Networked Society

The vegetable plots are the most visible sign of an amazing plan: to make Todmorden the first town in the country (UK) that is self-sufficient in food.

Via Dawn Lester

Co-working office space, a woodshop, sewing lab, creative people, dogs and a laser cutter; how awesome is that?!?! Adina and Marc Levin show us around Collab...

This new peer-to-peer search engine doesn't aim to 'out-Google' the big guys, its supporters say. Rather, its decentralized process seeks to free information from a central point of control.

Talk Title: Occupy Male Street Salim is the founding Executive Director of Singularity University and spent two years building out this unique organization. ...

 

Male and Female in balance. We need the tension between them. When you have abundance, you need a female archetype to manage it all. 

Richard Heinberg- whose latest book describes The End of Growth- isn't looking for when the recession will end and we'll get back to "normal". He believes ou...

 

He believes our decades-long era of growth was based on aberrant set of conditions- namely cheap oil, but also cheap minerals, cheap food, etc- and that looking ahead, we need to prepare for a "new normal".

 

The problem, according to Heinberg, is our natural resources just aren't so cheap and plentiful anymore, and he's not just talking about Peak Oil, Heinberg believes in Peak Everything (also the title of one of his books).

 

Heinberg thinks for many, adjusting to a life where everything costs a bit more, could be very hard, but he also thinks the transition to a new normal might actually make life better.

 

"Particularly in the Western industrialized countries we've gotten used to levels of consumption that are not only environmentally unsustainable, they also don't make us happy. They've in fact hollowed out our lives. We've given up things that actually do give us satisfaction and pleasure...

Globe-trotting journalist Robert Neuwirth has an astounding presentation at Poptech on the 'informal sector' around the world. It turns out that, in less than 10 years, 2/3rds of the world's popul...

 

Neuwirth argues that the informal economy offers a glimpse into a vibrant future unbounded by today’s methods of political order. People work in cooperatives, they barter, they swap using their own evolved currencies. They bring themselves electricity, trash collection, public transportation, welfare for the destitute and sick, even law and order. These markets are messy and not necessarily ‘rational’ from the perspective of an outsider or a State. But the tumultuous process is growing by leaps and bounds, spilling over international borders, and giving livelihoods to masses.