My name is David Braden
Appropriate technology has been a long term interest of mine - but I am not so much interested in any particular technology as how we can integrate technologies into:
- systems of production that heal nature and produce abundance
Appropriate technologies usually cannot compete with technologies of mass production in the "market". Mass production relies on spending lots of money to reduce the per unit cost - creating economies of scale. However, we can also design to minimize cash outlay - by integrating production processes - creating economies of integration.
- See in particular the work of the Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives.
People will live in poverty until such time as we have systems of production in which everyone can participate. The environment will be at risk until such time as we have systems of production that cooperate with natures processes - increasing diversity instead of diminishing it.
We know that there is only this one world and that we humans and the rest of life are going to sink or swim together. In order to design and implement the systems of production we need, we have to understand the mechanics of how the system functions. The following is my most recent attempt at that explanation. Imagine life as a computer game:
The Game of Life[edit | edit source]
Understanding the mechanics of system function
- At the start of the game the virtual space is filled with nodes that we call producer/consumers. Each node is connected to other nodes based on what it produces and what it needs to consume to survive and prosper. If we zoom out, we see that the nodes are clustered into businesses, religious groups, nations, and other groupings that affect which connections are available to them.
- If we zoom in we see that the nodes are not just human, they are people, plants and creatures of all kinds, all producing different things and all needing different things. If we zoom in on any connection, we see it as a double conveyor belt with one type of value moving away from the node and another type of value moving toward the node. As a player, you are a human node and your goal is to make as many connections as possible. You make offers of connection to other nodes and they either accept or reject based on the net effect of your offer on their set of connections.
- There is flowing across the various connections the food, clothing, shelter, education and health care that you need to prosper in the game and there is also flowing across those connections potential harm in the form of connections that drain resources like fraud, disease, hatred, and violence. The player tries to align themselves in the flows to maximize the opportunity for new connections with positive flows and minimize the likelihood that they encounter negative flows.
- As a player, you can accumulate currency, assets, the right to share in the production of a group, information, knowledge, and wisdom. You can increase the value of your time by increasing productivity. You can also cause a drain of resources for others which will impact the willingness of others to accept your offers of a connection. When you zoom in on your own node we will have a graphic representation of the world you have created. You can choose to make that a sterile place – or make your home a garden with lots of connections to plants and creatures.
- As a player you can choose to play as an individual or as a family or as an extended family and the interesting one to me would be to play as a community – all the people living in a locality – and experiment with the types of connections we could make – realizing more and more of the human and biological potential resident in our locality.
You can find more of my work at Introduction to Three Dimensional Networking.