Recent news from WorldChanging.com
 Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future
Updated: 17 hours 46 min ago Year in Review 2008: Best in Essays
As we look forward to the new year, we've also reflected on the old, and rediscovered some of the great events, innovations, interviews and debates that 2008 had to offer. For the next week, we will be sharing our picks from the Worldchanging team's best work from the last 12 months. Come back each day for a new collection of posts on topics from climate change to transportation, energy to health and society. Today's Topic: Best in Essays What's No Longer Impossible? The Ninja Gap Letter from Tällberg: Let's Talk about Transformation The Outquisition Imagine What Comes After Green The Apocalypse Makes Us Dumb The Problem With Walk Score, the Possibilities of Carbon Goggles Tiny Science, Big Implications An Invisible Solution to the 'Quiet Crisis' Letter from Stockholm Moving Beyond Sustainability to Environmental Effectiveness Chop Wood, Carry Water Evolution of the Web This piece is part of our Year in Review series. Use the following links to view more of our favorites from 2008: Best in Climate Change Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Features at 4:52 PM) Year in Review 2008: Best in Politics
As we look forward to the new year, we've also reflected on the old, and rediscovered some of the great events, innovations, interviews and debates that 2008 had to offer. For the next week, we will be sharing our picks for the Worldchanging team's best work from the last 12 months. Come back each day for a new collection of posts on topics from climate change to transportation, energy to health and society. Today's Topic: Politics Photo credit: flickr/selena marie, Creative Commons license.Here at Worldchanging, we believe that the right leadership, especially in the form of smart regulations and policies, is an indispensable tool for supporting needed shifts in systems from energy to smart growth to transportation. During the past year we've witnessed and written a lot about the glimmers of hope that have shone from the global political arena. Today, we look back at our coverage of political events that have sparked ideas and stirred up action, from the election of Barack Obama as the next American president to a series of eloquent and passionate pleas for change from our society's greatest thinkers. Below is a collection of our best posts on politics from 2008: Can We Solve It Like This? Why the We Campaign Needs Change Using Disasters for Systemic Change One Approach To Sustainability: Work Less Grassroots Lobbying: Use Ideas, Not One-Click Campaigns Al Gore, Clean Energy and A Better Nation The Candidates and Climate: A Persistent Air of Surreality Climate, Energy and Environment Secretary? The Real Problem With Foreign Oil? Climate Change To The Next U.S. President: 100 Words for 100 Days Inaugurate Change Charting a Course for the First US CTO Jim Hansen's Letter to Obama This piece is part of our Year in Review series. Use the following links to view more of our favorites from 2008: Best in Climate Change Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Features at 7:13 AM) Make New Friends, Keep Track of the Old
Connecting with other Worldchanging readers is as easy as checking your Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or WiserEarth account. Make new friends or keep track of the old by friending Worldchanging today: Facebook Watch videos, hear interviews with Worldchanging team members or search our friend list for those changing the world in your neighborhood. Already friends with Worldchanging? Invite your other friends to join today. Connect. Communicate. Change the world. Happy New Year! The Worldchanging Team
Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in About Worldchanging at 10:49 AM) Year in Review 2008: Best in Transportation
As we look forward to the new year, we've also reflected on the old, and rediscovered some of the great events, innovations, interviews and debates that 2008 had to offer. For the next week, we will be sharing our picks from the Worldchanging team's best work from the last 12 months. Come back each day for a new collection of posts on topics from climate change to transportation, energy to health and society. Today's Topic: Transportation The way we get around impacts numerous other big-picture systems, including the way we use energy, the health of our bodies and our communities, the growth patterns that can protect or degrade our land, and our economy. For this reason, the transportation sector has always been one of our favorite places to look for new innovations. This year, we covered how these innovations, like bike sharing and bus rapid transit, have continued to become widespread and popular; and looked more closely at what transportation will look like in the future. Below is a collection of our best posts on transportation from 2008: Taking Aloft With Sustainable Biojet The Nexus of Peak Oil, Climate Change and Infrastructure The Autobahn's Future and One-Liter Class Racing San Francisco Goes Wireless and Real-Time to Reduce Traffic Bike, Meet the City. City, This is the Bike. Crunching Some Numbers on Paris Bike-Sharing Program Does the Water-Powered Car Really Work? Cut Your Carbon and Save on Auto Insurance How Much Does Transportation Really Cost Copenhagen, Melbourne & The Reconquest of the City Could Cell Phones Enable Bike-Sharing in the Developed World?
Best in Climate Change Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Features at 10:05 AM) Year in Review 2008: Best in Health, Food and Society
As we look forward to the new year, we've also reflected on the old, and rediscovered some of the great events, innovations, interviews and debates that 2008 had to offer. For the next week, we will be sharing our picks from the Worldchanging team's best work from the last 12 months. Come back each day for a new collection of posts on topics from climate change to transportation, energy to health and society. Today's Topic: Health, Food and Society How will the future affect our health and our societies? Perhaps more importantly, how can we begin to change our approaches to social and civic life now, in order to create the kind of future that we want? In the past year, many of our posts discussed what the future might hold for what we eat, what we learn, how we spend our time and how we relate to one another. Today we look at the best posts from 2008 that discuss health, food and society: Neighborliness, Innovation and Sustainability Gin, Television, and Social Surplus Scenius, Innovation and Epicenters Facebook, Coca-Cola and Medical Aid in Africa Can Sustainability Save the Midwest? Locavore Valley: The Next Big Boom? New School Sustainability: Majors Making a Difference Making Social Equity an Issue of Public Health The Transformative 120: Text Messages Prove a South African HIV Lifeline The Future of Public Lands in the United States Peak Population and Generation X Local Food Plus: A Model for Food Citizenship in North America
">Students, Seniors and Social Biodiversity Worldchanging Interview: Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Health Solutions This piece is part of our Year in Review series. Use the following links to view more of our favorites from 2008: Best in Climate Change Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Features at 11:19 AM) Year in Review 2008: Best in Energy
As we look forward to the new year, we've also reflected on the old, and rediscovered some of the great events, innovations, interviews and debates that 2008 had to offer. For the next week, we will be sharing our picks for the Worldchanging team's best work from the last 12 months. Come back each day for a new collection of posts on topics from climate change to transportation, energy to health and society. Today's Topic: Energy We read numerous reports this year making the compelling argument that the world's energy markets are slowly shifting to take advantage of what we get for free from nature: wind, sun and heat. In 2008, we saw the markets for wind power, solar energy and geothermal heat starting to compete with dirtier, harsher, more (truly) expensive sources of energy, and we were encouraged by predictions for a more dynamic, interactive, smarter grid. And we told many stories about the smart entrepreneurs who will help push these game-changing innovations along. Below is a collection of our best posts on energy from 2008: Green Buildings and Smart Grids Gasification Experimenter's Kit Decoding the World's Best Energy Policies Human Ingenuity at the World Wind Energy Summit Staking the Vampire: The Future of Recharging Pop!Tech: Rice Power to the People With Husk Power Systems Smart Garage: An Integration Revolution What Would An Optimistic Forecast for Renewable Energy Look Like? This piece is part of our Year in Review series. Use the following links to view more of our favorites from 2008: Best in Climate Change Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Features at 5:00 AM) Mapping: Infrastructure and Flow
I love airline route maps. I’ve fallen asleep staring at the tangle of possible journeys so often that I sometimes confuse the capillaries I see with my eyes closed with the red paths of Northwest flights hubbed out of Detroit and Minneapolis. I love the questions the maps raise: why is there a direct flight on Air Canada from Halifax to Fort McMurray in Northern Alberta? (Lots of Nova workers in the oil sands, I suspect, but I never would have asked the question without the map.) Why is Chengdu such an important Chinese air hub? Why does MIAT (Mongolia’s airline, affectionately known as “maybe I’ll arrive tomorrow” by regular customers) fly to Berlin, and no other western European cities? Does a direct Air Madagascar flight to Milan imply a strong Italian-Malagasy connection, or was Malpensa just one of the few airports where they could buy a landing slot? These maps are deceptive in a way. They let you know what’s possible, but not what actually happens. The Northwest map will show you flights from Detroit to both Albany and Bozeman. While it’s good to know that it’s possible to get between those cities by flying Northwest, it doesn’t tell you how easy or difficult it might be to make that trip, how often those flights run, or how many people choose to make that trip. That’s okay - the job of maps is to tell a traveler where she can go, not where other travelers choose to go. But trying to extrapolate too much from a map of infrastructure may be a mistake - is the Ulaanbataar/Berlin link the sign of close governmental and trade ties between Mongolia and Berlin? Or an accident of history, airport capacity or other factors? This lovely video gives a different picture from the route maps. It’s a simulation of global air traffic from the fine folks at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. The map uses data from Flightstats.com, and overlays their position on a Miller cylindrical projection. Compared to some of the other flight data porn the folks at ZHAW have churned out - like their amazing Radar mashup of flights over Zurich, using live transponder data from aircraft - this was a pretty simple hack. I’ve watched the video half a dozen times today, getting different insights each time. Popular routes become apparent - the arc of travel from the Northeastern US to London, Paris and Amsterdam runs west to east as night falls, and reverses as morning breaks. The popularity of that ocean crossing vastly outpaces traffic across the Pacific, connecting Tokyo, Manila and Beijing to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. There’s more traffic from Brazil to western Europe than I would have guessed, and virtually no traffic across the southern Atlantic or Pacific. Domestic traffic in the US, India and China, and intra-EU travel is vastly more common than trans-oceanic travel. As the US is covered with yellow dots representing airplanes, international travel looks like a rounding error in comparison to domestic flights. It’s not a map you’d want to use in planning your vacation, perhaps, but it would be a useful one to turn to if you were tracking the spread of an epidemic, for instance. If you’re studying SARS, it’s useful to know that you can, theoretically, get from Guangdong to Johannesburg - it’s lots more useful to know that most of those travellers are heading to Hong Kong, Toronto and New York City. It’s a map of flow, not of infrastructure. It reveals infrastructure - the location of airports, the preferred air routes followed - because they appear as bright spots, places where lots of flow originates. A map of infrastructure - a map of potentials - shows every airport as co-equal; a map of flow shows you which airports are heavily used, which are pivotal nodes in a network. If you’re an executive at a fast food company, an infrastructure map of highways is moderately helpful - it’s obviously wise to place your stores in places where drivers could theoretically reach them, rather than in the middle of a desert. (No one told Pacific Bell this, obviously, before they erected the legendary Mojave Phone Booth.) But a map of flow is what you really need, showing where drivers are likely to go, and where they’re likely to come purchase your grease-laden wares. It’s hard to map flow. Infrastructure tends to stay put. But people, cars, and shipping containers move all the time. To build accurate maps, you can’t simply plot the location of an airport once - you’ve got to map each plane that flies during some period of time. Things that don’t stay put aren’t always happy about being mapped. In simplest terms, maps of flow are a form of surveillance. Mapping your personal “flow” - in the way that the BBC is tracking a shipping container around the world - would likely be a gross violation of your privacy, as it would probably reveal more about you than you’re strictly comfortable sharing. My friends Sandy Pentland and Nathan Eagle have been experimenting with something Pentland is calling “reality mining“, using surveillance of individuals via their mobile phones to extrapolate information about social networks, individual health and events in the news. Eagle tells me that the system was so effective, it could determine which of the anonymous participants were dating, and was able to correlate behavior to events like the Red Sox World Series victory, during which cellphone users clustered in bars and crossed the river to celebrate near Fenway. Unsurprisingly, a lot of sponsors are interested in this research, including mobile phone companies and advertisers - it’s not unrealistic to believe that mobile phone companies might, at some point, offer you free basic phone service in exchange for your behavioral data (collected by tracking your phone) and the opportunity to target ads to you based on your location. (See Blyk, a free mobile phone service in the UK, targetted to young people and ad sponsored…) The maps Pentland and others are making tend to make us the most nervous when we place ourselves in them as individuals. We wonder what a map of our actions will tell others. We’re generally more comfortable with them in aggregate. Leaving the Berkman Center, I look at Google Maps to see whether the traffic heading west on Route 2 or I-90 is lighter. This is a useful thing and I’m very glad that someone is monitoring road conditions and letting me make intelligent decisions about which way to drive. On some level, I realize that my beat-up black truck is part of the overall picture represented as a green, yellow or red line. But that map generally doesn’t make me uneasy in the way that a map that allowed you to click on it and see “1999 Toyota Tacoma, 27 mph, heading west on Massachusetts Ave, MA license plate 345 GDF”. The former reads to me as mapping of flow, the latter as surveillance, but it’s not entirely clear to me where the line should be drawn between the two ideas. The map above is called “In Transit” and is part of the Cabspotting program run by the Exploratorium, using data from Yellow Cab and visualisations by the folks at Stamen Design. All yellow cabs in San Francisco are equipped with GPS and report their location to dispatchers, automatically, once a minute - they’re being surveilled so that dispatchers can respond to requests for cabs or deploy cabs to another part of town. In this visualization, those minute-by-minute accretion of data points are blurred into lines, showing the paths that cabs take. And these paths can reveal some interesting things about how people flow through the city of San Francisco. Those who know San Francisco will immediately pick out the major highways - 101, 280 and 80 - and the paths across the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate. It’s not hard to intuit where downtown is, to get a sense for the comparative popularity of various routes in and out of the city. The blank spots, on the other hand, are a little confusing. The area near #5 on the map is the Presidio, a former military base that’s now a park… which helps explain why there’s not much cab traffic through it. The areas just south of #4 and #7 aren’t parks - they’re Potrero Hill and Dogpatch, neighborhoods that are better known for industry and low-income housing than for tourist attractions or dot.com startups. To their southeast is a large blank patch on the map: Bayview and Hunter’s Point, a predominantly African-American neighborhood that surrounds a former naval shipyard. In other words, some areas are blank because there’s no good way to drive a taxi there. In other cases, they’re the neighborhoods where few people call for a taxi… or where the taxi drivers aren’t willing to go. The street map helps you figure out how to get from 3rd Street and Evans Avenue to Union Square, while the flow map makes it clear that you probably shouldn’t count on hailing a taxi to make the trip. Maps of infrastructure visualize what it’s possible for people to do. Maps of flow show what they actually do. The two may diverge sharply. A few years ago, if you wanted to send an email to a friend across the street in Accra, there’s a good chance the message would travel through the US or the UK on the way. Ghana had several competing internet service providers, and each provider bought internet connectivity from a different vendor. The vendors’ networks connected, just not in Ghana. So sending email across town meant sending a message on one ISP, to the US, transferring over to the other ISP, and back to Ghana, a journey that involved two satellite hops to cross the Atlantic. This is called “trombone routing”, and it’s generally something to be avoided. If you mapped the network traffic of Ghanaian internet users - the flow - it sure looked like they were sending a lot of bits to and from the US. This might have been a result of trombone routing of emails between Ghanaians. Or it might have been because many websites are hosted in the US, and Ghanaian users wanted to read cnn.com, espn.com, etc. Knowing which it was mattered - if lots of traffic was local, it would make sense to construct an Internet Exchange Point (IXP), a crossing point for local ISPs to exchange traffic. If it was mostly requests to US webservers, the IXP wouldn’t save much money and probably shouldn’t be built. An infrastructure map would be no help - almost all traffic needed to go through the US, even if the intent was to communicate locally. To build a map of flow, Ghanaian ISPs would need to monitor their traffic, distinguish between domestic and foreign requests, share this information with fellow ISPs and make a decision regarding the utility of an IXP. Ghanaian ISPs made the decision to build the Ghana Internet Exchange not based on understanding their own flow, but by looking at the behavior of other African exchange points. When ISPs in Johannesburg started exchanging traffic directly, they discovered that roughly 50% of their traffic was local to South Africa. The administrators who set up an exchange point in Nairobi saw roughly 25-30% local traffic. The disparity? There’s a lot more web servers hosted in South Africa than in Kenya, and hence more local traffic. To make the decision to build an IXP on a rational basis, you need to know not just the flow of internet traffic, but the flow the traffic would take if it were routed via an IXP. You need to know not just what users are doing, but what their intention is. This is a tough enough mapping challenge that you end up guessing, not analyzing. The distinction between maps of infrastructure and maps of flow matters to me because I think it can help explain certain misconceptions and misunderstandings about our connected world. My contention - with very little to support it, frankly - is that we tend to assume more connections than actually exist. We see a map of infrastructure that shows it’s possible to fly from Antananarivo to Albania and assume, on an unconcious level, that the connection is routine, frequent, common. We look at maps of the internet - a near-worldwide tangle of undersea cables - and assume that data flows everywhere, connecting every one of us. A map of flow would help us understand a more complicated reality. You can fly from Antananarivo to Albania, but you might be the only person this year to make the trip. Traffic flows between Ghana and the US via the Internet. We can see a cable - SAT-3 - that connects West Africa to the global internet through Europe and India. A map of flow could tell us whether that connection is symmetric, whether Americans are looking for information from Ghanaweb as often as Ghanaians are looking at ESPN or CNN. If we could see flow, we might detect the dark spots, the places reached by infrastructure but disconnected - through language, economics, or force of habit - from global flows. This piece originally appeared on Ethan Zuckerman's personal blog, My Heart's In Accra.Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Ethan Zuckerman in Big Systems - Global Institutions, Governance and History at 8:35 AM) Year in Review 2008: Best in Business
As we look forward to the new year, we've also reflected on the old, and rediscovered some of the great events, innovations, interviews and debates that 2008 had to offer. For the next week, we will be sharing our picks from the Worldchanging team's best work from the last 12 months. Come back each day for a new collection of posts on topics from climate change to transportation, energy to health and society. Today's Topic: Business Photo source: Flickr, Creative Commons license.In 2008, we saw more businesses than ever before asking how they could improve their bottom lines while decreasing their negative environmental and social impacts. Companies producing everything from automobiles to iPhones are reassessing their business models as sustainability continues to prove itself as the new shrewd tactic for making business better, improving the lives of millions around the world, and building a better future where companies can thrive. And as smart entrepreneurs search for this elusive balance, the way the world does business will be forever changed. Below is a collection of our best posts on business from 2008: Nau: An Elegy "B" is for Beneficial: The B Corporation Proudly Made in China: NEST Collective Missing the Market Meltdown From Sampling to Monitoring to Gulping Data Down in Great Big Chunks The Problem with Big Green Interview: Kavita Ramdas, Global Fund for Women The iPhone, Now in Green(er) Could Globalization Be Going In Reverse? PIG 05049, a Conversation with Christien Meindertsma Alternative Trade Networks and the Coffee System Advance Market Commitments: Bringing Medicines to Developing Nations Is 'The Old Economy of Car Dependence' Over? This piece is part of our Year in Review series. Use the following links to view more of our favorites from 2008: Best in Climate Change Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Features at 7:08 AM) Lazy Dystopias
Recently, I've been buried in a bumper crop of lazy dystopias. Now, I'm not against dystopian fiction as a means of social critique. Not at all. I think showing how present intentions may come to grief is necessary art. Not every creative act needs to embrace the politics of optimism. But I am bored by imaginings of collapse that follow tired patterns. I am even more bored by futures that refuse even to invent a new visual aesthetic. Just to pick (no doubt unjustly) on one example: Why is the dystopian future always literally dark? Why is it always raining or overcast? Why is the architecture always a mix of hyper-modernism, brutalism and squatter slum? Why is the politics always so transparently totalitarian, so fascist-plus-rebels? Why is it so retro and abstract? Why doesn't the dystopian vision ever include sunshine and children playing in its ruins? Why does it not include the constant, untiring efforts of most people to do what they can with what they have to improve their situations? Why are most people in the dystopian future always powerless to change anything? I could go on, but you get the point. The biggest problem with dystopian fiction is not its pessimism. I do think there's a serious issue about who's interests are best served by making people fear the future, but I think the biggest problem with most dystopian fiction is its laziness and derivative quality. Lazy futures act like visionary static, crackling and dirtying the signal-to-noise ratio, making it harder not only for truly insightful futures to be found, but corrupting the ability of normal people to see why those visions are worth understanding. Better by far to not envision the future at all, than to make a lazy dystopia. Give us the new stuff! Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Alex Steffen in Imagining the Future at 9:02 PM) The Street as Platform
I realize now that I've been delinquent in recommending Dan Hill's truly excellent speculative essay The Street as Platform, which explores a cross-section of all the ways that urban environments have become suffused with data. It's one of maybe 25 things I read this year that actually changed the way I see things in daily life: We can’t see how the street is immersed in a twitching, pulsing cloud of data. This is over and above the well-established electromagnetic radiation, crackles of static, radio waves conveying radio and television broadcasts in digital and analogue forms, police voice traffic. This is a new kind of data, collective and individual, aggregated and discrete, open and closed, constantly logging impossibly detailed patterns of behaviour. The behaviour of the street....[T]his is all everyday technology - embedded in, propped up against, or moving through the street, carried by people and vehicles, and installed by private companies and public bodies. Each element of data causes waves of responses in other connected databases, sometimes interacting with each other physically through proximity, other times through semantic connections across complex databases, sometimes in real-time, sometimes causing ripples months later. Some data is proprietary, enclosed and privately managed, some is open, collaborative and public. Those who are paying attention already know that the information richness of urban environments is already changing what's possible within them, even spurring new forms of entirely urban innovation. I can see no reason why this trend will not accelerate, and very few reasons why it might decelerate. I think the implications for sustainability and social innovation could be profound. Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Alex Steffen in Leapfrogging at 7:45 PM) What if Climate Change is Not an Energy Problem?
Here's a thought I've been kicking around, and I'd like your ideas. What if, contrary to conventional wisdom, climate change is not actually primarily an energy problem, and by thinking of it as an energy problem, we risk making huge mistakes in the coming years? What do I mean by energy problem? A problem caused by our choice of energy sources. Given that a large percentage of greenhouse gasses comes from the burning of fossil fuels, it seems odd to contend that climate change is not a problem created by our energy choices. Certainly, no one with any credibility denies that coal, oil and gas use is changing the climate, and I don't mean to suggest that at all (though it is also worth not losing sight of the considerable emissions that come from farming, forestry, the chemical industries and other sources). What I mean is that when we look to address the central challenge presented by climate change -- creating widespread prosperity while lowering, and then eliminating, emissions -- changing energy sources might play a much less important role than we've been trained to think. The kind of energy we use, in other words, while important, may not be anywhere near as important as three other considerations: whether we use the energy we create at all; how we use it; and how we live. Whether we use the energy we generate: much of the energy we generate is wasted in the process of generation or transmission (56.2%, here in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration). As I understand it, by wasted we don't mean that it's used, but not used effectively. We mean that it is not used at all. It is the current dumped into the ground by power plants whose generation exceeds demand and other generated energy that accomplishes no task. Based on what I've been told and read, much of that systemic waste is an attribute of badly-designed big systems, and could be eliminated through a variety of different new approaches, from smart grids to more efficient turbines to the harvesting of waste heat in industrial processes. As I understand it, no system can be perfectly effective at eliminating wasted energy, but if we managed to slash energy waste in half -- all other things being equal -- it'd be like eliminating roughly 25% of our energy-related emissions. How we use energy -- what I've heard described as energy efficiency at end use -- is equally important. Amory Lovins has consistently pointed out the myriad ways in which our current uses of energy are extremely inefficient. We all know about the energy savings of a compact fluorescent lightbulb over an old-fashioned incandescent light bulb. Well, on a metaphorical level, our society (especially here in the U.S.) is nothing but old-fashioned light bulbs, nothing but opportunities for improvement. As has been pointed out again and again, not only are large energy savings immediately possible, but many of these energy savings pay for themselves or already profitable, while many others would become profitable with even moderate carbon pricing and/or green tax shifting. How we live may be the biggest nut to crack. As we've discussed before, where we live has more to do with the amount of energy we use -- and the amount of energy we could save -- than almost any other factor. We can save huge amounts of energy by stopping sprawl; encouraging smart growth, good design and transit; using density to promote green building and green infrastructure; and emphasizing a prosperity based on experiences rather than stuff and product-services rather than products. These are steps that eliminate the need to use energy in the first place, while delivering the same or better quality of life. To extend our light bulb metaphor, it's like not needing to turn on a light in the first place, because you have a window through which sunlight is streaming. In fact, if what we're committed to is prosperity, rather than a particular suburban SUV-and-McMansion vision of wealth (I, at least, am convinced that vision is a doomed project over the medium-term no matter what path we take), then a big shift towards bright green living might be possible even with only modest shifts in the sources of energy -- if the shifts in the uses of energy were large enough. A radically more-efficient society of compact communities with a variety of transportation choices, green buildings and smart infrastructure, run off an only slightly-improved mix of energy sources might be more sustainable than a society that continues on our current path of increasing sprawl and waste but uses twice the proportion of clean energy that it does today. Obviously, we want both. We want renewable, low-carbon energy fueling a compact and efficient society. But attempting to meet the increasing energy demands of an essentially unchanged (and rapidly spreading) vision of suburban prosperity (whether in suburban Atlanta, suburban London or suburban Shanghai) through the provision of more and more and more clean energy seems pretty much guaranteed to fail. And in a society with limited resources and attention, pushing a strategy based primarily on clean energy may in fact reduce our ability to go after other, more important systemic solutions. (For instance, here in America, I would rather see a national smart growth agenda than a national clean energy subsidy.) So maybe it's time to stop calling climate change an energy problem? What do you think? (Image: K2D2vaca, Creative Commons.) Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Alex Steffen in Columns at 2:57 PM) Headlines from Worldchanging Seattle (12/29/08)
The recent snowfall here in Seattle, and its impact on all of the city's neighborhoods, has helped us see many of the things we take for granted in new ways. It's easier, for example, to imagine no cars when there are barely any in sight, letting pedestrians and people using alternative forms of transportation (like snowshoes, toboggans and cross-country skis!) own the roads for a few days. In addition to speculating on the snow, we've seen some new developments in sustainable building design, innovative use in public space, and more. Though our Seattle staff is out of the office for most of this week, here's a roundup of the recent work that has appeared on our local Seattle blog that we hope you'll enjoy: Eco-Laboratory Incentive Zoning: A Good Plan For Affordable Housing? Snowbound Community Building Local Business Profile: Lighting Design Lab Burien/Interim Art Space Alex Steffen to Ron Sims: The Viaduct and the Seawall
Photo credit: Photo credit: flickr/arycogre, Creative Commons license. Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in About Worldchanging at 8:37 AM) Year in Review 2008: Best in Cities
As we look forward to the new year, we've also reflected on the old, and rediscovered some of the great events, innovations, interviews and debates that 2008 had to offer. For the next week, we will be sharing our picks from the Worldchanging team's best work from the last 12 months. Come back each day for a new collection of posts on topics from climate change to transportation, energy to health and society. Today's Topic: Cities Image credit: Kimco Redevelopment GroupBy enabling solutions like bus rapid transit, district heating and product service systems, the dense, compact communities found in cities allow us to pool our resources and work together to collectively improve our quality of life. In the past year, we saw lots of new solutions for making cities even better with the help of inventions that help us live well while living close together. Below is a collection of our best posts on cities from 2008:
Highlights from the 7th EcoCity World Summit Cities of the Future, Today Unclogging the Water and Sanitation Crisis BIMstorm: Honing Bureaucracy, Giving Urbanism an Edge Recovery Parks, Free Geeks and Plasma: Vancouver Debates Zero Waste The Future of Shopping Malls: An Image Essay Eric Lombardi's Zero Waste Park Connected Urban Development: Green Tech for Cities Using ill-fated buildings for art in Seattle This piece is part of our Year in Review series. Use the following links to view more of our favorites from 2008: Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Features at 8:36 AM) Year in Review 2008: Best in Climate Change
As we look forward to the new year, we've also reflected on the old, and rediscovered some of the great events, innovations, interviews and debates that 2008 had to offer. For the next week, we will be sharing our picks for the Worldchanging team's best work from the last 12 months. Come back each day for a new collection of posts on topics from climate change to transportation, energy to health and society. Today's Topic: Climate Change
Whether spurring innovation or policy, movement building or transportation solutions, the call to fight climate change is a unifying force that defines our moment in history. It's easy to understand why: the time for action is now. And the more informed we are about its effects, the better we can come up with the solutions that will change the world. Below is a collection of our best posts on climate change from 2008: Polar Agriculture Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize Lecture Seeing China's Climate Emissions Clearly Carbon Accounting in New Zealand Extra Cheese, Hold the Methane
">The Real Green Heretics The Nexus of Peak Oil, Climate Change and Infrastructure Cut Your Carbon and Save on Auto Insurance Inside WCI: Thresholds
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008316.html">Buildings--the Biggest Bang for the Buck in Global CO2 Abatement Geoengineering: A Worldchanging Retrospective Seeing Climate Change Through the Trees
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009058.html">The Hot Spot Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Features at 3:44 PM) Chu, Browner, Holdren, Lubchenco: the Climate Superfriends
We need strong U.S. leadership on climate change, especially as we head into next year's COP-15 talks. President-elect Obama has already spoken more boldly (by far) on climate change than almost any other American elected official: There is often, however, a large gap between words and deeds in Washington, D.C., and some of Obama's initial cabinet selections have been discouraging, to say the least, so I was extremely glad to see the President-elect's climate team come together. Simply put, these guys are like the Justice League of American climate policy, scientific superheroes who will be (we hope) leading a transformed scientific and policy debate in a nation that's spent eight years being lead by an overtly corrupt administration and its Lysenkoist hacks. These people have been nominated for extremely important jobs, and they are up to the task. Steven Chu -- a Nobel prize-winning physicist, who is a leading voice on climate change and renewable energy -- as Secretary of Energy: At Berkeley, colleagues say, Chu has aggressively promoted research on advanced biofuels, solar power, and energy efficiency. He has successfully, and often shrewdly, fought for funding from the federal government as well as from private industry, most notably in his wooing, last year, of a $500 million partnership with oil giant BP for alternative energy research. As Chu sees it, a handful of hard-won breakthroughs—with photovoltaic cells for solar power, for instance—could be game-changers for the country's energy portfolio.I've met and spoken with Steve Chu, and he is not only brilliant, he gets it: he understands the magnitude of the problem, the urgency of finding solutions, and the complexities that make progress difficult. But don't take my word for it; here's what he has to say for himself: Carol Browner -- a well-respected former EPA administrator known for political savvy, who's been vocal on "the costs of inaction on climate change"-- to be Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change. Here's her recent testimony on Capitol Hill: Harvard's John Holdren -- a leading scientist who has been a strong voice on climate change, renewable energy and emerging sciences -- as the President's Science Advisor. Most of the people I respect think Holdren is an outstanding selection, a brilliant man who gets science politics. Climate Progress' Joseph Romm bluntly says Holdren has "more combined expertise on both climate science and clean energy technology than any other person who could plausibly have been named science adviser." But don't take Romm's word for it, listen to Holdren describe the political realities of global climate agreements in his own words: In applying the costlier solutions, the industrialized nations must lead – going first, paying more of the up-front costs, offering assistance to developing countries. This is a matter of historical responsibility, capacity, equity, and international law (the UNFCCC). ... The best basis for such an agreement in the short term is probably reductions in emission intensity (GHG/GDP); in the longer run, the only politically acceptable basis will be equal per-capita emissions rights.Or check out this article. (And, of course, as we've noted before, John Holdren is an outspoken opponent of geoengineering.) Jane Lubchenco -- a leader on climate change and a strong advocate for marine reserves -- to head NOAA: Lubchenco has actively encouraged fellow scientists to better communicate their research to the public and has urged controls on greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. She helped lead a panel created by Gov. Ted Kulongoski to develop an Oregon strategy on climate change....A former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Ecological Society of America, Lubchenco has won many of the top awards in her field, including a so-called genius MacArthur Fellowship. Lubchenco is a strong proponent of scientific clarity in politics; in her own words (from this excellent video on scientists as public citizens): If decisions are to be informed by science, decision-makers should have access to information that they can understand, use and believe is credible. As all of you know, and especially in areas like the environmental sciences, the science is in fact very complex, nuanced, and difficult to communicate simply. The uncertainties are real. We don’t know everything. On the other hand, scientists often focus on those areas of uncertainty because that’s what we get excited about, those are the research frontiers, and we forget to communicate to the public at large or the policymakers, all the areas where there actually is a lot of agreement. We oftentimes lose perspective when we’re communicating and we need to regain that perspective.Vested interests, then, often spin, cherry-pick and distort information. The result is what we have seen play out over the last decade in many different arenas. Decisions are made without good science, or science is seen as a weapon, not as useful knowledge. Now, this doesn’t serve anyone well. Changing this requires a number of things. One, clarifying the role of science - scientists don’t think they should be dictating - they should be informing, they should be helpful. Training and empowering scientists to communicate more effectively is a critical element of changing this situation. Organizing our data and information to make them more accessible and useable to others, having more scientific assessments like IPCC, like the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (the MA was a one-off - it needs to be done on a routine basis like the IPCC) and increasing openness in the conduct of science and opportunities for citizens to participate. I'll write again about what's wrong with the Obama team and approach as it's being laid out, but for now, let me just end this piece by saying that this team is good news. Now, we're not out of the woods yet. You can't even see the edge of the woods from here. But I am heartened by a core U.S. climate team that is lead by four brilliant, hard-fighting, deeply committed scientific leaders. Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Alex Steffen in Columns at 12:57 PM) In the Bubble
I'm a huge fan of John Thackara and his writing. As I wrote of his book, In the Bubble, That book changed my brain. From the very first few pages, I was hooked: here was design thinking about sustainability and social innovation that understood and loved technology and ingenuity, without being blinded to its downsides, that embraced prosperity and modernity without missing the big picture that our current ordering of the world is both making us less happy than we might be and destroying the planet in the process.Now, In the Bubble is coming out in French, Italian and Portuguese editions. If you have friends who are more comfortable reading in these languages than English, In the Bubble would be a great gift. I also note that you can get In the Bubble, Bruce Sterling's excellent, seminal Shaping Things, and Worldchanging together on Amazon for $US38. That's a smokin' great deal. (Remember too that supporting your local library or independent bookseller is always a good idea.) (And, if you're looking for other good reads, check out the books we recommend in our Worldchanging gift guide) Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Alex Steffen in Sustainable Design at 11:16 AM) Inventor's 2020 vision: to help 1bn of the world's poorest see better
Professor pioneers DIY adjustable glasses that do not need an optician By Esther Addley It was a chance conversation on March 23 1985 ("in the afternoon, as I recall") that first started Josh Silver on his quest to make the world's poor see. A professor of physics at Oxford University, Silver was idly discussing optical lenses with a colleague, wondering whether they might be adjusted without the need for expensive specialist equipment, when the lightbulb of inspiration first flickered above his head. What if it were possible, he thought, to make a pair of glasses which, instead of requiring an optician, could be "tuned" by the wearer to correct his or her own vision? Might it be possible to bring affordable spectacles to millions who would never otherwise have them? More than two decades after posing that question, Silver now feels he has the answer. The British inventor has embarked on a quest that is breathtakingly ambitious, but which he insists is achievable - to offer glasses to a billion of the world's poorest people by 2020. Some 30,000 pairs of his spectacles have already been distributed in 15 countries, but to Silver that is very small beer. Within the next year the now-retired professor and his team plan to launch a trial in India which will, they hope, distribute 1 million pairs of glasses. The target, within a few years, is 100 million pairs annually. With the global need for basic sight-correction, by his own detailed research, estimated at more than half the world's population, Silver sees no reason to stop at a billion. If the scale of his ambition is dazzling, at the heart of his plan is an invention which is engagingly simple. Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles. The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription. Silver calls his flash of insight a "tremendous glimpse of the obvious" - namely that opticians weren't necessary to provide glasses. This is a crucial factor in the developing world where trained specialists are desperately in demand: in Britain there is one optometrist for every 4,500 people, in sub-Saharan Africa the ratio is 1:1,000,000. The implications of bringing glasses within the reach of poor communities are enormous, says the scientist. Literacy rates improve hugely, fishermen are able to mend their nets, women to weave clothing. During an early field trial, funded by the British government, in Ghana, Silver met a man called Henry Adjei-Mensah, whose sight had deteriorated with age, as all human sight does, and who had been forced to retire as a tailor because he could no longer see to thread the needle of his sewing machine. "So he retires. He was about 35. He could have worked for at least another 20 years. We put these specs on him, and he smiled, and threaded his needle, and sped up with this sewing machine. He can work now. He can see." "The reaction is universal," says Major Kevin White, formerly of the US military's humanitarian programme, who organised the distribution of thousands of pairs around the world after discovering Silver's glasses on Google. "People put them on, and smile. They all say, 'Look, I can read those tiny little letters.'" Making and distributing a billion pairs of spectacles is no small task, of course - even at a dollar each (the target cost), and without Silver taking any profit, the cost is eye-watering. This is what Silver calls "the challenge of scaling up". For the Indian project he has joined forces with Mehmood Khan, a businessman whose family trust runs a humanitarian programme based in 500 villages in the northern state of Haryana, from where he originates. There will be no shortage of takers in the region, Khan says. "One million in one year is straightaway peanuts for me. In the districts where we are working, one district alone will have half a million people [who need the technology]." Khan's day job is as Global Leader of Innovation for Unilever, and though his employer will have no direct connection with the scheme, having contact with 150m consumers a day, as he points out, means he is used to dealing with large numbers. But surely finding funding on this scale will be impossible? "I share a vision with Josh," says Khan. "A thing like this, once it works, you create awareness, you enrol governments and the UN, and the model becomes scaleable. People begin to believe." And from a business point of view, he notes wryly, when poor people become more economically developed they also become potential customers. In addition to the enormous manufacturing and distribution challenges, Silver has one other pressing problem, namely addressing the sole complaint about the glasses - their rather clunky size and design. "Work is going on on several new designs, and further work will be required to get the costs down. The truth is that there is, at the moment, no device that can be made for a dollar in volumes of 100 million. "But I am entirely confident that we can do that." Such is his determination, you wouldn't bet against it. Oxford University, at his instigation, has agreed to host a Centre for Vision in the Developing World, which is about to begin working on a World Bank-funded project with scientists from the US, China, Hong Kong and South Africa. "Things are never simple. But I will solve this problem if I can. And I won't really let people stand in my way." Big ideasLife-changing inventions Wind-up radio Invented by Trevor Baylis, the crank-powered device brought radio to remote villages and was inspired by the need to disseminate information about Aids. Solar cooker Uses sunlight instead of solid fuel. Used in refugee camps in Darfur and while Gaza was under siege. Improvised solar cookers replaced regular ones as gas supplies diminished. (Read more about it here in the Worldchanging archives.) LifeStraw portable water filter Half of the world's poor suffer from waterborne diseases and this tool contains a halogen-based resin which is claimed to kill 99.9999% of bacteria and 98.7% of viruses that can cause deadly diseases.(Read more about it here and here in the Worldchanging archives.) The XO laptop A textbook-sized computer with built-in wireless and a screen that is readable under direct sunlight. It was designed with extreme environmental conditions such as high heat and humidity in mind. It is an educational tool created expressly for children in developing countries. For each laptop bought at around $400 (£267), one is given to a child in a developing country. (Read more about it here and here in the Worldchanging archives.) This article originally appeared in The Guardian. Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Stuff at 7:29 AM) The LUCAS Imager: Portable, Affordable Blood Tests for the Other 90 Percent
In the Global South, blood tests -- which require a lab, expensive evaluative equipment and/or the presence of a skilled technician -- are out of reach for the majority of the population. As advancements in disease awareness and disease treatment continue to take hold in the developing world, effectively combating the most deadly diseases will require a means of testing that is inexpensive enough -- and portable enough -- to give access to the millions of people in under-served communities. A new innovation that I read about recently in Wired promises to go a long way toward changing the game. A team of scientists at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute have found a way to turn a cell phone into a portable blood tester, using simple and available materials. The instrument, called the LUCAS imager (Lensfree Ultrawide-field Cell-monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging), can be used to detect diseases, and to monitor major killers: HIV, malaria and leukemia. Dave Bullock writes: UCLA researcher Dr. Aydogan Ozcan images thousands of blood cells instantly by placing them on an off-the-shelf camera sensor and lighting them with a filtered-light source (coherent light, for you science buffs). The filtered light exposes distinctive qualities of the cells, which are then interpreted by Ozcan's custom software. By analyzing the cell types present in a much larger sample, a more accurate diagnosis can be made in a matter of minutes. No more sending blood away to a lab and waiting days or weeks for the results. According to Wired, Ozcan is currently seeking a manufacturer for the devices. Read more about how the instrument works, and see more photos here. Read more about worldchanging health developments in our archives: Photo credit: Dave Bullock/Wired.com Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Julia Levitt in Health at 7:07 AM) Resource: Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism
Throughout history, some architects have earned reputations as egoists who want to impose their ideals on culture through their massive structures. Industry masters are often viewed as untouchable, as few can afford their services. Not to mention, the majority of highest-profile buildings tend to be located in the urban environment, culturally and geographically removed from rural and agrarian communities, who often are equally in need of good design. But the role of today's architect is changing. I recently read a collection of excellent accounts of architects and designers who are bridging those gaps, and becoming engaged citizens, in the book Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism edited by Bryan Bell and Katie Wakeford. This visually rich book, (published by Metropolis) is an inspiring read for anyone, but its clear and instructive descriptions also make it a reference book of sorts for those interested in acting through architecture. This book presents diverse examples of architectural projects directed towards the greater public good, in stories told from the perspectives of the architects. The stories aren't about the individuals themselves, but about their experiences. As they discuss projects that range from a public transit shelter in a disadvantaged neighborhood to new dwellings in a rural part of Taiwan, each designer describes the design process, challenges they faced and the proposed solutions. Some explain in first person; others speak along with their team as a whole; some speak more at a distance. Through stories told this way, we view the architects and the projects on a more personal level, rather than as typical textbook descriptions. With detailed accounts of projects located both in the United States and abroad, the book shows how architects have met the needs of people in all types of development. One chapter described the Social, Economic and Environmental Design Network (SEED), a group that emerged from a meeting in 2005 at Harvard, where attendees discussed ways for architecture to help communities. One of their first efforts was in New Orleans, where they helped local residents by teaching them to build furniture from salvaged materials, thereby created jobs as well as the needed furniture. Their work became the Katrina Furniture Project. One of the designs, a church pew made from debris, was used in many of the rebuilt churches that had been destroyed. Another group profiled in the book is Platforma 9.81 in Croatia. This creative group is all about reclaiming public spaces. They have "taken over" abandoned properties and created public events such as theatre openings and art shows. Platforma 9.81 re-envisions these structures, and sees how they can use them to add meaningful interaction and experience to their community. Expanding Architecture is arranged into eight chapters of various topics that allow designers of all interests to relate. As a professional designer, I found it easy to be inspired by a project. What I found extremely helpful was that this book offered guidance on how to proceed with projects in a similar way to those described, showing me exactly how I could make a difference myself. The architects profiled discuss their processes step by step, telling what worked and the actions they took. And the stories also discuss how designers overcame challenges mid-project. For example, during the Design Corps Summer Studio in Asheville, NC, the group's bus shelter design came to a halt when a police officer joined the discussion mid-project and opposed the location of the proposed site. By working with the policeman, the group was able to select a new site near a park with a stream, which turned out to be more beneficial to their project. The actual design of the book facilitates its use as a valuable reference. Graphics, color-coded chapters, block quotes and overall organization combine to allow easy perusing, whether you enjoy reading from cover to cover or just flipping through. Architects and designers are uniquely poised to help communities around the world solve pressing human problems such as the need for shelter, the need to rebuild in the face of natural disaster, and the need to craft a built environment that uses the Earth's resources sparingly and efficiently. It's wonderful to have a collection of stories that so strongly makes this point, by showing the broad array of projects that are already making a difference, and hopefully inspiring more like them in the future. For those who have already read the book and want to discuss, and learn more, Metropolis Magazine is hosting Conversations on Design as Activism. Morgan Greenseth is an interior designer living in Seattle. She currently designs hospitality and retail spaces, but is also focused on public spaces. Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Morgan Greenseth in Resource - Shelter at 12:08 PM) Harvesting the Ocean: A New Approach to Wave Energy Conversion
By Tyler Seed While much attention on renewables in recent years has focussed on solar and wind technologies, awareness has been growing around the enormous energy generating potential of the Earth's oceans. A 2005 report from the Electric Power Research Institute stated that wave power properly and effectively harnessed, would likely have minimal environmental impact, and be much less visible on the landscape, than competing technologies. At the same time, waves possess the advantage of being more predictable than either wind or solar, which in principle makes ocean power a more reliable source of energy. The rapidly expanding field of wave power is rife with innovation and an extraordinarily diverse range of approaches. Several technologies have been, and are being, developed and tested in coastal regions around the world. So far however, technical challenges involved in engineering a sufficiently inexpensive, efficient and reliable method of extracting this energy have proven difficult enough that as yet there is no agreed upon 'best way' to do it. Among the significant difficulties facing engineers of commercially viable wave power have been durability in storms, and low generating capacity factors resulting from the difficulties of extracting a steady load from constantly shifting wave motions. Irregular and alternating wave motions lead to large variations of the power produced, severely limiting the power output of many Wave Energy Converters (WEC). Mikael Sidenmark, founder of Ocean Harvesting Technologies, and the inventor of the Ocean Harvester (pictured above), has developed a method of generating electricity from waves that offers compelling and cost-efficient solutions to these problems. As Sidenmark explains: A buoy follows the wave motions at the surface. When the wave rises, a drum inside the buoy is rotated by a mooring line wound around it, converting vertical motion into a rotation. This is a very efficient way of extracting energy from waves that is independent of the wave sizes and has been used in earlier technologies. What is unique with the Ocean Harvester is the way a counterweight is used to achieve a leveled and controlled load on the generator. As a result, excess energy from larger waves can be accumulated and used to compensate for shortage from smaller waves. In combination with the flexible mooring, this also composes a simple and efficient storm protection system. Together, these characteristics result in an exceptionally high capacity factor.The system should produce a consistent level of power throughout the wave motion, over changing wave sizes, and even in storms. Besides generating efficiently and evenly, the simplicity of its design will allow the Ocean Harvester to be easily protected in rough conditions, and make its manufacture impressively cost-efficient. Ocean Harvesting Technologies is currently planning a two-year scale model testing period, slated to begin in March 2009 in the coastal Blekinge region of Sweden, on the Baltic Sea. The company expects the Ocean Harvester to enter the commercial market in 2013. The AquaBuOYImage source: Finavera Institutions across Sweden are researching further possibilities of wave energy. Among those with notable programs are Uppsala University, Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) (where wave power research initiated with the Ocean Harvester in February 2008), and at Chalmers University of Technology, where researchers were involved in pioneering the AquaBuoy, a concept now being tested on a commercial scale. Read more about innovations in wave energy in the Worldchanging archives: Wave Energy (2005) The Wave Hub (2006) Biomimetic Ocean Power (2006) Graphic Series: Earthly Ideas, Week 10: Ocean Power (2008) Tyler Seed is completing a Masters' degree in Sustainability at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden. Top image source: Ocean Harvesting Technologies Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Columns at 10:50 AM) |
 |
back to home |
BFI's Programs |
Join our Network |
Visit BFI's Online Store |
Search our Site |
About BFI |
Contact Us | Help | Site Map
BFI Community Content | Who is R. Buckminster Fuller?
This site © 2005-7 Buckminster Fuller Institute | Built and designed by Quilted | Powered by drupal.
BFI Community Content | Who is R. Buckminster Fuller?
This site © 2005-7 Buckminster Fuller Institute | Built and designed by Quilted | Powered by drupal.