Competition! The dream of the electric ship, or ferry, or something to keep us going on the current course.

What does this ship make you think of? Give me your best, win a big prize.

2bFrank sees this parallel:

 

Im more in this direction..

Anon thinks of this.

The open service packet service - idea.

The Open Packet Service (OPS), work just like the backbone of the Internet (the IP protocol) with a twist.

How it works:

I want to send  a packet to my friend living a 100 km from me. I go to the Internet website for OPS and I plots in where I live and where I want the packet to go. OPS then suggests how much I should "CHARGE" the packet with - lets say 50 bobs. I pay 50 bobs to OPS. Then OPS puts on the Internet that a packet is waiting at my house for pickup and that there is 50 bobs to be made if you deliver this packet. Now here comes the beautiful part. Someone sees this message (on the OPS site) and he is going by my house anyways so he picks up the packet. He would love to take the packet all the way to the receiver, but he can only take it half the way. Fortunately there is a small OPS trading post half way on route (It a small shop of any sort with Internet connection). He hands in the packet in at the OBS trading post - This is being registered at OBS and he gets his cut of the 50 bobs - Lets say he gets 23 bobs. Then the packet lays at the OBS trading post - Charged with 25 bobs (the shop-keeper gets 2 for his service). Another person sees the packet on the Internet an picks up the packet and deliver it to the receiver, earning him 25 bobs (when my friend tells OPS that the packet is being received).
That is Open Service Packet service!

As long as the packet gets nearer to its destination you can ear money.
A traveler can pick up several packets on the way earning more money on the way.
If a packet gets stock on its way (or you think it goes to slow) to the destination, it can be "overcharged" where it is (because you can see where its stuck on-line).

Most cars only travel with 1 passenger, this could be a way to make that car travel a bit more reasonable (and economic).

The infrastructure making OPS possible is all in place (Internet, VISA, mobile phones, people, cars, boats etc.).

There is one several obstacles that need to be worked out in order to make the system work.  

• Make it  possible for citizens to earn micro-money (there is a tax bureaucracy issue here).
• Get around the argument that OPS will be used to carry illegal substances eg. drugs. When I have discussed OPS with friends they all mention this - but I cant see how this differs from other postal-services. Maybe a solution is to carry OPS packets in transparent plastic wrap. 
• What if the packet is lost on the way? Who is responsible? Again I think there is a workaround to the problem. When the OPS-traveler picks up the packet he gets liable for a specified amount and if he loses the packet the sender is compensated.

You can say that OPS is just the file-sharing network of real-world packets. People do it all the time through friends (can you take this and give it to..), OPS is just a more organized way of doing it. This is to me what getting organized is all about.  

Background:
I live on an island in Sweden and this comes with mixed blessings, one of them being trying to get a packet from "overseas". Several times I have ordered items from Australia and Hong Kong. I can follow the packet via the wonders of the Internet a see how Its getting nearer and nearer - Until it gets to Sweden then it stops. Nothing happens. 3 days later I get a letter telling me that I can pick up my FEDEX/USB etc. packet at the local post-office (5 km from here and not the nearest post-office). Trying to SEND a packet from this place ANYWHERE, and that includes just across the island, is very expensive and slow or maybe impossible.

Why you ask am I so hung up on sending or getting a packet you may ask?
The answer is that the second I want a spare part or something that is not a consumer goods that is pre-chewed and forced-feed my through proper channels I'm in trouble.
If I try to get my friends on the other site of the island something they need, I don't think it should be cheaper and a lot easier to drive a 100 km in order to do this.
The postal service has gone from bad to worse the last 20 years. Service is gone and the postman can not as before deliver anything or pick anything up (still unemployment is rising..).
If we are to able to save energy, travel less, make things last longer, repair stuff - we must have a working postal service. Before the state thought is was vital to have a working postal service - I gees its why they chose to own it - now 5 to 12, 10 minutes before we really need it, its sold of and dismantled.

That made me think of the idea of the Open Packet Service (OPS).

______________________________
Small update (24/2-2010). Announcement; The Swedish postal service is to be cut by 2000 (more).

Resilience

Wikipedia: Resilience is the ability of a material to recover from a shock, insult, or disturbance.
Its also psychological resilience. We need both physical and psychological resilience in the near future. Another way to view resilience is short-term and long-term resilience. My mother told me about a 1960 short-film describing how the whole of society is hanging in a tread - and that is how vulnerable the society is. Resilience is the opposite to this.

Psychological resilience.
As I have described earlier we have become true believers in progress and a better society (still praying to the unknown God). So if we are meet with the opposite (a crises), most people will react badly to this - denial, anger (especially at the messenger), despair and so on. We need psychological resilience to deal with the crises and we need resilience in dealing with the transition to a carbon starved future.

The Swedish state has a department called Department for psychological defense - www.psycdef.se (this sends you to another URL with a more acceptable name).

The goal of the Swedish PsyDef is;
"The task of the MSB is to enhance and support societal capacities for preparedness for and prevention of emergencies and crises. When one does occur, we support the stakeholders involved by taking the right measures to control the situation".

That sounds very good - maybe the word "stakeholders" is a little strange. Does that mean the citizens or does it mean the institutions, the government?

There is a dilemma when you try to build up the resilience in the country.
One of the most destructive forces that can be unleashed in a country is panic and chaos. Ex. looting can destroy a working society in short time (see Iraq).
To get through the first shock without panic and chaos is vital. Therefore you want the citizens to be calm in a crises and the listen to the authorities.
THEN you want the citizens to have personal resilience and stamina, being able to cope without authorities (for a while). The state knows it can not be everywhere in times of crises and that people have to make it through on there own.
So there is needed 2 sorts of resilience:

• Shock resilience (short term, trusting authorities, centralized)
• Abandonment resilience (long term, self sustaining, localized) 

Shock resilience is mostly needed in case of a war, a great catastrophe, breakdown of the banking system or the electric grid, an outbreak of a pandemic, in the hours and days following the crises.
 
Abandonment resilience is needed needed in the aftermath of war, catastrophes and is needed to cope with slow moving negative changes like rising unemployment, rising prices, shortages, living with the consequences of interruptions in the electric grid, the banking system, in the month following the crises.     

Physical resilience.
This can be translated to sustainability, invulnerability, independence, durability.
Often described as the capacity to keep vital parts of the society functioning (mostly police, hospitals, government, military, banking system, electric power is meant by that). Ideas of self sustainability has long been abandoned and the trend going towards globalism. Ideas of local self independence is not part of any central governments thinking or policy. Some local people think about this, but when it comes to actually prioritize and build resilience in the rural areas there is nothing. The trend since 1960 has been going towards centralization.
Again its reasonable to talk in terms of short and long time resilience in the society.
The development of bigger faster machines and transportation plus pervasive communication technology has greatly improved the short term resilience since WW2, but the long term resilience is since WW2 been greatly reduced. A power-cut will cripple the society instantly and the petrol reserve will last max. 90 days. After 90 days are we in very unplaned territory.
The long term physical resilience is just not there - lack of petrol and lack of spare-parts will grind the current society structure to a halt.

The planing for long term resilience was on mind of those in power after the war, but this focus withered away gradually until it was silently totally gone somewhere in the late 1980s. 
I have found an example of some one of the last long term resilience efforts.
As late as 1980 there was still a university department in Sweden looking in to how the biggest Swedish car manufacture could prepare Volvo cars to run on gasified wood gas if needed. During the second world war more than 1.000.000 cars and trucks was modified to run on wood-gas. It was this effort made it possible to have continuation of the civil society during the war. This lesson was finally lost 1986 and today we are even more vulnerable than 1939 because modern cars can for the most not be modified to run on wood-gas without a major intrusive intervention on the car. Read more on www.gengas.nu och här.

Here is another sad story from Sweden. This story is of now. The expansion of wind power is being hampered by many "stakeholders", one of them being the military. Modern wind turbines are big and they shadow the radars of the military. That means that the military turns down many application for wind turbines. The military do this on the base of national security (and has done for many years). That brings us to question of national security and that brings us to the question of resilience - short term and long term. A more energy independent Sweden would be more resilient and more secure as I understand security - national security. Today Sweden is participation in the "operation" in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is about natural gas and gas-pipelines. I doubt very much that Sweden would be there if Sweden was energy independent - fighting wars in faraway countries is a question of national security and I don't believe its a good solution to our energy dependency (I'm not interested in the moral aspect of the question). Permitting Sweden to become this vulnerable to factors we can not control in countries very far from Sweden is irresponsible to say the least. This policy has weakened the Swedish (and EUs and USAs) national security to a state where we have to be aggressors in order to get the resources we need. This is the result of a very faulted security policy. That politicians have acted in this short-sided manor is not surprising, but how security expert within the military and intelligence haven't protested loudly during the last 35 years is a mystery to me. To build the wellbeing of the society on a dwindling oil resource is more than critical. The facts have been around for 35 years! Even the US military has faced the facts. And again its not me and some other nobodies who think that the peak oil is a fact - Its the IEA, The International Energy Agency. We are prepare for the Ruskies, but not trivial facts of live.

And when it comes to preparing the population for a carbon-starved future the policy's are just as depressing. Somehow the risk of scaring people and thereby damaging the stock marked outweighs the risk of social chaos and shock when the bubble burst. This is VERY much contra to what the whole idea of a psychological defense. The trust in authorities is paramount in times to come and the time has come to face the facts - The stock marked and the financial system can not be saved by optimism. The last bailout was the last bailout and it kept us warm for 1,5 years, but the smile is wearing thin. Trust is a hard won currency. Who is going to listen politicians excusing them self, saying that nobody could have known? The public servants should consider how they can keep some of their credibility in the coming times.    
I'm afraid the only plan is the "don't panic - help will come" and that is not a plan.

Toolbox for a future - 4 - Community

I think it went down like this, for centuries where we forced to live together, we needed one-another to make do especially in the daily live. Needed not in an emotional sense, but in a very concrete and physical way - it was a question of survival. Marriage was a lot more than love - more like a cooperative (thats not best foundation for a happy marriage). Houses where small and people where cramped together with no private space and labor was hard. That we dreamed of freedom and private space and independence is no mystery. Then came the possibility to become more independent. First we got free from the large extended family, then later from the the closer family itself. We cut away connections because we could, because they where not needed anymore (this only the story of the western people, most people of the 3rd world still regard the extended family as close family).

The transition to a sustainable future will bring us closer together - for better and for worse. The current state of affairs is mostly characterized by fragmentation. We can (could) live a whole life not knowing or talking to the next door neighbor and we let the state and firms take care of everyday needs. I am pretty sure we are seeing the beginning of a smaller state and fever companies - not because I want to see it, but as a consequence of less resources. That will put the local community and family back in the center and that will be a huge transition. Being forced together (again) will create conflicts and it will take time to realize the need for a closer local community.

The energy matrix.
There is some very clear connections between how much energy a we use and what the society looks like.

Less energy <-----------------------------------> More energy
Simple structure <-----------------------------> Complex structure
Local foundation <----------------------------> Global foundation
All rounders <------------------------------------> Specialists
Shorter connections <-----------------------> Longer connections
Harsher justice <-------------------------------> Mercy justice
Long term investments <-------------------> Short term investments
Small government <--------------------------> Big government
Big family <---------------------------------------> No family
Less taxfunded social security <---------> Taxfunded social security
Very little private loans <------------------> Bloated private loans 

I'm not very optimistic in believing that the state or government is going to "do the right thing" and begin the transition to a more stable and sustainable society in a timely and thorough fashion. The state and government IS going to loose power in this transition and people ARE going to be very critical to the role of the state and government. Since WW2 has the state been able to get involved in every thinkably aspect of the citizens life. I don't have an opinion about the size or role of the state, that is beyond the point, the point is that the state have no possibility to maintain this omnipresence it have now. What should be a natural way of scaling back the state (and commune) by looking at the path of expansion, can very likely be that the state (and commune) abandons its primary services (schools, hospitals, collective transportation..) to be able to keep the prestiges areas (diplomacy, universities, trades agreements, EU..), resulting in a distant top heavy organization not delivering the demanded services and that will deepens the split between the citizens and its state.
Local community is going to be the tool that will make everyday life function - I don't believe someone is not going to come to the rescue.

Toolbox for a future - 3 - Open communication technology

Is a telephone-company natural? Where does it say that there always will be overblown telephone companies with a near monopoly on electric communication? Do these companies do there best to provide us with the best and cheapest product possible? My opinion is that telecom companies has been hampering a lot of natural development and that if they could, they would turn back the clock to before the Internet. Remember the Internet was an ACCIDENT! CCmail and Microsoft tried to build an commercial Internet 1994-95 but couldn't agree on a common standard for exchanging emails. Companies grew tired and turned to the "Internet" awaiting a standard - THAT was the beginning of the Internet. Before 1994 the Universities had failed to see that anyone beside them and the US military (for launching nuclear weapons) could have any use of the technology - They sat on the technology from 1968 to 1993.. Let there be another wireless "accident".
I you google Radio spectrum and take a closer look you will find that "common" people are left with scraps of the spectrum. The radio spectrum is a state owned commodity sold to the highest bidder. And the frequencies we can use without a permit or payment is heavily regulated (max 100mv). A normal GSM phone is from 1 to 2.5 watt and this is a transceiver put directly to the head - Therefore we can conclude that the 100mw limit put on WLAN is not to spare our health. But do not despair - the WW record of WLAN transmission is over 200 km with only 100mw.

Several years ago I began thinking about how I could use my knowledge of the Internet to a better use than pushing more product to the already besieged consumer.
The conclusion became the idea of the SU.I.S. - SUstainable Internet Solution. The idea was a self-configuring self-healing digital communication center-less mesh network. This is over 10 years ago. The idea was not novel - I take no credit. Since then there has been some progress in the area of mesh networking, but no consumer or open source application is ready. The military is using mesh networking since long, but the technology don't seem to trickle-down to the rest of us and thats a pity.
A mesh network could bring much relive in disaster areas and 3. world countries where a central government is either non existing or corrupt. Centralized systems are prone to corruption and easy to disrupt.
Do we need this? Here? We got ADSL and 3G and mobile phones and wired phones, why another (slower) communication network? I regard this as an insurance, just like the fire-department. There is also the question of cost - the common European spends over 100 Eur a month on communication, paying private companies an absurd overprice for eg. SMS. In an economic crises many people will scale back on their communication capability, when we might need I most. I don't like the idea of depending on big companies when trying to (re)organize society. Local communication (witch is most of communication) should not cost full rate mobile phone rates and local Internet traffic should not go across the Atlantic ocean. A wireless mesh network using existing WLAN technology would be a good beginning to liberating communication.
Remember its not the bandwidth you miss when you are off-line - Its the connection, regardless of how slow it might be. A wireless mesh is not going to be fast, but it could be a stable and reliable line of communication.

Several open source mesh system is under development, but it will take some time before we see an application that can be installed on every kind of platform and operating system. Here is also some promising developments.

If you come upon interesting news about open source wireless network mesh'es please make a comment!
(I have decided to have ads on the blog - I suspect that it will give me a better google rating for some strange reason..)

Is Open Source Hardware a new movement?

Since I started thinking about sustainable technology and then stumbled upon the idea of Open Source Hardware and began trawling the net for the subject it have become clear to me that I am not alone - far from it, but also that the phenomenon is in its infancy - The information is not connected and people are not connected - YET!
Another strange generation phenomenon has also become apparent - The old school versus new school.
Old school is the now 50+ needs that missed the PC/Software/Internet race and still reads magazines like this or this or what about this one. These old men have a very different way of sharing knowledge - you suck up to those with more knowledge (or more toys or buy some fancy stuff useself so others wants to play with you - knowledge is power and you better start pleasing..

New School is another creature. New school IS about sharing.
Its about helping and getting more people interested in your interest. This has also brought some unlikely groups of people in the realms of electronics. Last week I meet 2 young(er than me) woman and to my surprise we talked about Arduino and electronics for the best of an hour. I am very pleased about seeing more than I expected woman in the forums and behind projects I visit. This might also keep a lit on the "I have the fastest, newest, biggest.." male trend that pester male dominated areas.

Another thought I had was the other day when thinking about why this electronics bug has caught on. Its a reaction to being utterly at the mercy of things that we have NO idea about how functions. Basically its about empowering and New school is coming on strong.

Toolbox for a future - 2 - Permaculture

When thinking about the future it is easy to forget our basic need for food and shelter. Food production used to occupy 90% of the work force. With the help of first coal and then oil, agriculture was radically transformed and mechanized. Today under 1% of the western population work as farmers. The biggest challenge for the future can easily be food production. Modern agriculture IS the use of fossil fuel - many good people are writing a lot about this already.
My focus is technology and my interest is to see if there is some technology that can be of help in the future farming. One of most promising "technologies" I have come about is Permaculture. Its really nothing new, but modern communication and the possibility to send seed and plants across the world has made a new/old way of farming possible and more effective. Permaculture in its current form is not a silver bullet, it is still very labor intensive and heavy work. I have spend many hours talking about this with my eco farmer friends. There is 2 main issues in farming (there is many issues, but me being a techman sees the issues from a technological viewpoint).

• Heavy work (like ploughing, digging ditches)
  
• Repetitive work (like weeding, planting)

When I have been going through the different kinds of workload in the farm, ploughing turned up to be hardest problem to see a non-carbon solution to.
There is work going on in the area, but it clear that there is a long way to go before agro-robots is rolling around a field near you.
The challenge of a sustainable agriculture in a carbon starved future is the same as for the rest of society, but food is a basic need and needs special attention.
The degree of complexity that will be sustainable is also a major challenge. How much outside dependency can there be to rely on? Spare-parts? What will the trade value of produce be? How is a transition to be accomplished from city to the country-side? (be sure there is to be a transition). Another strange problem we could be facing is that the current system is "to" effective - meaning that "to" few can provide to much food and that this hampers the transition (back to farming) at the same time that those not working cant afford the food produced. This "problem of efficiency" can be seen today in the way China can manufacture nearly everything needed for the rest of the world. That this is not a sustainable way of organizing a society is becoming blatantly obvious - Term like; "The information society", "The service sector", "The new economy" is VOID. Trading is a 2 way transaction, just as the relation between city and country side is.
Why Permaculture then? The basic philosophy of Permaculture is "most food for least amount of work" but with a twist - Its "most food" for you living at the farm or close to the farm. Permaculture tries to have a huge biodiversity - not a kind of farming thats suited for export or the supermarket chain. A central power might not like Permaculture because its not suited for central control and taxation, but it has the promise of being a way of farming that frees up labor AT THE FARM, locally thereby making it possible to think about and make something else than food (eg. how to build your DIY electric car).

More about Permaculture in a cold climate.