3 ms·

In today's culture, it might be dreamed up on facebook, funded on kickstarter, promoted on twitter, picked up by 10,000 blogs that all poach from each other and

by trotsky 16y ago

In today's culture, it might be dreamed up on facebook, funded on kickstarter, promoted on twitter, picked up by 10,000 blogs that all poach from each other and then abandoned by the next semester because the earth-water-sun interface is ancient and suffers from significant design issues whose tickets never get responded to by the upstream provider.

olefoo 16y ago
I'm tempted to start blogging up the project proposal for a hippie arcology to be built on a south facing slope in southern Oregon with geothermal backup heat and a fiber optic connection to the internet for the remote workers whose economic contributions exempt them from the maintenance duties that the less skilled have to do (hey, someone needs to turn the compost heaps and feed the tilapia you know). The basic design concept is to have one largish thermal envelope that encloses multiple garden and dwelling spaces that are kept at a relatively constant temperature year round. I would really like to bring the Whole Earth Catalog hacking tradition full circle.
- pyre 16y ago
  > hey, someone needs to turn the compost heaps and > feed the tilapia you know Now I'm just picturing the Dharma Initiative, and Ben's burnt-out, drunken father that came to 'the island' thinking that he was going to be a part of something special, only to find out that they wanted him to be the janitor.
- citizenkeys 16y ago
  "Home Power" magazine is what you need to check out: http://homepower.com/home/ http://homepower.com/home/ All their back issues are available online in pdf. They have all the details on cost-effective clandestine home energy solutions. Also, the trick to cheap hot water is a water heating coil on your roof facing the sun. The water gets hotter as it runs through the coil.
- _delirium 16y ago
  > I would really like to bring the Whole Earth Catalog hacking tradition full circle. Sort of a tangent, but the Whole Earth Catalog scene and the tech scene were surprisingly inter-related in the 60s-80s, which is something I didn't know until recently. Ted Nelson, who had coined the word "hypertext" about three years before the first WEC was published, was greatly influenced by it for his 1974 book Computer Lib / Dream Machines, and Steve Jobs was an avid reader as well. There was even briefly a software version in the 80s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Software_Catalog_and_Review http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Software_Catalog_an... I think I was surprised to find a connection mainly because in 2010 I associate the Whole Earth Catalog more with anti-technology primitivists, which doesn't seem to have originally been the case--- seems plenty of technologists were also interested in it, since DIY doesn't have to mean primitivism.

by trotsky 16y ago

olefoo 16y ago

I'm tempted to start blogging up the project proposal for a hippie arcology to be built on a south facing slope in southern Oregon with geothermal backup heat and a fiber optic connection to the internet for the remote workers whose economic contributions exempt them from the maintenance duties that the less skilled have to do (hey, someone needs to turn the compost heaps and feed the tilapia you know). The basic design concept is to have one largish thermal envelope that encloses multiple garden and dwelling spaces that are kept at a relatively constant temperature year round. I would really like to bring the Whole Earth Catalog hacking tradition full circle.

pyre 16y ago
> hey, someone needs to turn the compost heaps and > feed the tilapia you know Now I'm just picturing the Dharma Initiative, and Ben's burnt-out, drunken father that came to 'the island' thinking that he was going to be a part of something special, only to find out that they wanted him to be the janitor.
citizenkeys 16y ago
"Home Power" magazine is what you need to check out: http://homepower.com/home/ http://homepower.com/home/ All their back issues are available online in pdf. They have all the details on cost-effective clandestine home energy solutions. Also, the trick to cheap hot water is a water heating coil on your roof facing the sun. The water gets hotter as it runs through the coil.
_delirium 16y ago
> I would really like to bring the Whole Earth Catalog hacking tradition full circle. Sort of a tangent, but the Whole Earth Catalog scene and the tech scene were surprisingly inter-related in the 60s-80s, which is something I didn't know until recently. Ted Nelson, who had coined the word "hypertext" about three years before the first WEC was published, was greatly influenced by it for his 1974 book Computer Lib / Dream Machines, and Steve Jobs was an avid reader as well. There was even briefly a software version in the 80s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Software_Catalog_and_Review http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Software_Catalog_an... I think I was surprised to find a connection mainly because in 2010 I associate the Whole Earth Catalog more with anti-technology primitivists, which doesn't seem to have originally been the case--- seems plenty of technologists were also interested in it, since DIY doesn't have to mean primitivism.