Cyber-community 101 - Lesson Four Turbines are the future

Cyber-community 101 - Lesson Three | ShortFormContent at Blogger: 

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You can access prior lessons at the link above.

Cyber-communities are imagined settlements of the future

These nested lessons spell out the elements

Cyber-communities are dense enough 

to enable viable economies

Cyber-communities are walkable and sustainable

Cyber-communities possess all elements of city living

Cyber-communities integrate residence work 

recreation health and education

Turbines seem to me the most likely candidates for 

generating the energy needed to make these communities 

independent and sustainable

Turbines can be powered with both solar and wind 

Turbines can be so pervasive and attractive 

they make wind farms look like what they are

a bad and ugly investment

We need to build proper cyber-communities from scratch

Imagine a giant Stonehenge-like matrix whose vertical stones

each house 40 turbines

Simple!

Energy is distributed to all who live and work in the community

Surplus is saved or shared 

Most thought about this is hampered by our worship of oil and car

These retro things dictate current sad sprawl design

Cyber-communities are an evolution to sustainability 

with teeth

and an eye to global leadership

in the thought department 

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Cyber-community 101 - Lesson Four

Cyber-community 101 - Lesson Three | ShortFormContent at Blogger:

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Cyber-community 101 - Lesson Four

A cyber-community must contain

most elements we associate with urban life

The cyber age reclaims the country

and re-casts the city

so its positive aspects are available to all

The crime aspects of the city

are minimized by 

two realities

Cyber-communities are diverse by design

Therefore their inhabitants are there by choice

not necessity

That enables a more neighborly sense

Cyber-communities

in their concentration and walkability

are vastly easier to police than

either city or sprawl areas

It would be understood for example

that public space is secure 

by consent of all

and that private space is private

All the aspects of a city are

scaled to a population of up to 10,000

Small theaters - 24/7 multi purpose venues

Commercial outlets - mainly kiosks connected to

global enterprises enabling pin-point

access to all products everywhere

Smaller and more nimble educational spaces

again shared and 24/7

Deployment of employed persons

to work in every one of the scaled down

facilities in the cyber-community

Living working recreating educating

all in the same space

Why must this be

Because concentration is inherently urban

Because residence in a cyber-community

enables privacy

Because life is short enough without

a car-sprawl component

And most of all

because we will be walking 

in the future to everything we need

to reach

for reasons that are obvious when you see this film

Free Public Transit Video: Post Carbon Institute: There is no tomorrow: 

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There will be no furniture in my cyber-communities

Are You Safe on That Sofa? - NYTimes.com:

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There will be no furniture in my cyber cities

Minimalism is one reason but not the only one

Surfaces will be intelligent and versatile

Most things we call furniture

attach to surfaces

Soft things like pillows make

surfaces comfortable

My cyber-communities make do with less

but live better than now because 

it takes 5-10,000 people to pay for

the sustainability

of an eco-structure that

actually powers the community

using sun and wind and the energy

we can create by our own movements

Some one will build this some day

and the world will come into synch with what

is already there

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All the global generation issues are resolved in my cyber-communities

The Vanishing Valley - NYTimes.com: "The issues in the valley are the global challenges of our generation: water, land use, population, growing economic disparity."

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In a Cyber-Community 

(My imagined future)

We re-densify 

We live in 5-10K gatherings

Car free

Sustained on site

By the generation of 

energy serving all

The collection and reuse of water

By building modular in matrices

Conducting all things needed

In and out of spaces

We have all attributes

of urban living in a mile

We no longer zone things out

We bring everything in

We enhance common space

A square every 200 feet

Grass roots democracies

Mass produced components

replacing the car as the

generator of new economies

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A Quora Thread That Gives the Lie to the Anti-Government Folk

(16) Silicon Valley: Why has Silicon Valley proved difficult to copy? - Quora:

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Quora is becoming a magnet for intelligent responses to relevant questions.

I am tempted to say, in reference to the image, that that's better than the Secret Service, of late.

UPDATE

The celebration of Silicon Valley raises two questions for me.

Why has it produced no macro-industry - construction and transportation being the main ones. Its insights have informed everything without affecting the general lay of the land in terms of these two huge areas.

And if a concentration  of brains and money are deemed essential, why do we still venerate lone inventors who required no Silicon Valley. Peirce posited the logic that helped create the computer and was a social and academic reject.

If it is true that certain factors work to create prosperous and creative communities, there is surely room to posit a prosperity of scale where in every field one or more of my cyber-communities would ad to the social good.

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

From urban/rural to ecumenopolis

ShortFormContent at Blogger: Why we need a redensification of the world:

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In most of the world urban/rural means density and surrounding sprawl  (megalopolis, strip city) and a very scattered and sparsely populated rural area.

Much of the economic trouble of the world and no small part of its social problems can be accounted for by this pattern. The large city and surrounding sprawl concentrates people toward its center and spreads distribution for miles and miles of sprawl. This subjects people to the difficulties and growing cost of commuting and to what might be called the infrastructure of congestion. Such an environment tends to become uniform worldwide, bearing the marks of its corporate origin. Virtually everything necessary for such a city-sprawl environment comes from the largest global corporations which have thousands of subsidiaries. The Koch Brothers portfolio of companies is instructive. It is a picture of the world we now have. Needless to say, though most of the population is in these strip city or megalopolis areas. the rural areas have far less than the population needed to create a viable local economy.

The solution to the dislocation and expense of this pattern is the development of what C.A. Doxiadis called Ecumenopolis.I knew Doxiadis briefly in the 1960s and his early death and political troubles in Greece vitiated his potential influence. Today we face a sort of global sclerosis because of our commitment to the pattern described. Meanwhile we have advanced to the point that ecumenopolis can be updated to consist of what I call cyber-communities. Roughly 10,000 persons living in car free space with all the amenities of a city within walking distance. Once these are normative, clusters of cyber-communities would naturally exist and enable diversity and easy access between communities. I believe the move toward  this updated ecumenopolis has already begun. I also see it as inevitable.  




Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Cyber-communities would radically reduce racial profiling

Fighting Stop-and-Frisk Tactic, but Hitting Racial Divide - NYTimes.com:

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Imagine your area of 10,000 people is designated a car free community

Imagine that all who work there also live there

Imagine all aspects of a city included in the mix

Shops education workplace entertainment health

Imagine that's because it is car free

Children play

People walk without fear

Vacant lots become squares or playgrounds

That such policing as there is is done by trained persons

Who live in the community

Imagine that we think for a bit of life without

subservience to the corporate system of

Obligatory sprawl

Obligatory car ownership

Obligatory subservience to the needs of car traffic

You have just begun to think about how we could actually begin to eliminate

The disease of racial profiling

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Forget Warming Prepare for The Flood

Forget warming prepare for the floodForget science watch earth turn to mudForget truth as coastal houses rotSodden as predicted on the dot
Framing the warming debate has stumbled because the science though accurate is not a lockWhat is a lock is the effects of whatever we want to call itWhy have I been advocating construction of cyber-communities from scratchBecause they minimize the effects of flood cyclone and quakeIn addition to creating something like face to faceA car free environment with all urban amenities within walking distance 

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Balancing population enhances civilization

Balancing population enhances civilization

The United States exemplifies imbalance

Our population per square mile is very small

But  then we have sclerotic metro areas 

Made less than habitable by the plethora of cars

And roads

The best balance of population would be to distribute

Cyber-communities of 10,000 

Living in areas of a mile square

In clusters of ten 

With distance between of them

For agriculture and so forth

These cyber-communities would be walkable 

With no more than

Four above ground levels

They would be connected to their neighbors by public transit 

Evolved

From trains and buses of the present

Speed would not be of the essence 

Dstances 

Would be modest

A few miles between communities

Ten such walkable, car-free communities forming a viable cluster

100,000

A region would have ten to twenty of these

Viable clusters

The construction of a cyber community requires

Creation of a universal matrix able to

Perform the tasks we assign to the circulation of water, energy and waste

By envisioning a matrix serving 10,000 we arrive at an

Economy of scale

All this thought derives from a reasonable approach to the actual

Distribution of population

Such a distribution would free land between the cyber-communities for

Local agriculture

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

The Engineering Miracle We Need

ShortFormContent at Blogger: The key to smarter construction in the future:

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The engineering miracle we need

Is the creation of a modular unit that can be linked to other such units to create

A universal means of achieving eco-sustainability on site

These modular units would form the base of a matrix to which

The modular elements of living, work and commercial spaces would be attached

These base units would have the capacity to recycle all wastes

To reprocess liquid

To store and conduct energy

They would be underground

They would operate silently as the continually moving heart of cyber-communities

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Occupy could build new cyber-communities bottom up

Occupy Our Homes Calls for National Week of Bank Protest Actions | AmpedStatus: "In solidarity with families across the U.S. resisting foreclosures and evictions, the Occupy Our Homes movement is announcing that March 13th-16th will be a National Week of Action to protest the criminal foreclosure practices of the nation’s largest banks."

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Smartest thing Occupy could do would be to build new cyber-communities for up to 10K persons within mile-from-end-to-end areas. It can be done. These would be zoned for everything - education, entertainment, residence, work, commerce, etc. They would be car-free. Create the integral designs and start building and it will speak louder than any words that we could write. It would truly revolutionize society.

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Postmodern Ideas and Their Limitations

Those Fabulous Confabs: "If TED’s platinum brand is at risk of becoming a generic, it has been with the full support of the brand’s owner. As the TED Talks online uncovered a far-flung global yen for idea videos, TED’s TEDX program, in which the company grants would-be curators licenses to organize local mini-TEDs, has been unexpectedly popular. Since it launched in March 2009, there have been more than 3,000. There has been a TEDX Hunstville (Alabama), a TEDX Timisoara (Romania), a TEDX Gujranwala (Pakistan). There is now one TEDX, and usually more, every day somewhere in the world."

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Try cyber-communities that actually exist.

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Why Environmentalism Must Be Bottom Up

Trade Battles Buffet Europe’s Green Efforts - NYTimes.com:

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Capitalism in its present cautious form (Braudel) will not embrace environmentalism

It is up to local communities to prove that there is massive profit in an environmental approach

This can only be done by communities because there is no long term profit in individual or household actions

This is because capitalism has caught on to the profit in "green" and will gladly let you pay through the nose to make your house environmentally smart

Only a redensification of population and a commitment to car-free communities will actually dent the environmental problem globally

Densification means populations of 5-10,000 within an area a mile square

Such density makes possible viable local economies
Such density can create a capital base for designing a way to handle all functions cooperatively radically reducing costs

Local communities that organize can design their own cyber-communities and form the cooperatives needed to raise the necessary funds

We are about to witness a revitalization of the best in capitalism by the power of local democracy working in concert to create a new model of how to live

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Seven Easy Ways to End Pain at the Pump

Obama Will Try to Blunt Attacks on Gas Prices - NYTimes.com:

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Move to a place where you do not have to drive

Give up commuting - work at home or nearby

Advocate for public transportation and patronize it

If you drive take others with you and share expenses

Sell your car and use zip-cars

Organize to advocate for cyber-communities - car free and zoned for all uses

Insist on walkability everywhere

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Why Yesterday's Construction Technology Must Go

It is too expensive

It is not mass-produced at a proper scale

It is not smart

It cannot be easily integrated into a grid that could supply energy and remove waste for a whole community

It is in the hands of developers whose aim is to extract the last dollar with little regard for human needs or human participation in planning

The idea of making each distinct structure a stand-alone eco-plant multiplies costs and hurts efficiency

Concentration on renewing old structures delays the day when new initiatives can create genuinely 21st Century communities where all elements are integrated, where all surfaces are smart, and where life in all respects is within walking distance 

Yesterday's construction was for sprawl, highways and endless separated housing segregated so you have to drive everywhere

Tomorrow's construction will be integral, beyond green and reflect a new economy that integrates grass roots and global

After the deadliest tornado season, a thought

Updated Feb. 16, 2012

I am still thinking about what would be needed to create safe cyber-communities when the main weather culprit is a tornado. I have little question that a solution exists.

Tornado Season Is Deadliest Since 1953 - WSJ.com : "The twister in Joplin comes on the heels last month of the largest one-day outbreak of tornadoes to date, when 226 twisters were reported during a single 24-hour period on April 27, largely in Alabama and Mississippi. All told, the cluster of tornadoes, which continued into the following day, killed more than 340 people."

It is not the number or tornadoes but the number of deaths that should excite us to some form of action which is more than accurate prediction or more copious reporting of the horrendous results.

What this bumps up against is the clear fact that we have hardly begun to think about how to build in a known tornado ally. While there is no fail-safe way to defeat a determined tornado, there are concepts of community and notions of building and placement that could protect people better. We need to move to a 21st century concept of how we will structure out future.

One Day's Tornadoes Took More Than 340 Lives

The Bike Alternative Has its Limits

Living in an Automobile Culture:

"Bob Pickett wrote: The people shut inside those cocoons (autos) with the artificial air fanned on them and rigidly subject to traffic controls are to be pitied. They have access to so little of the outdoors, even though such access may have once been the impetus for owning an auto.

Cary Weitzman wrote: This makes me think of one of the more bizarre excuses people come up with for not commuting to work by bike instead of car, "What about all the car exhaust? I wouldn't want to be out there in the open with all those fumes." As if the air in cars is somehow magically purified by the act of being sucked in somewhere up near the front grille (near the exhaust of the car in front of them) and run through the air conditioning or heating system.

Bill Yoder wrote: My favorite excuse of my high school students for not having time to do their homework is "I have to go to work." When asked why they have to go to work, it's "I have to pay for my car." When asked why they have to have a car, it's "I have to get to work." It's hard to defeat such circular logic. Too many kids are hooked on cars at age 16, and live the remainder of their lives enslaved by the concept of "freedom of the road.""

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But in a city bikes can be almost as intrusive as cars. It is perambulation that should concern us. Walkability. With that one thing we have made a global revolution. Cyber-communities are ecologically self-sufficient and largely vehicle free because everything is within walking distance.

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Time to start reducing the number of cars and detached houses

Beyond Our Unsustainable and Eco-Disastrous Automobile Economy - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com: "Last winter I was driving (as a passenger) on big roads that serve the Boston area and they were almost traffic free. My friend told me, when I asked, that the economy had indeed impacted traffic.

To me this is simply God's, or the economy's, way of nudging us toward my proposed future (it has been proposed since the 1960s) when the private car simply becomes out of reach for most, just as I believe private detached homes will be out of reach."

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There's more at the link above. These days we are starting to see malls converted into the prototypes of cyber-communities. Things are looking up.



Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

The World Beyond Cars - Excerpt

The World Beyond Cars - speculative fiction: "Bellingham turned and walked down the slight incline. There were ten such gentle spirals in the whole complex, each allowing movement up and down the four levels. Side ways appeared at irregular intervals, allowing passage to and from the center areas. Every 200 feet or so there was a level space with tables and chairs or childrens' play equipment. Almost everything had a retractable top. Whenever there was rain it was almost entirely collected, flowing down to a subterranean area where water was recycled. There was no waste. Everything was used. Just as Bellinghan had imagined before there ever were cyber-communities."

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A simplistic notion of educational reform

Students of Virtual Schools Are Lagging in Proficiency - NYTimes.com:

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The problem is we are not doing online right
Most teaching needs to go online so we can get the best of the best going to every classroom

It is the classroom that is the problem

And the simplistic either or that obtains

We do not need virtual education

We need face to face

Radical face to face

The kind that will only come when we have redone our social structure so we have cyber-communities

Walkable

Face to face

Fully integrated because America is fully integrated

The best education is destratification

But all these thoughts are beyond the pale at this point

We need to cut through the false realities

To the real

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