Documenting a personal quest for non-toxic housing.
Thursday, April 29, 2004Thinking About The Future
I've been thinking a lot lately about the notion of a post-industrial intentional community; an eco-village focused not merely on the goal of sustainability but rather on the continuing cultivation of post-industrial technology. Most true eco-villages have tended to be testing grounds for this in the form of 'soft' technologies which quite often overlap the sphere of post-industrial technology. But contemporary environmentalism has become increasingly anti-technology, focussing on a low-tech agrarian vision modeled on the example of Amish culture that sees environmental sustainability as necessitating personal sacrifice in standard of living. This is very different from the post-industrial vision which sees the responsible and open use of technology in concert with rational design as the key to sustainability without sacrifice. It's a difference between walking backward into the future and walking forward.
This used to be an ideal shared by the originally pragmatic ecology movement, the post-industrial movement being largely absorbed into it as a result. But it was lost when contemporary environmentalism adopted the same intellectually fraudulent dystopian dogma of Thomas Malthus its own enemies themselves have long prescribed to and devolved into a Jihad over which flavor of apocalypse we should be thrown into; the one that looks like Bladerunner or the one that looks like the Irish Potato Famine. But, in reality, our civilization is heading in neither of those directions. It is evolving toward a post-industrial future, even if most people are utterly ignorant to that fact or even what the term 'post-industrial' means. So it's occurred to me that maybe it's time to revive and renew that pragmatic post-industrial meme to make this an easier and less painful transition. Perhaps it's time someone focused an intentional community sharply on a post-industrial vision and the goal of cultivating that vision and its technology widely.
What am I talking about here when I speak of a post-industrial vision? What does 'post-industrial' mean?
The term was first coined by a loose band of intellectuals in the post-war era who became disturbed by what they perceived as the inherent unsustainability of the civilization, consumer culture, and system of economics western corporations were systematically imposing on the world. They anticipated an imminent collapse of the current systems of industrialization and global economics for two reasons; first, they were environmentally unsustainable and therefore doomed. Our contemporary economics system is a zero-sum game that can only exist if it keeps growing, seeking out new sources of cheap resources to exploit and new markets to sell stuff to. But one of the obvious lessons of WWII and the post-war period was that we were soon to run out of any 'new' territory to exploit. Capitalism was effectively taking over the whole globe -even Communist portions of it indirectly. The conventional model of corporate industrialization is too primitive to function in a closed-cycle resource ecology. It squanders too much energy and resources across unnecessarily long and redundant transportation lines, doesn't track or recover post-use resources, doesn't know how to recycle or design for recycling, doesn't take responsibility for post-use pollution, doesn't understand that pollution equals inefficiency and that any stuff a process has to throw away is earnings squandered. So in a system of zero-sum economics industrialization as we know it is doomed to fail at some point, and that point was looking very imminent.
The other reason was that they believed that society was coming close to its limit of tolerance for the social, cultural, and psychological damage the consumer and corporate culture were generating and that social and political upheaval would soon result. Corporate industrialization had greatly improved the standard of living for people in the western world but, in the process, had disrupted traditional patterns of society all over the world and systematically subjected vast populations to economic exploitation. As economics starts to fail a process of class triage sets in. The middle-classes can't maintain their standard of living anymore. They start falling off the speeding-up treadmill in increasing numbers. The lower classes can't maintain even the crude basics of survival, swelling the ranks of an increasingly desperate underclass. At some point, these intellectuals reasoned, the larger portion of global society would decide they'd had enough. The result, a wave of civil unrest accelerating the already inevitable collapse of global economics and taking governments with it.
Looking at the history between 1950 and 1980 it is easy to see why these people would anticipate such things. We were very plainly dancing on the brink in that period and all sorts of people were predicting any number of different apocalypses then. But there was a way to avoid these impending disasters. You could cultivate new alternative industrial technologies, new social structures, and new community architectures which could effectively function in a closed-cycle renewable energy driven ecology of resource utilization much like the ecological systems of nature. You could quietly, smoothly, subtly, obsolesce the old system before it ran itself off the cliff and spare the environment and society a lot of the damage and suffering it might otherwise face -maybe even save civilization and the environment both from complete destruction. Thus was born the notion of cultivating a post-industrial culture; a culture with the sustainable technology to maintain a high standard of living and high quality of life in the absence of large scale centralized industry and the dead-end economic system that supports that. A culture based on rational materials and energy use and personal industry; means of fabrication at the individual scale using free public domain technology allowing a person to make -and recycle- for himself and his immediate neighbors things he might otherwise have to buy with cash from corporate industry. A means to maintain his standard of living directly by his own personal labor -and with the least amount of that labor, material, and energy as possible. The keys to freedom lay in control and ownership of the means of production.
Now, this is an idea rather different from anti-technology 'back to nature' notions based on the presumption that sustainability is about self-sacrifice and subsistence farming. The post-industrial culture knows it can't go backwards because the world population is too great. You could reduce all civilization to a pre-industrial state and it would still result in mass death and reduction of the global environment to a desert. So it seeks to progress civilization to sustainability rather than regressing it. Much sustainability gains are possible simply by changing the way we make and use things, by simplifying our lives, and by being more rational about what we really need and what really constitutes quality of life. Many of these changes are already happening of their own accord as a consequence of information technology and evolving industrial technologies.
Sounds great but why do we hear very little of this movement today? Partly because, as noted previously, it was largely absorbed into the early ecology movement which originally shared -and in fact appropriated- much of its ideals. There was little distinction between the two until contemporary environmentalists became disciples of Malthus.
Also, the disasters predicted never quite manifested sufficiently to be taken seriously. The social upheavals and energy crisis of the 60s and 70s didn't slap westerners in the head hard enough to get them to fully wake up. The inventions of intercontinental container shipping, financial telecommunications networks, and information technology coupled to an Asian industrial boom, the fall of Communism, the drug-addict-like compulsive consumerism of Americans, increasing intervention of governments to prop-up economics when it starts to fail, and the systematic cultivation of a culture of denial by right-wing political factions and the corporate interests allied to them have helped to give the old dinosaur system a temporary reprieve. There was always another convenient little war, political distraction, or shiny new consumer fetish to keep people from paying attention to what was happening around them.
At the time the at-hand technology was also rather inadequate to its proposed task even if it could effectively point in the right direction. Industrial autonomy still required fairly large facilities. Most theorists projected post-industrial communities needing very large populations to achieve effective self-sufficiency -and that with radical lifestyle changes. This is partly what inspired ideas like Paulo Soleri's Arcologies -a very post-industrial concept. It has long been difficult to establish community projects that start out at such a large scale and involve radical changes in the 'normal' lifestyle -at least without the gravitas of a religious movement. Even some of the oldest contemporary eco-villages are no where near that population level.
In addition, by the 1980s the creeping fundementalism in the environmentalist movement had begun to drive away a lot of intellectuals, replacing them with New Age mystics who only served to taint the credibility of the movement in general. That's why environmentalism suffered such a great decline in popular attention over the two previous decades. People gave up, sold out, or found what seemed like more fertile ground in the dazzling new technologies of the Information Age.
But the threats have not gone away, as witnessed by the steady increase of apocalyptic predictions by a steadily growing number of economists. And we are beginning to see the waves of famine, terrorism, war, dismantling of social services, whittling away of personal freedom, and radical global financial restructuring that hint at the vested interests' circling of the wagons in anticipation of the end of the game. They apparently do have some inkling of what is coming and are struggling to keep the dinosaur on life support as they squeeze the last bit of profit out of it before it finally gives up the ghost. It's a fool's errand, though. In a few decades they will only find themselves sitting on mountains of Confederate dollars.
Today the technology tools we need for an effective post-industrial culture are close at hand. We are already beginning to see a transformation of industry away from distant large scale centralized production as a result of the inherent technology trend toward systems of decreasing scale and increasing flexibility. Indeed, the large centralized factory is already obsolete. Today more goods are produced by multi-purpose job-shop facilities than by large centralized factories. Most contemporary industrial production is now a process of fan-in and fan-out across global networks of small fabrication and distribution sites with products being finished progressively closer to the point of sale. And this past two decades has seen an explosion in home-based cottage industry doing things that once were impossible without large factories. Already at least one new auto maker is experimenting with on-demand manufacture of cars within the auto dealership itself from modular components. In a few years that could be the way most products are made. Nanotech advocates now routinely predict a civilization virtually identical to that advocated by the post-industrial visionaries of 60s. Whether we realize it or not, our civilization is transforming into a post-industrial one. The challenge at hand is to shepherd that transition for maximum positive effect and minimum human suffering.
So, what would a post-industrial intentional community be like? Ostensibly little different from the typical eco-village except that it is more technology and craft oriented, more focused on making things. And not just any technology but open-source technology that enables people to make an expanding diversity of things themselves from materials obtained or recycled locally. The architecture may seem similar with its focus on renewable energy and sustainable materials. And there might also be that same old subsistence farm -or something equivalent based on hydroponics. But there would also be machine shops, labs, offices, and studios, some integrated into homes and others in shared facilities akin to a light industry business incubator. And the structure of the community is more compact and unified. A single integrated community-structure rather than a scattered mass of homesteads in order that energy, resource, and labor efficiency is optimized. Altogether, it may be similar to the 'Bolo' communities described by author P.M.
I think the architecture of such a community must meet a couple of key criteria beyond that of typical 'green' architecture. The physical structure of the community must not be 'hard wired' because it is likely to change in population, size and organization as it evolves. I don't believe in static community design. That's an oxymoron. The notion that any structure will have one use throughout its lifetime is anachronistic in the 21st Century. A community and its structures must be allowed to freely evolve in response to its occupants individual interactions. The failure to support this is one of the roots of the pathological dysfunction of contemporary urban habitats. Thus this community should employ structures easy to adapt, renovate, or even move whole and that would favor systems of modular construction or use of extremely low cost and simple materials. Initial construction would be challenging because of limited capitol, limited resident skill, nacent industrial capability, and perhaps limited time. This would favor the adaptive reuse of industrial cast-offs like ISO shipping containers or the use of kit housing products but it's important that such things be chosen based on their potential for reverse-engineering and/or recycling/reuse. Something like modular factory-built homes or kit homes using nailed construction are bad choices as these are not easily duplicated by post-industrial means or easily recycled or adapted without material waste. However, kit homes based on modular component post & beam construction, space frames, modular truss systems, and so on are freely adaptable and can serve as valuable textbooks for their own construction and design method, being easily reverse-engineered so their components can be owner-duplicated endlessly and possibly improved upon.
Altogether we get a picture of a kind of freely morphing community structure made of modular interchangeable components. A simple and loosely defined ring form seems appropriate, defining a strict boundary between the natural and human environments, between the personal, community, and external boundaries, following the examples of both primitive human settlements and the futurist arcologies.
While at-hand technology is much more capable than it was 20-30 years ago, it still isn't all quite there to achieve industrial autonomy right away. The base of knowledge isn't in place. Technique has to be worked out. This of course, is the reason for this community's existence -to do this work. Just as an artifact needs to be specifically designed and engineered for factory fabrication, so too must it be designed and engineered for a post-industrial mode of fabrication. And, in the context of the post-industrial culture and its efficiency-oriented community structures, the need for a lot of consumer goods can simply be factored out by smart design. If one has a computer one technically shouldn't need a diversity of other home electronics as the one device -if properly designed- can handle all media and communications. Similarly, the need for factory-made toilet paper can be reduced by the use of bidets. The need for replacement light bulbs eliminated by the use of fiber optic lighting. The need for disposable storage bags, wraps, and boxes eliminated by reusable containers. So this community would be starting from scratch, seeking to cultivate this knowledge and skill over time, functioning rather like a live-in research and engineering lab that develops this new technology, demonstrates its use, and shares it with the world.
Since it can't immediately realize industrial autonomy the initial residents of such a community need to generate cash to buy the things they haven't yet figured out how to make or do without -tools being key among them. Most eco-communities have this same problem and solve it by either the acceptance of the sacrifice in standard of living for a 'higher cause' or having their members simply treat the community as a residence while they work elsewhere in the region. A post-industrial community, however, would encourage cottage industry among its residents instead because it makes better use of the same tools it seeks autonomy with. Everything it can make for itself is potentially something it can also make to sell to its regional neighbors. Self-publishing books and other media on the technology a community develops is also a good way to generate modest cash income while disseminating its knowledge. Many eco-community residents have built writing careers on that. Even once a post-industrial civilization ultimately emerges many communities may specialize in the creation of exclusive types of goods relating to regional resource spectrums and the individual cultures evolved within the community or region; artistic creations, cultural artifacts, regional food specialties.
Altogether the creation of such a community seems a pretty feasible, worthwhile, even necessary thing. The only problem is that, as well as I may be able to imagine it, I personally would probably never be able to live in such a community. In the long term this post-industrial culture will produce a habitat that's largely free of the toxic chemicals which make life for an MCS patient such an ordeal. But initially it would be impractical to expect a group of people coming out of the chemical-addicted contemporary culture to accept the rigors of the non-toxic lifestyle for the sake of any one person. So it looks like this will be just a fantasy for me. Still, I hope there are others who eventually see the sense to such a concept. There is clearly a post-industrial sensibility emerging today even if people don't yet have a name for it, be it inspired by the post-industrial designers of the past now being rediscovered by the fans of New Modernism, the Bolo-like future societies described by today's 'diamond age' SF writers, the post-industrial visions described by the nanotechnology engineers, or the simple quests for practical self-sufficiency of communities like Gaviotas Columbia.
I've also been considering starting a web site devoted to this idea, called The Office of Post-Industrial Technology. This would be a journal cataloging the emerging technologies and tools with a post-industrial application, tracking the current evolution to this new culture. I had wanted to use this blog account for this but the software will currently not allow for sufficient separation of different subject sites. It will have to wait until these features are added or I can afford another account somewhere.
