Massively Networked

DIY civil works for the 21st century

Residents of Kauai heard news that flood damage in much-touristed Polihale State Park would take the cash-strapped state two years and US$4 million to remedy, likely forcing several businesses to shut down. Eight days later the repairs were complete. For (almost) free. Did the state realize the potential impact on local business, get really clever about sourcing supplies and kick the project into high gear? No. Residents affected by damage volunteered their time and donated supplies to get 'er done. Welcome to DIY civil works in action.

Horatio Alger bootstrapping, lack of stigma attached to failure and openness to change provide much of the scaffolding for the mythos that shapes attitudes in the United States - so perhaps it's no surprise that Hawaii residents felt empowered to ignore the state's answer and find a way to fix the park themselves. What makes this story potentially more interesting is when you align it with the current growing economic crisis and other DIY movements afoot. What happens when economic necessity meets DIY culture and a technological platform that enables massively networked coordination of resources?

John Geraci, founder of DIYCity.org, has a practical vision for participatory civil engagement by creating open-source tools that can draw upon the collective intelligence of city residents to find ways to create the city they want. Much like the Kauai example, citizens would be drawn together by a common frustration - say, inefficiencies in the public transit system - and collectively assemble the human and technological resources to make public transportation a better experience.

Unlike Kauai, however, the DIY civil works projects need not be in response to a crisis. These projects could simply start with the question "What would improve your experience of the city?" or "What would make your life more enjoyable? More fun? More satisfying?" The emergent nature of massively networked communications can coalesce a movement toward positive and creative changes that could not have been anticipated by rational, bureaucratic processes.

Moreover, the coalescence and focusing of human intent is only part of the DIY equation. The other part is enabling the physical environment to participate in the communication. Right now there are hundreds of projects in maker/hacker spaces that are bootstrapping technological innovations on the cheap. Many of these projects leverage wireless technology, inexpensive circuit boards and radio frequency tagging to create environmentally-responsive communicants that can be embedded within physical spaces. The Arduino open source electronics platform, for example, puts creating something like an iPhone-like accelerometer within the reach of a reasonably intelligent tinkerer.

Take the kind of focused human intent found in the Kauai example, empower it with inexpensive and accessible creative resources, feed it all into a massively networked platform for communication and collaboration - and, like the folks on Kauai, we need not wait for the state to set the agenda any longer. The tools for 21st century DIY civil works are in our hands right now.

April 14, 2009 Update: A great example of DIY civil works from Estonia

Thought bubbles: DIY (& die?), governing the leaderless revolution, decentralizing conscious intent

   Thought Bubbles shares bits of news, ideas, links and random scribblings. Feel free to email me your own.

I've spent the entire month of February so far hosting a googolplex of viral and bacterial creatures, kicked off by the flu week one - thus the long break in posts. I'll get back on it soon. In the mean time, some items I might write more on later:

DIY - & die?: March's Wired columnist Clive Thompson is enthusiastic about the maker culture revolution wherein "everything you want could soon be micromanufactured just for you." Yea! - right? Well maybe not so much, or at least not so fast. Sven Johnson shares several examples of DIY manufacturing gone wrong. You might want to think twice before putting those darling necklace beads you ordered from Etsy in your mouth.

Governing the leaderless revolution: "Thanks to the internet, the tools for revolutionary change are at our fingertips, but as of yet this revolution has no name, no leaders and no formal agenda. We have barely tapped into its potential to become the advanced operating system that will allow us to catch up with the future." -from a SpaceCollective.org project. Brings up questions about governance and organization in a dynamic, emergent system. Kevin Kelly has some thoughts on governing the swarm as well.

Decentralizing conscious intent: Interesting juxtaposition (to me, anyway) of two TED presentations - Elizabeth Gilbert talking about relating to genius as an external entity that communicates inspiration and Juan Enriquez talking about the rise of a new, technology-enhanced, hominid species "homo evolutis." Both these talks have in common the notion that we as human beings are informed and formed by forces not wholly governed by our conscious intent.

Rapid prototyping: Closing the gap between imagination and reality

Ideas that were abstract and esoteric a few decades ago now seem more tangible to me in large part to activities the Web enables. I’m reminded in particular of Sorbonne professor Henri Corbin’s description of what he called in the ‘60s the mundus imaginalis: “a world as ontologically real as the world of the senses and the world of the intellect, a world that requires a faculty of perception belonging to it, a faculty that is a cognitive function, a noetic value, as fully real as the faculties of sensory perception, or intellectual intuition.”  He believed the imaginal realm to be a less-tangible yet fully real precursor to what can appear in the material world.

Corbin carefully distinguishes imagination from fantasy. Having a well-developed faculty of imagination makes the difference between, say, producing Cirque du Soleil and a roadside carnival, or Bilbao Guggenheim and the Venetian. The fantasy end of the spectrum tends to yield products of little substance, whereas being able to tap into the realm of imagination potentially adds greater value.

This notion is relevant to the period we’re entering now. Increasing numbers of people have access to tools that enable rapid prototyping of ideas. Already it’s easy to see how political ideas, music, video, virtual realities and the written word can be prototyped, remixed and iterated in the online space. It’s been less obvious, so far, how these tools might impact the realm of material production.

Maker/hacker spaces are doing just that; members are coming up with designs that can be rapidly prototyped and executed in the 3D world, for example, through 3D printers and cutters (laser, water or other). As the trend continues it’s perhaps a matter of time before the tools of the online and offline worlds become connected enough where the gap between imagination and reality starts to close.

In this version of the emerging interactive marketplace, it will not be sufficient to rely on relatively slow-moving, linear processes that require project plans and product specs to move ideas to market – though these will continue to have their place. I expect the skills that will distinguish leaders include the faculty to tap into the mundus imaginalis and discern what of value might be drawn from its contents.