 The Ideas:
(1) Instead of thinking about technological innovation that applies
top-down (improving our cities, our institutions, our communities) what
if we thought about such innovation at the personal level, bottom-up,
the way nature does? (2) Why are we so inept at moving from brilliant
ideas to ubiquitous delivery of solutions?
I have long been an advocate of bottom-up, front-line-focused, personalized
solutions to business problems, because I've seen them work, and
because I've seen imposed top-down one-size-fits-all management
solutions continually fail. And I've proposed bottom-up, community-based
solutions for our political, social and economic woes. Everything I've
learned so far tells me that bigger-is-worse, that there are no
economies of scale, that centralized is much
less effective than decentralized, and that the people at the top of
power and money elites are totally disinterested in solving real
problems, and merely consumed with further increasing their power and
wealth.
So if bottom-up problem-solving is the best answer for business, social, political and economic challenges, how about technological challenges?
I have mentioned my revelation at a recent wind energy conference where a large number of people seeking to become personally
energy-independent overwhelmed one gentleman who wanted the state to
set up more centralized, "efficient" wind farms for all, and how I, as
a liberal accustomed to the role of the state in organizing things for
the greater benefit, was at first ambivalent, but by the end of the day
was won over by the self-interested. While I still believe innovation
and technology need to be focused on solving basic human needs, I've
begun to think that they might better solve those needs by looking at personal bottom-up
solutions instead of institutionally-deployed ones. I'm even wondering
whether community-based renewable energy co-ops are too centralized.
No, I haven't suddenly become a libertarian or a Dawkins selfish-gene
adherent: Nature, in its
technological design and innovation (look at birds' wings and the
thermal design of feathers), doesn't use centralized solutions --
animal communities are bound together by social imperatives, not shared technologies. Why should we be any different?
 Maybe we need to merge the great cradle-to-cradle design thinking of guys like Bill McDonough, who creates wonderful zero-waste designs for institutions, with the bottom-up, personalized approaches that I have advocated for business.
Here are some of the fragments of ideas that I've been kicking around
since I contemplated this. Since I was thinking at the time about
renewable energy, the End of Oil and global warming, that's what most
of these ideas are focused on:
What if
solar energy collectors were designed to look like trees, not like flat
panels -- more surface area, better fit with the environment? Could
they even be 'grown' using fractal patterns and crystal-forming
ingredients?
What if hats
were designed as personal solar energy collectors -- instead of just
protecting us from the sun's rays, why not have them harvest them? What
about hair, even, which again has more surface area. Could our shampoo double as an application of wireless nanotech energy collectors?
What if we could harvest our nervous energy, and the energy expended when we exercise? I've heard of PCs and flashlights powered by hand-crank
devices. Why not PCs and TVs powered by foot pedals, or ergonomic
bicycle-type devices under our desks? Deskwork and good exercise at the
same time.
What if instead of heating and cooling whole buildings, we designed our clothing (the design of which now is, let's face it, pretty useless, not nearly durable enough, and quite silly) to heat
and cool our bodies? No more fighting over where to set the thermostat
-- we each set our own. And don't tell me it would look geeky or
restrict our movement -- good design can solve that. Just use birds as
models.
What if we merged the technologies of the Smart Car (lightweight materials, miniaturization) with the technologies of the recumbent bicycle, the electric scooter, and the Segway, to create a human-powered
enclosed vehicle that would achieve highway speeds and give us good
exercise while using no fuel whatsoever? Can't be done? That's what
they told the Wrights.
What if we developed a
toilet that produced fertilizer instead of sewage, and delivered it
through the sprinkler system right to your garden?
Yes, I hear you saying that these aren't new ideas, they've been tried,
some are even being used as we speak. But how do we make them
commercial, mainstream, available to and affordable by everyone? After
all, millions of houses are still being built with wasteful,
inefficient North American style hot water heaters instead of the
long-coil European "instant hot water" heaters. If we're going to save
the world and stuff we can't quit when people nod and say "good idea"
-- we need to commercialize it, make it better, experiment with real
working models, and drive it out until everyone has one, so the need
for the old technologies that these ideas replace -- power plants, the
electrical grid, furnaces, air conditioners, internal combustion
engines, passive hot water tanks, toxic non-recyclable batteries, maybe
even buildings (to the extent their primary function is to keep heat
in, or out) -- can be done away with.
What is the reason that so many bottom-up ideas and innovations never
make it into the commercial marketplace? I'm not a believer in
conspiracy theories that corporations deliberately buy up and suppress
more durable inventions to keep them from cannibalizing their market. I
think it's more likely that people with good ideas are just disconnected
from those with the skills and resources needed to implement those
ideas. And vice versa -- those with commercialization skills and
resources are rewarded by the market (and by shareholders) for not
fixing what ain't broke, for not changing what they're doing until and
unless they have to.
So on the one hand we have an astonishing and unprecedented flood of
good ideas, made possible by the democratization of knowledge (the
Internet etc.), and on the other hand we have this incredible inertia
by those who could make those ideas reality, change everything. Not
dissimilar to the paradox of our staggering surplus of cheap (thanks to
subsidies) foods and medicines at the same time we have epidemics of
hunger, malnutrition and disease. "It's the distribution system", some
say. "It's the lack of security and ethics in the areas of suffering"
say others. "It's the whole economic system, which is designed to
artificially create scarcity to drive up demand and hence profits", say
others.
It's time to stop excusing ourselves and blaming others for these
disconnects. It's time to stop amusing ourselves to death with
fake-reality shows and the fate of some poor brain-dead woman in
Florida. Where there's a will, there's a way. It's a question of
priorities, of combining energies, and of collaborating in a focused,
informed and urgent manner to fix the disconnects and make it happen. We have a responsibility to make it happen. We certainly have the money, the ingenuity and the organizing technologies to make it happen, so what are we waiting for?
We need to get past our learned helplessness and start talking to each
other about things that matter, things we can fix, and enrolling
ourselves to do so.
Are we just disorganized, or
is our passivity, our inaction, our feelings of helplessness, are these
things symptoms of something deeper, darker? Or is all this noise, this
online cacophony, the sound of a billion revving engines just now
shifting into gear?
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
