  • I’m not prescient enough to enumerate them, but it seems that the single most useful technology would be one that
    • clearly distinguishes
      • verifiable truth from
      • agitprop
    • in an unavoidable and unambiguous way.
  • This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for making progress on any of the key issues we face.
• author: David Bray
  • executive director, People-Centered Internet Coalition

• for: TPF, crowdsource solutions, climate crisis - commons, polycrisis - commons, quote, quote - crowdsourcing solutions, quote Miles Fidelman, Center for Civic Networking, Protocol Technologies Group, bottom-up, collective action
• quote
  • At best, we will see new forms of collaboration among large numbers of people toward beneficial ends.
  • The most obvious example is the changing nature of responses to largescale natural disasters.
  • Perhaps we will see this spirit of volunteer and entrepreneurial cooperation emerge to address such pressing issues as climate change
    • e.g., maybe, the Green New Deal will be crowdsourced.
• author: Miles Fidelman
  • founder, Center for Civic Networking
  • principal, Protocol Technologies Group

• for: futures, digital futures, online vs offline role reversal, inequality
• quote
• paraphrase
  • We are already seeing the emergence of
    • ‘tech-free’ camps and
    • ' tech-free' vacation packages
  • Experiencing life ‘offline’ will become a generational goal,
    • much like the Millennial generation introduced ride sharing and home sharing.
  • Ironically, it will be technology that enables this trend, and premiums will be paid for uninterrupted time to focus or to simply enjoy being alive.
  • This may also indicate a new kind of disparity between economic strata, with
    • the more-wealthy affording privacy, peace and quiet while
    • the lower strata remain fodder for 24/7 social media aggregators and botnets.
• author: Sam Adams
  • 24 year veteran of IBM
  • senior AI research scientist, RTI International

• for: progress trap, quote, quote - progress trap, quote Brian Southwell, Science in the Public Sphere Program, RTI International

• quote

  • We are likely to make some gains in personal health, are likely to face some collective concerns in terms of environmental health and
  • are not likely to cope with the alienation and despair that is a part of a life lived largely online.
  • In the latter case, there is a disconnect between the long period of evolution that honed our humanity and
  • the short period of rapid technology change we are facing.

• author: Brian Southwell

  • director, Science in the Public Sphere Program, RTI International

• for: quote, quote - Jason Hong, quote - health apps, health care app, idea spread through social network, mental health app, physical health app, transform app
• quote
• paraphrase
  • Health care is an area that will likely see many innovations. -There are already multiple research prototypes underway looking at monitoring of one’s
    • physical and
    • mental health.
  • Some of my colleagues (and myself as well) are also looking at
    • social behaviors, and how those behaviors
      • not only impact one’s health but also
      • how innovations spread through one’s social network.

• for: smart cities, doughnut cities, cosmolocal, downscaled planetary boundaries, cross-scale translation of earth system boundaries, TPF, community data, local data, open data, community data ownership, quote, quote - Garth Graham, quote - community owned data
• quote
• paraphrase
  • Innovation in the creation and sustainability of social institutions acts predominantly at the local level.
  • In the Internet of Things, for those capacities to emerge in smart cities, communities need the capacity to own and analyse the data created that models what they are experiencing.
  • Local data needs to be seen as a common, pool resource.
  • Where that occurs, communities will have the capacity to learn or innovate their way forward.
  • So far, smart city systems are being set up to appropriate and commercialize individual and community data.
  • So far, communities are not waking up to the realization that a capacity they need is being stolen from them before they have it.
• author: Garth Graham
  • leader of Telecommunities Canada

• for: quote, quote - Artur Serra, quote - labs, quote - innovation, quote - internet labs
• quote
  • Four billion people are now connected to the same infrastructure, the internet, that we the science and technology community put in place just decades ago.
  • This is creating the conditions for an explosion of open creativity and innovation never seen before.
  • A huge wave of labs of all kinds,
    • living labs,
    • fablabs,
    • social labs,
    • edulabs,
    • innovation spaces and
    • policy labs
    • citizen labs
  • is emerging as the new kind of groups and communities of the digital era.
  • We are moving from the net to the lab.
  • On the 2030 horizon, many of these labs will gather and agree in generating the first universal innovation ecosystems in regions and countries.
  • https://www.ecsite.eu/activities-and-services/news-and-publications/digital-spokes/issue-45
• author: Artur Serra
  • deputy director of I2CQT Foundation
  • research director, Citilab, Catalonia, Spain

• for: quote, quote - Alejandro Pisanty, quote -human conduct vs tech, Alejandro Pisanty
• quote
  • We are wasting valuable time for humankind when we focus on
    • technology and platforms,
    • or even in privacy and control over data,
  • and not on conduct
  • A whole chain of conduct
    • from the active subject of a possible manipulation
    • to the harms suffered by others and society
  • occur as a consequence of manipulation and other abuses.
  • It’s not that tech is not important; it is that we overlook what goes on around it.”
• author: Alejandro Pisanty
  • professor at the National University of Mexico

• for: quote, quote - Douglas Rushkoff, quote - bottom-up, bottom-up action
• quote
  • The primary means of social and civic innovation will occur as people go offline and reconnect with their local communities.
  • So, I don’t see so much positive change occurring from the top down,
    • through policies and
    • regulation
  • even though it would be nice to try.
  • I do think government and corporations can be pressured to respond to widespread,
    • bottom-up social activism and
    • changes in citizen and consumer behavior.
• author: Douglas Rushkoff
  • media theorist
  • author
  • professor of media, City University of New York

• for: quote, quote - Prateek Raj, quote - internet regulation, quote - reducing misinformation, fake news, indyweb - support
• quote
  • We lived in a relatively unregulated digital world until now.
  • It was great until the public realized that a few companies wield too much power today in our lives.
  • We will see significant changes in areas like
    • privacy,
    • data protection,
    • algorithm and
    • architecture design guidelines, and
    • platform accountability, etc.
  • which should reduce the pervasiveness of
    • misinformation,
    • hate and visceral content
  • over the internet.
  • These steps will also reduce the power wielded by digital giants.
  • Beyond these immediate effects, it is difficult to say if these social innovations will create a more participative and healthy society.
  • These broader effects are driven by deeper underlying factors, like
    • history,
    • diversity,
    • cohesiveness and
    • social capital, and also
    • political climate and
    • institutions.
  • In other words,
    • just as digital world is shaping the physical world,
    • physical world shapes our digital world as well.
• author: Prateek Raj
  • assistant professor in strategy, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore

• for: quote, quote - Lee McKnight, quote - corporate social responsibility
• quote
  • Thomas Jefferson’s aphorism ‘Do well by doing good’ is timely and trendy in a way it hasn’t been for centuries.
  • Because that ethos for technology entrepreneurs is increasingly recognized as the only way many people will expect firms offering technology innovations to approach them:
    • humbly and
    • with a broader social mission and
    • accounting not just as a corporate social responsibility afterthought, but -as a core value of the products and companies themselves
• author: Lee McKnight
  • associate professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies

• for: quote, quote - Warren Yoder, quote platform monopolies, internet - regulation, indyweb - support

• quote

  • Much social and civic innovation is possible if the GAAF platform monopolies (Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook) are broken up or regulated appropriately.
  • I believe that will happen, and I hope it will happen in appropriate ways.
  • Done right, it will release a torrent of innovation, including social and civic changes.
  • I trust that the general level of competence is growing among digital citizens.
  • So, I am modestly hopeful we can sort out the helpful from the harmful changes for a net positive gain.

• author: Warren Yoder

  • Director of Public Policy Center of Mississipi

• for: quote, quote - Byron Reese, quote - digital communities, quote - online communities, indyweb - support
• quote
  • Our first attempts at building community online have had both good and bad outcomes.
  • We know them all. But would we have expected otherwise?
  • We are new at digital communities and are inventing them as we move forward.
  • Of course we aren’t going to get it right the first time. But the key question is whether these technologies help us form social bonds or not.
  • Anyone who has posted a question in a forum and received an answer from a stranger knows firsthand that they bring us together.
• author: Byron Reese
  • futurist
  • author of "The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers and the Future of Humanity"

• for: quote, quote - Sam Adams, quote - social media
• quote, indyweb - support, people-centered
  • I do expect new social platforms to emerge that focus on privacy and ‘fake-free’ information, or at least they will claim to be so.
  • Proving that to a jaded public will be a challenge.
  • Resisting the temptation to exploit all that data will be extremely hard.
  • And how to pay for it all?
  • If it is subscriber-paid, then only the wealthy will be able to afford it.
• author: Sam Adams
  • 24 year IBM veteran -senior research scientist in AI at RTI International working on national scale knowledge graphs for global good
• comment
  • his comment about exploiting all that data is based on an assumption
    • a centralized, server data model
• this doesn't hold true with a people-centered, person-owned data network such as Inyweb

• for: quote, quote - Janet Salmons, quote - online communities, quote - social media, indyweb - support
• paraphrase
  • Will members-only, perhaps subscription-based ‘online communities’ reemerge instead of
  • ‘post and we’ll sell your data’ forms of social media?
  • I hope so, but at this point a giant investment would be needed to counter the mega-billions of companies like Facebook!

• for: quote, quote - Janet Salmons, quote - human cooperative brain networks, indyweb - support
• quote
  • Extreme bad behaviour from governments and private companies – GAFAs [Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon] and the like in China – will create a social and civic innovation to compensate and/or to contribute to an innovation jump. I hope for development of human cooperative brain networks.
• author: Caroline Figueres
  • strategic consultant

• for: quote, quote - Stowe Boyd, quote - progress trap, quote - unintended consequences, unintended consequences, progress trap, cultural evolution, technology - futures, futures - technology, progress trap
• quote:
  • Technological change is an accelerant and acts on the social ills like pouring gasoline on a fire
• author: Sowe Boyd
  • consulting futurist on technological evolution and the future of work
• paraphrase
  • In an uncontrolled hyper-capitalist society,
    • the explosion in technologies over the past 30 years has only
      • widened inequality,
      • concentrated wealth and
      • led to greater social division.
    • And it is speeding up with the rise of artificial intelligence,
      • which like globalization has destabilized Western industrial economies while admittedly pulling hundreds of millions elsewhere out of poverty.
  • And the boiling exhaust of this set of forces is pushing the planet into a climate catastrophe. -The world is as unready for hundreds of millions of climate refugees as it was for the plague.
  • However, some variant of social media will likely form the context for the rise of a global movement to stop the madness
    • which I call the Human Spring
  • which will be more like
    • Occupy or
    • the Yellow Vests
  • than traditional politics.
  • I anticipate a grassroots movement
    • characterized by
      • general strikes,
      • political action,
      • protest and
      • widespread disruption of the economy
    • that will confront the economic and political system of the West.
  • Lead by the young, ultimately this will lead to large-scale political reforms, such as
    • universal health care,
    • direct democracy,
    • a new set of rights for individuals and
    • a large set of checks on the power of
      • corporations and
      • political parties.
  • For example,
    • eliminating corporate contributions to political campaigns,
    • countering monopolies and
    • effectively accounting for economic externalities, like carbon.

-for: quote, quote - Jennifer Jarratt, quote - progress trap, progress trap, unintended consequences, technology - unintended consequences, quote - unintended consequences, cultural evolution, technology - futures, futures - technology, progress trap - quote: with new technologies come new crimes and criminals – opportunities for all! - author: Jennifer Jarratt - co-principal of Leading Futurists LLC

• for: democracy - by device, quote, quote - Barry Chudakov, quote - democracy by device
• quote
  • We are in the midst of a remarkable social and civic experiment, democracy by device
• author: Barry Chudakov

• for: quote, quote - Robert Epstein, quote - search engine bias,quote - future of democracy, quote - tilting elections, quote - progress trap, progress trap, cultural evolution, technology - futures, futures - technology, progress trap, indyweb - support, future - education
• quote
  • The big tech companies, left to their own devices , have already had a net negative effect on societies worldwide.
  • At the moment, the three big threats these companies pose
    • aggressive surveillance,
    • arbitrary suppression of content,
      • the censorship problem, and
    • the subtle manipulation of
      • thoughts,
      • behaviors,
      • votes,
      • purchases,
      • attitudes and
      • beliefs
    • are unchecked worldwide
• author: Robert Epstein
  • senior research psychologist at American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology
• paraphrase
  • Epstein's organization is building two technologies that assist in combating these problems:
    • passively monitor what big tech companies are showing people online,
    • smart algorithms that will ultimately be able to identify online manipulations in realtime:
      • biased search results,
      • biased search suggestions,
      • biased newsfeeds,
      • platform-generated targeted messages,
      • platform-engineered virality,
      • shadow-banning,
      • email suppression, etc.
  • Tech evolves too quickly to be managed by laws and regulations,
    • but monitoring systems are tech, and they can and will be used to curtail the destructive and dangerous powers of companies like Google and Facebook on an ongoing basis.
• reference
  • seminar paper on monitoring systems, ‘Taming Big Tech -: https://is.gd/K4caTW.

• for: progress traps, progress, unintended consequences, technology - unintended consequences, unintended consequences - technology, unintended consequences - digital technology, progress trap - quotations, quote, quote - progress trap
• title: Experts Predict More Digital Innovation by 2030 Aimed at Enhancing Democracy
• authors: emily A Vogels, Lee Rainie, Janna Anderson
• year: June 30, 2020
• description: a good source of quotations on progress traps / unintended consequences of digital technology from this Pew Research 2020 report on the future of the digital technology and democracy.
  • the Pew Research Center interviewed a lot of experts in the field
  • in particular, section 5 of the report entitled
    • "Tech causes more problems than it can solve" is quite salient for the topic of progress traps
  • The Indyweb actually addresses many of these problems:
    • https://opencollective.com/open-learning-commons/projects/indy-learning-commons

• for: quote, quote - Barry Chudakov, quote - progress trap, progress trap, cultural evolution, technology - futures, futures - technology, progress trap, indyweb - support, future - education
• quote
• paraphrase
  • Technology’s greatest contribution to social and civic innovation in the next decade
  • will be to provide
    • accurate, user-friendly context and
    • honest assessment of
      • issues,
      • problems and
      • potential solutions / comment - indyweb /
  • We are facing greater accelerations of
    • climate change,
    • social mobility,
    • pollution,
    • immigration and
    • resource issues.
  • Our problems have gone from complicated to wicked.
  • We need
    • clear answers and
    • discussions that are
      • cogent,
      • relevant and
      • true to facts.
  • Technology must guard against becoming a platform to enable targeted chaos,
  • that is, using technology as a means to
    • obfuscate and
    • manipulate.
  • We are all now living in Sim City:
  • The digital world is showing us a sim,
    • or digital mirror,
  • of each aspect of reality.
  • The most successful social and civic innovation I expect to see by 2030
  • is a massive restructuring of our educational systems based on new and emerging mirror digital worlds. / comment: This bodes well for Indyweb for education/
  • We will then need to expand our information presentations to include
    • verifiable factfulness that ensures any digital presentation faithfully and
    • accurately matches the physical realities.
  • Just as medicine went from
    • bloodletting and leeches and lobotomies to
    • open-heart surgery and artificial limbs,
  • technology will begin to modernize information flows around core issues: urgent need, future implications, accurate assessment.
  • Technology can play a crucial role to move humanity
    • from blame fantasies
    • to focused attention and working solutions.”

• for: corporate power, technology - capitalism, capitalism - exploitation, Danah Boyd, progress trap
• paraphrase
• quote
  • technology in the U.S. is caught up in American late-stage (or financialized) capitalism
    • where profitability isn’t the goal;
    • perpetual return on investment is.
  • Given this, the tools that we’re seeing developed by corporations
  • reinforce capitalist agendas.
  • Innovation will require pushing past this capitalist infrastructure to achieve the social benefits and civic innovation that will work in the United States.
  • China is a whole other ball of wax.
  • If you want to go there, follow up with me. But pay attention to Taobao centers.
  • We haven’t hit peak awful yet.
  • I have every confidence that social and civic innovation can be beneficial in the long run
    • with a caveat that I think that climate change dynamics might ruin all of that
  • but no matter what, I don’t think we’re going to see significant positive change by 2030.
  • I think things are going to get much worse before they start to get better.
  • I should also note that I don’t think that many players have taken responsibility for what’s unfolding. -Yes, tech companies are starting to see that things might be a problem,
    • but that’s only on the surface. -News media does not at all acknowledge its role in amplifying discord,
    • or its financialized dynamics.
  • The major financiers of this economy don’t take any responsibility for what’s unfolding. Etc.
• author: Dana Boyd
  • principal researcher, Microsoft Research
  • founder, Data & Society

• for: progress trap, unintended consequence, unintended consequence - digital technology, quote, quote - progress trap, quote - Doc Searls
• quote
  • What won’t change is people’s tendency toward gossip,
    • tribalism driven by gossip and the ability of anybody to inform anybody else about anything,
      • including wrongly.
  • The only places where news won’t skew fake will be localities in the natural world.
  • That’s where the digital and the physical connect best.
  • Also expect the internet to break into pieces, with
    • the U.S.,
    • Europe and
    • China
  • becoming increasingly isolated by different value systems and governance approaches toward
    • networks and
    • what runs on them.

• for: progress trap, unintended consequence, unintended consequence - digital technology, quote, quote - progress trap, quote - David Weinberger
• quote: I see no reason to think that the current situation will change:
  • Tech will cause problems that require innovative solutions and
  • tech will be part of those solutions.
  • Machine learning (ML) is right now an example of this
• author: David Weinberger
  • senior researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society

• for: progress trap, unintended consequence, unintended consequence - digital technology, quote, quote - progress trap, quote - Jonathan Grudin
• quote: Can our fundamental human need for close community be restored or
  • will we become more isolated, anxious and susceptible to manipulation?
• author: Jonathan Grudin
  • principal researcher, Microsoft

• for: quote, quote - Esther Dyson, quote - progress trap, quote - progress traps, progress trap,
• quote: "If tech doesn’t contribute to solving some of the problems it creates, we are doomed"
• author: Esther Dyson
  • internet pioneer
  • journalist
  • entrepreneur
  • executive founder of Way to Wellville

• for: quote, quote - Ethan Zuckerman, quote - fragmentation and polarization, Indyweb - support, MIT Center for Civic Media, Global Voices
• quote
  • We need mass innovation in design of social tools that help us
    • bridge fragmentation and polarization,
    • bring diversity into our media landscapes and
    • help find common ground between disparate groups.
  • With these as conscious design goals,
    • technology could be a powerful positive force for civic change.
  • If we don’t take this challenge seriously and assume that we’re stuck with mass-market tools,
    • we won’t see positive civic outcomes from technological tools.”
• author
  • Ethan Zuckerman
    • director of MIT’s Center for Civic Media and
    • co-founder of Global Voices

• for: titling elections, voting - social media, voting - search engine bias, SEME, search engine manipulation effect, Robert Epstein
• summary
  • research that shows how search engines can actually bias towards a political candidate in an election and tilt the election in favor of a particular party.

• for: search engine manipulation effect, SEME, voting, voting - bias, voting - manipulation, voting - search engine bias, democracy - search engine bias, quote, quote - Robert Epstein, quote - search engine bias, stats, stats - tilting elections
• paraphrase
• quote
  • In our early experiments, reported by The Washington Post in March 2013,
    • http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/could-google-tilt-a-close-election/2013/03/29/c8d7f4e6-9587-11e2-b6f0-a5150a247b6a_story.html?ref=hackernoon.com
  • we discovered that Google’s search engine had the power to shift the percentage of undecided voters supporting a political candidate by a substantial margin without anyone knowing.
  • 2015 PNAS research on SEME
    • http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/E4512.full.pdf?with-ds=yes&ref=hackernoon.com
    • stats begin
    • search results favoring one candidate
    • could easily shift the opinions and voting preferences of real voters in real elections by up to 80 percent in some demographic groups
    • with virtually no one knowing they had been manipulated.
    • stats end
    • Worse still, the few people who had noticed that we were showing them biased search results
    • generally shifted even farther in the direction of the bias,
    • so being able to spot favoritism in search results is no protection against it.
    • stats begin
    • Google’s search engine 
      • with or without any deliberate planning by Google employees 
    • was currently determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent of the world’s national elections.
    • This is because Google’s search engine lacks an equal-time rule,
      • so it virtually always favors one candidate over another, and that in turn shifts the preferences of undecided voters.
    • Because many elections are very close, shifting the preferences of undecided voters can easily tip the outcome.
    • stats end

• for: big tech - bias, big tech - manipulation, big tech - mind control, big tech - influence
• paraphrase
  • Early in 2013, Ronald Robertson,
    • now a doctoral candidate at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University in Boston,
  • and I discovered that Google isn’t just spying on us;
    • it also has the power to exert an enormous impact on our opinions, purchases and votes.

• for: Hiliary Clinton could have won, voting, democracy, voting - social media, democracy - social media, election - social media, facebook - election, 2016 US elections, 2016 Trump election, 2016 US election, 2016 US election - different results, 2016 election - social media
• interesting fact
  • If Facebook had sent a "Go out and vote" message on election day of 2016 election, Clinton may have had a boost of 450,000 additional votes
    • and the outcome of the election might have been different

• for: search engine bias, google privacy, orwellian, privacy protection, mind control, google bias
• title: Taming Big Tech: The Case for Monitoring
• date: May 14th 2018

• author: Robert Epstein

• quote

• paraphrase:
  • types of search engine bias
    • the Search Suggestion Effect (SSE),
    • the Answer Bot Effect (ABE),
    • the Targeted Messaging Effect (TME), and
    • the Opinion Matching Effect (OME), among others. -
  • Effects like these might now be impacting the
    • opinions,
    • beliefs,
    • attitudes,
    • decisions,
    • purchases and
    • voting preferences
  • of more than two billion people every day.

• for: progress, progress trap, exponential growth - knowledge, exponential growth - technology, technology - exponential growth, US patents, patents, intellectual property -description: GIF graph of US patents from the start in 1825 to 2021

• for: transition, transition - energy, progress, progress traps
• title: The Energy Transition Is a Technological Revolution — with a Deadline
• subtitle: What historical transitions — from water wheels to semiconductors — can teach us about today’s energy transition.
• authors
  • Yuki Numata
  • Laurens Speelman
• date: Aug 10, 2023
• source: https://rmi.org/the-energy-transition-is-a-technological-revolution-with-a-deadline/

• for: superorganism, biomolecular archeology,

• for: biomolecular archeology, tuberculosis
• paraphrase
  • biomolecular archeology can assist in solving the puzzle of tuberculosis

• for: stats, stats - microbiome, human microbiome, stats - human microbiome
• stats
• paraphrase
  • One hundred trillion cells is the approximate number of microorganisms in your body,
  • that's ten times greater than the number of your own cells.
  • The micrbiome is about 2% of our body weight
  • That's about one and a half kilograms

• for: progress trap, cumulative cultural evolution, gene-culture co-evolution, speed of cultural evolution, human genome project
• paraphrase
  • the human genome project took 10 years and cost 3 billion dollars
  • with NGS technology, 10 years later, the same job takes 1 day and costs $15,000 dollars

• for: umwelt, symbiocene, perspectival knowing
• comment
  • the experience of reality of other living beings

• for: inequality, Anthropocene, climate justice
• title: Why this viral photo of the world’s largest cruise ship is polarizing opinion
• source
  • https://edition.cnn.com/travel/viral-icon-of-the-seas-cruise-ship-photo/index.html
• comment
  • economic AND carbon inequality on display

• for: life expectancy - ancestors - example
• example
• paraphrase
  • The "Old Man of La Chapelle", is the name given to the remains of a Neanderthal who lived 56,000 years ago,
    • found buried in the limestone bedrock of a small cave near La Chapelle-aux-Saints, in France in 1908.
  • He was found to have had arthritis, bone regrowth along the gums where he lost several teeth.

• for: human life expectancy, life expectancy, life expectancy myth, life expectancy at birth, life expectancy - ancestors
• title: The life expectancy myth, and why many ancient humans lived long healthy lives
• comment
• new insight
  • life expectancy at birth skews our understanding of how the health and longevity of adults. -There is a false claim and belief that due to modern technologies, modern humans have lived far longer than our ancestors in the distant past.
  • In fact, child mortality rates play a major role in calculating life expectancy and this is what differs modernity from our ancestors.
  • Our distant ancestors did live to their 70s and 80s

• for: life expectancy, human life expectancy, life expectancy - myth, life expectancy - ancestors
• paraphrase
  • It is not uncommon to hear talk about how lucky we are to live in this age of scientific and medical advancement
    • where antibiotics and vaccinations keep us living longer, while our poor ancient ancestors were lucky to live past the age of 35.
  • This is not quite true:
    • at best, it oversimplifies a complex issue, and
    • at worst it is a blatant misrepresentation of statistics.
• key question
  • What happened?
    • Did ancient humans really just drop dead as they were entering their prime, or
    • Did some live long enough to see a wrinkle on their face?

• for: life expectancy, human life expectancy, life expectancy - myth, life expectancy at birth, life expectancy - ancestors
• paraphrase
• definition
  • What is commonly known as ‘average life expectancy’ is technically ‘life expectancy at birth’.
  • In other words, it is the average number of years that a newborn baby can expect to live in a given society at a given time.
  • But life expectancy at birth is an unhelpful statistic if the goal is to compare the health and longevity of adults.
  • That is because a major determinant of life expectancy at birth is the child mortality rate
    • which, in our ancient past, was extremely high, and this skews the life expectancy rate dramatically downward.

• for: life expectancy - ancestors
• key insight
• paraphrase
  • in our early ancestors, the early years from infancy through to about 15 was perilous,
    • due to risks posed by disease, injuries, and accidents.
  • But those who survived this hazardous period of life could well make it into old age.

• for: intentional communities, intentional communities - failure, cults
• comment
  • This article does not seem to be aware of the controversy at Damanhur:
    • https://rightsforrainbows.medium.com/a-call-for-a-new-spiritual-paradigm-in-the-face-of-spiritual-abuse-and-authority-490b912584d8

• for: intentional communities - funding
• comment
  • the fact that many intentional communities court wealthy benefactors means that they are not really autonomous or resilient but instead, parasitic on the very society they are trying to escape
  • and depending on 60% of your funding coming from workshops or spiritual tourism implies it isn't that resilient if eco-disaster were to strike.

• for: intentional communities, intentional communities - failures
• comment
  • modern, industrialized society is still a massively interdependent system
  • what many who start intentional communities don't realize is this refined interdependency give us a lot of time savings
  • we find that out when we live in an intentional community and have to make everything ourselves

• for: intentional communities - case study - New Harmony
• paraphrase
  • New Harmony
  • Year: 1825
  • Location: Indiana
  • Size: 20,000 acres
  • Members: 800 in first 6 weeks
  • ideals
    • environment
    • education
    • abolish private property
  • problems
    • low percentage of hard skills
      • 140 of 800 had skills contributing to local industry,
      • 36 were skilled farmers
    • indiscriminate and allowed too many without skills to join
    • intentional communities are often the most attractive for a dangerous constellation of actors
      • dreamers,
      • drifters,
      • seekers in need of belonging,
      • the needy and wounded,
      • the egomaniacal and power-thirsty
      • free riders, lazy and without skills
    • founder was absent a large percentage of the time

• for: intentional communities, intentional communities - failure
• paraphrase
  • reasons for failure:sound more like the challenges afflicting any organisation today:
    • capital constraints,
    • burn-out,
    • conflict over private property
    • conflict over resource management,
    • poor systems of conflict mediation,
    • factionalism,
    • founder problems,
    • reputation management,
    • skills shortage,
    • failure to attract new talent
    • failure to entice subsequent generations.

• for: intentional communities,
• irony
• paraphrase
  • the irony is that many of the administrative and managerial forces that individuals are running away from within mainstream society
    • are exactly the organisational tools that would make intentional communities more resilient

• for: stats, intentional community, intentional communities, - stats - intentional communities
  • intentional communities fail at a rate slightly higher than most startups
  • startup failure rate is around 90%
  • longevity of Fortune 500 companies listed in 1955 to 2017
    • failure rate of 88%
  • S&P companies average lifespan: 15 years

• for: stats, intentional community, intentional communities, stats - intentional communities
  • intentional communities fail at a rate slightly higher than most startups

• for: intentional community, intentional communities, eco-community, ecocommunity
• title
  • Utopia Inc Most utopian communities are, like most start-ups, short-lived. What makes the difference between failure and success?

• for: ecocommunity, eco-community, intentional community, Dieter Duhm, Tamera, psychoanalyst -noteworthy
  • Tamera ecocommunity was founded by psychoanalyst Dieter Duhm

• for: energy storage, battery storage, pumped hydro, PSH
• description
  • Recent studies indicate that pumped hydro can play a significant role in energy storage for a 100% renewable energy system

• for: pumped hydro storage capacity, pumped hydro, PSH
• paraphrase
  • According to the International Hydropower Association, or IHA,
    • a facility with:
      • two reservoirs roughly the size of two Olympic swimming pools,
      • a 500-metre height difference between them,
    • would have
      • an energy capacity of about three and a half megawatt hours and
      • they last for decades,

• for: pumped storage hydro, pumped hydro, pumped storage, PSH, ANU study, ANU PSH
• stats
  • 23 million gigawatt-hours of global PSH
  • sites in the study were
    • geographically and topographically feasible
    • non-urban areas
    • environmentally protected areas
  • this is 100x more than is needed for a global 100% renewable energy storage system
  • so even if only 1% of sites were useful, that is enough to provide all we need for global 100% renewable energy storage

• for: storage requirements per million, grid storage
• stats
  • storage requirements for one hundred percent renewables is about
    • one gigawatt for every million people
    • twenty hours of energy storage per person
    • 20 gigawatts including buffer for every million people
    • 500 gigawatts for Australia, with storage potential 300x that figure

• for: NREL, PSH, grid storage, grid storage - alternative, grid storage - pumped hydro, pumped hydro, renewable energy - storage, pumped storage hydro,
• the new NREL study shows the potential for pumped storage to provide for all the grid storage needs

• for: climate change - evolutionary causes, cultural evolution - unsustainability, unsustainability
• definition: Anthroecological theory (AET)
  • This theory proposes that the ultimate cause of anthropogenic environmental change is multi-level selection for niche construction and ecosystem engineering

• for: history - hyperlink, history - Vannevar Bush, history - Ted Nelson, history - Doug Engelbart

• for: Ted Nelson, Xanadu, knowledge federation

• for: memex, Vannevar Bush, Indyweb, Ted Nelson

• for: zoning, city council, re-zoning, low carbon city, walkable city

• for: project drawdown - walkable city, walkable city

• for: beautiful cities - qualities, comparison - American vs European cities
• paraphrase
  • qualities of a beautiful city
    • orderly, but not homogenous
    • they have visible life
    • they are compact, not sprawling
    • have both orientation and mystery
    • appealing scale with ideal height of 5 stories

• for: adjacency - urban decay, suburbs, history- suburbs, history - car culture, urban decay - economics

• paraphrase

  • as the suburbs expanded they need more and more roads highways Bridges infrastructure to stay afloat
  • but because the nature of the suburb is spread out single-family housing as opposed to the densely packed City Apartment dwelling the suburbs have too few people to be able to fund this infrastructure
  • subsequently, they so they have to keep expanding in order to fund themselves and even then they still can't fund themselves
  • so they often rely on tax dollars from City dwellers to subsidize their Suburban excesses
  • who lives in the cities because of white flight ?... people of color

  • when it comes to housing, people of color have been screwed over in literally every way in imaginable

  • so we have this self-perpetuating cycle

    • the growth of suburbs leads to more suburban sprawl
    • this increases the need for cars
    • this leads to the building of more highways and Roads
    • this leads to not enough income to pay for the suburbs
    • this leads to black and brown communities being forced to subsidize Suburban Lifestyles at the expense of the beautification of their own communities leading to the degradation of inner city neighborhoods

• for: history - suburbs, history - car culture
• etymology
  • jaywalking
    • invented by the auto industry to discourage waling in the suburbs. A "Jay" was a derogatory term in the 1800s that meant "worthless"

• for: history - suburbs, history - car culture
• paraphrase
  • With so many people living in the suburbs, there was a new transportation problem as these people had to travel to the city centers to work.
  • High speed rail and mass transit lost out over big oil and the auto industry lobby, and this loss resulted in an auto-centric design that shaped not only the American landscape, but the entire world
  • The 1956 federal aid highway act created a national highway system, but also provided positive feedback to increase suburban development
  • highway construction disproportionately affected minority communities

• for: history - suburbs, GI Bill, racial discrimination, structural racism, institutional racism, racial discrimination
• paraphrase
  • The GI Bill institutionally and structurally discriminated against people of color and played a major role in how suburbs expansion was racially discriminatory against people of color

• for: town planning, zoning, uglification, history - car culture, big oil - lobby, history - suburbs

• for: polycrisis, Trumpism, Chaos, distraction, climate crisis, climate communication, complexity, adjacency climate change fossil fuel industry, adjacency climate change big oil, adjacency climate change politics big oil, quote adjacency climate change fossil fuel industry, quote adjacency climate change big oil
• key insight
  • claim
    • One big reason that big oil is funding GOP to keep the chaotic Trump story as the main headline is to foster distraction from climate change impacts
    • big news story in the US is Donald Trump and the election, climate change impacts of extreme weather is minimized
    • the distraction of politics from a chaotic GOP is perfect distraction for the masses to ignore climate change and for big oil to continue BAU
• paraphrase
• quote
  • when you take a step back and look at that part of the distraction and the chaos that Trump and these GOP trolls deliver
  • it's it's a wonderful Boon for the oil and gas industry and the Koch brothers and the guys that fund these campaigns and the federal Federalist Society that's owning the Supreme Court
  • they want to keep doing business as usual and the easiest way to do that is
    • to have this big chaotic GOP that ignores climate change and
    • to play into what they want
      • the mainstream media not focusing more on climate change let alone making those two connections
    • a lot of mainstream media is scared to make that connection because oil companies are paying the bills of CNN and every other network
• author
  • Noel Casler

• for: rapid whole system change, TPF

• for: cosmolocal, quote, quote - cosmolocal
• paraphrase
  • acting locally with knowledge is how we bring about systemic change

• for: open source, indyweb, open learning commons, radical collaboration, individual / collective entanglement
• paraphrase
• quote
  • to live for the common good is a very good purpose but
  • purpose is a gift and the purpose of our life here on Earth is to change the environment which we met for something better because there is always an opportunity for something better
• author
  • Obiora Ike
• quote
  • I would urge us all to be in a learning mode and
  • we when we know things to be in a teaching mode also
  • that is propagating what we know
  • sharing it with others and
  • making this knowledge open source for the world and
  • especially to help train a young generation of new leaders who are going to be the ones that grapple with these problems
• author
  • Jeffrey Sachs

• for: extinction, hope, futures, radical collaboration, indyweb, TPF, SRG
• quote
  • people from all different aspects
    • all different kinds of business people
    • in governments
    • not just the finance people
    • but the environmental section and so on
  • they need to get together and discuss
    • calmly and
    • productively
  • what we can do to creating a new mindset
  • and we can only work out a future economy if people come in from these different sectors and
  • talk together
    • not in a controversial way but
    • in a way of we must find a solution
  • because humanity is not exempt from extinction
• author
  • Jane Goodall

• for: individual / collective entanglement, ubuntu M2W, human interbeing, quote, quote - John Mbiti, quote - human interbeing
• paraphrase
  • professor John Mbiti will always say "I am because we are since we are therefore I am:
• so my being is not just my being alone and being the richest in the world and owning everybody
  • my property has no meaning my wealth has no meaning
    • if it's not of service to the community
  • so if you come to my Village and many other villages in the African continent and someone says is a wealthy person but is not bringing his wealth to
    • Advanced education
    • Advanced roads and infrastructure
    • train people
    • support agriculture
  • people don't care he's not respected
  • but once you bring your wealth and no matter how poor you are that you are contributing to the society
  • you are considered great so these are the values we think we can start discussing in the International Community

• for: W2W, TPF, stats, inequality, wealth redistribution, wealth tax, quote, quote - wealth tax, quote - inequality, stats, stats - inequality, stats - wealth tax
• quote
• stats
  • An annual wealth tax of just 5% on multi-millionaires and billionaires
  • could raise US $1.7 trillion a year
  • enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty
• author Institute for Policy (2023)
• comment
  • that breaks down to approximately $US 1,000 per person for 2 billion people from the 1% elites
  • this is pretty reasonable
  • W2W can begin with this simple VOLUNTARY ASK
  • if the multi-millionaires and billionaires do just this consistently, then it is so little from their coffers and they could avoid a wealth tax by simply stepping up voluntarily
  • Could W2W motivate them to?

• for: indyweb, silos, emptiness - example, entanglement - example, progress trap
• paraphrase
• quote
  • all the problems I've mentioned are being tackled by groups of people
  • sad thing is those people are often operating in silos just concerned to solve their particular problem
    • not realizing that if they don't have the whole picture they may solve their problem
    • and cause problems in other places
• author
  • Jane Goodall
• comment
  • the Indyweb and SRG strategy is designed specifically to mitigate progress traps through radical collaboration built into the communication and information system itself.

• for: TPF, cosmolocal, community as building block, city as building block, W2W, quote, quote - Brian Wong, citizen assemblies, bottom-up strategy
• paraphrase
• quote
  • the victims that suffer under over consumption over depletion and environmental degradation don't really have a say
  • so we want a fair World
  • At Large we need to start with Fair countries
    • and with Fair countries the prerequisite is
    • fair cities
  • what's needed here too is direct mechanisms by which
    • the people can have their voices heard
    • can hold Elites accountable and
    • fundamentally have an opportunity to partake in the designing of
      • the rules of the institutions and
      • of the outlying sort of overarching structures of their cities and therefore
    • we move from cities to countries and
    • from countries to the World At Large

• for: extinction, climate departure, Jane Goodall, quote, tapestry, thread,
• quote
  • we humans depend on the natural world
  • but what we depend on is healthy ecosystems that are made up of a complex mix of plants and animal species
  • each one has a role to play and I see it as like a beautiful living tapestry and as an animal or plant species disappears from that ecosystem it's like pulling out a thread
  • and if enough threads are pulled then the tapestry will hang in tatters and the ecosystem will disappear
• author
  • Jane Goodall

• for: quote, quote - W2W, quote - inequality, quote - jane goodall
• quote
  • there's the unsustainable lifestyle of so many of us
  • and I include myself
  • I have far more than I need and
  • some people take this to excess and they have way way way more than they could ever possibly need and
  • this is something that somehow we have to change
• comment
  • this supports the need for the W2W program

• for: inequality, poverty, W2W, Jane Goodall, socio-ecological system, climate justice, emptiness - example, entanglement - inequality and climate crisis
• key insight
  • if you're very poor and you're living in some kind of Wilderness Area
    • you're going to destroy the environment in order to survive
    • example: Gumby Street National Park
      • in 1960 it was part of the Great Forest
      • but by the late 1980s was a tiny Islander forest and all the hills around were bare
      • more people living there than the land could support
      • too poor to buy food elsewhere
        • struggling to survive
        • cutting down the trees to make money from charcoal or Timber
        • or to make more land grow more food and
      • that's when it hit me
        • if we don't help these people these local communities find ways of living without destroying the environment
        • we can't save chimpanzees forests or anything else so we need to alleviate poverty
• comment
  • This is why the inequality crisis is entangled with the climate crisis

• for: science-based societal transformation, whole system change, overnight change, 50 year project, radical change
• paraphrase
  • this is not an overnight project
  • radical change would be dangerous
• comment
  • the word "radical" is subjective here
  • how does John view the latest earth system science about the need to reach zero emissions in less than a decade and likely 6 years in order to stay within 1.5 Deg C carbon budget?
    • is that considered radical change or not?

• for: evolutionary design, organisms - problem solving
• key insight
  • organisms as evolution's way of solving a specific problem
  • hence, organisms are by their very nature, solvers of specific evolutionary problems of how to best adapt to an environment, and that includes our own human species

• for: polycrisis, adapt or die, evolutionary pressure, maladaptive
• paraphrase
  • the fact that we could be in the early stages of extinction is evidence that there is something deeply dysfunctional about the systems we have designed
• comment
  • from evolutionary biology perspective, also could argue that
    • we have become maladaptive due to the huge mismatch between
      • rate of genetic biological evolution and
      • rate of human cultural evolution
    • in other words,
      • human (cultural) progress,
      • cumulative cultural evolution,
      • gene-culture coevolution
      • has resulted in progress traps
    • Progress traps leading to our progress traps may be evolutions milestone / marker / indicator to us that
    • we must now evolve to our next stage if we are to even survive
    • in other words, the polycrisis itself may be contextualized as an evolutionary pressure to adapt or die

• for: early adopters, social tipping points, wide bridges
• question
• paraphrase
  • who are the envisioned early adopters?
    • there are numerous experiments going on everywhere
    • new digital currencies
    • new types of democratic systems
    • new kinds of economic system proposals
    • existing communities may have a few thousand members, but can be exponentially grown to hundreds of millions
    • lots of small prototypes being built right now, we find the optimal ones and scale those

• for: contributors, contributors - science-driven societal transformation
• comment
  • almost every field of science plus many fields in the humanities and arts as well as other fields would contribute

• for: population decline, economic growth vs population decline
• comment
  • John makes a good point
  • how will humans negotiate a growth economy when population is shrinking?
  • it may be that AI automation may lessen the need for human capacity, but the future is unknown how these forces will balance out

• for: future climate impacts, futures, climate impacts, preparedness, climate change - human migration, climate refuge, climate departure, Camilo Mora

• comment

  • There will be massive human migration
  • Europe is already unable to cope with the migration of a million climate refugees from Syria
  • The US is polarized due to mass migration of a few people escaping climate crisis and violence in central and South America
  • Developed countries will be overwhelmed with climate refugees number in the millions or tens of millions
  • In addition to human migration, the migration of species seeking cooler temperatures will fundamentally reshape our economies
  • climate departure is the date when local climate goes outside normal historical bounds and locally adapted species do not recognize it anymore and will be forced to migrate to survive
  • climate departure is a huge issue that is going to happen, regardless of which decarbonoization path we take. This means all species on the globe will be undergoing dramatic environmental shifts, making mass extinction more likely.

• reference

  • Dr. Camilo Mora et al. seminal 2013 paper on climate departure: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbafybeihfoajtasczfz4s6u6j4mmyzlbn7zt4f7hpynjdvd6vpp32zmx5la.ipfs.dweb.link%2FTheprojectedtimingofclimatedeparture2013.pdf&group=vnpq69nW

• for: voting, power - money, money - voting, inequality, voting - money, equity, voting power - rich
• paraphrase
• question
  • if we think of money as a voting tool
    • why does a billionaire have a billion times more power to decide what society should be like than i do?