Hi Benjamin. Heres a thing. I heard about this story. Though it may not be true, and may have been made up by some devils advocate. That it was abundance that created scarcity.
There was a group of westerners doing some research in the African bush. They found the local monkeys began to get friendly and tame and came near to them. They started to give them lots of food. There was more than enough food for them, so much so, that it caused friction and fighting, whereass previously they hadnt been. As now tougher members guarded and took more of the food for themselves, and werent leaving any for the weaker members. They now fought over it, whereas previously they had shared. Do you have any thoughts on that?
A definately true scenario with monkeys, is a place in Japan, that had a large natural terrain enclosure, and within it there was a species of monkeys that they had put there which numbered more than 1000. They observed gang bullying and gang muggings. Also when they were thrown their food, each monkey, carefully guarded his piece, looking over their shoulders, and being careful that it wouldnt be taken. The behaviour came to resemble human behaviour not previously seen in the monkeys. This behaviour was put down to tribal, pack size, which in these monkeys, would have been no greater than 50 or 60, as there was no other unusual parameter apart ffrom this. It was postulated that above these group size numbers, others become more and more alienated and less and less bonded, as it is not possible for the brain to get to know so many. And so rather than living in a mutual comfortable supportive group. At 1000 members, each member lives in a supportive group of one!, all others being permanent strangers.
For humans, William Dunbar has put our group tribal, family size as a maximum of 150. As, amongst different primates, group size was found to corrolate to the size of a part in the brain.
AKA, When we do live in our group size we naturally 'share' with other members in these groups, and others outside the group become fair game. And here you have coming in the sheer fact that the human IS an animal. Taken out of his natural ecology, environment to live artificially herded together by the power that provides wage slavery, in big towns and cities, where we behave like battery chickens, amidst rows and rows and estates of block upon block of innumerable houses, a monoculture, in effect, where diseases, and violence and theft and crime become the accustomed norm and not unusual! In this size question many things are resolved, one is that there is no conflict between 'turn the other cheek', and 'an eye for an eye', because in the more natural state of living, you do have the two behaviours 'turn the other cheek' (in family= max 150), and 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' (with those fair game 'strangers', outside the tribe). So, we find ourselves in large groups that we live in as we do, thinking of it as natural, even civilised, but our brains make it always impossible to share and not compete. And we live in, and fret in and always talk about this conundrum, and are always and permanently wishing we were sharing. because its in us, its a natural part of us, and theres got to be a way to create freecycle and community sharing more in real life, and we need to find out the why its prevented and the how it can come about. I heard the miliatary use these numbers, and develope forms and social culture to keep their members in the most satisfactory cooperative and efficient good happy contented health mentally and physically. So maybe its worth looking at how they arrange their social culture.
Also, not so sure how your proclamation that its big farms that feed us all. It may be party true now. But the fact is that big industrial farms are totally dependent of cheap oil and are depleting soils and water tables faster than they are replenished. i.e. they are unsustainable (note that unsustainable does NOT mean "not nice" but "cannot be sustained"). Moreover, small farms are actually MUCH more efficient by pretty much every measure, see e.g. the link given here: http://globalswadeshi.ning.com/xn/detail/2097821:Comment:9741
One recent study in Turkey found small farms to be 20 times more productive than big farms.
That's currently correct, though it has been submitted to Apple's iBooks store, I've encountered some issues validating the file according to Apple's stringent (and as yet, undocumented) ePub standards. However, it does not have to be distributed through the iBooks store to get the book on the iPad--any compatible ePub file can be synced to an iPad through iTunes. If I continue to have issues with the submission process, I'm going to just distribute it through the http://isgreaterthan.net website. This diminishes some of the visibility and prestige of selling through the iBooks store, but is a possible workaround.
Killer essay Benjamin. You've taken the dialog here up a notch or three. Your question struck a chord for me - "What would it take for these scattered pockets to coalesce and snowball, to become the dominant forms of social organization... and to be good at it?"
This is the question I ask myself all the time. Clearly, for such a large change, many things need to happen. One thing that we think helps, which we pursue on Shareable, is to make sharing seem easy, fun, smart, hip, practical, and everyday instead of a marginalizing counterculture response framed as deprivation.
Wondering what you and others think too. What other actions can help the sharing movement coalesce?
This is perhaps the most inspiring thing I've read so far this year! Thank you Rachel for putting together this interview!
I also have been very aware of this level of emergence that you seem to be referencing, an upward spiral of the human condition. I however am a bit concerned with our environmental standing... it seems that time might not be on our side when relating our continued social evolution with a rapidly depleting system of finite resources. It will be interesting to see how it pans out...
But wow, positive transparency is so incredibly important and needed today!... I plan on reading and sharing J Richards book w others in the near future... also intrigued with your book as well... It's becoming clear to me that as the idea of ownership defined the 20th century, access will define the 21st... when will your book be available?
On a side note, a concept that compliments this flux of positivity that I am currently working with is called thrivability... I'm hoping it will be a foundation for social development that would transcend sustainability, business and consciousness fields... focus more on restorative, holistic projects (collaboration will be imperative here!), filter out the 'little less bad is good' mindset of current green trends, etc.
To be eligible, you should become a registered user with Shareable.net--sign up here. Then leave your guess as a comment here or on any of the three stories.
To be eligible, you should become a registered user with Shareable.net--sign up here. Then leave your guess as a comment here or on any of the three stories.
To be eligible, you should become a registered user with Shareable.net--sign up here. Then leave your guess as a comment here or on any of the three stories.
Dogs are wonderful for connecting with neighbors.. My first dog I got for two reasons: so I would have to leave my computer (I was self-employed) and see the outdoors and so I would meet my neighbors. It worked.
When I got a full-time job I hired a neighborhood kid. Gave him his first real responsibility. His parents loved it.
As someone who has/is also "losing" (or is that actually "gaining", huh) due to this G.R., I came across your blog a few weeks ago (dude, where's my car) while searching for inspiration. Ever since, I keep thinking about you and wondering how you're doing.
I share your love of creativity, just in a different way.. I'm a fine art printer and therefore "live" in Photoshop. Just for fun, if you ever grab an interesting pic with your iPhone camera, although it won't print very large, I'd print a few for you on canvas and/or fine art media.
Who knows, perhaps if we put our heads together we could work out a way to sell some in hopes of spreading your inspiration.
Karen Kaufman/Mo Media
(momedia at gmail dot com)
If two heads are better than one... imagine what three could do?
Thanks Séamus. Experiences are great investments: you get to tell your stories over and over, so it's an investment that keeps giving. Jonathan, love the idea of food as a service. There are a few companies out there now that offer "subscription" food services, like organic soups delivered by bike courier. I think this is definitely something to watch for. I'd love to get regular, health meals delivered. Crowdsourced recipes could help here, and maybe food grown in shared yards.
Really cool concept for a business. Hope to see it succeed and grow. One thing...it would be nice to see a more diverse group of people in the video. It's all white people.
Thanks!
Yes. Entertainment is already a service: see Netflix and Pandora. I own zero DVDs, and few MP3s. Digital rights management, designed to protect content sellers, is helping to push us away from ownership entirely.
Next big issue: food as a service. Think CSAs, but better. More deliberate choices (thus more healthy), less hassle, curated choice guidance, solves transit issues, with community baked in - sharable shopping lists, seasonal ingredients ship with links to recipe wikis, etc.
Wow taxi cab sharing is a cool thing for sure. I mean I have never read about anything like that before. Keeping in mind that all the world is suffering financial crisis at the moment it could be really efficient thing. People don't have much money to pay for taxi in such a big town as New York is. Sharing will help the situation. Thanks for the great article by the way and keep publishing them in the nearest future too.
Regards, Jeremy Wattson from mediafire sims
This is a great thing, not only for getting the most out of computers, but for getting computers into the hands of the economically challenged. The digital divide will be narrowed via actions such as this one. When will we get an annex in Watsonville?
Nice post! One other thought for the not too distant future is that you'll eventually be able to 'login' to cars, as you do a computer at an Internet Cafe currently. No matter which car you get into, it will be personalized for you via the cloud - play your music, GPS will know your preferences, mirrors will adjust to your favored settings, etc.
Even with the strides that have been made in recent years to make transportation facilities more biker friendly, I still feel US Cities have a lot of room for improvement. I lived in Jyvaskyla, Finland for one summer and could bike to almost anywhere without having to even ride on a road with cars or trucks. I think this is very similar for most European cities
In the above comment i missed out the word 'now'
the sentence should have read:
'So, now, we find ourselves in large groups that we live in as we do thinking of it as natural, even civilised, .....'
Hi Benjamin. Heres a thing. I heard about this story. Though it may not be true, and may have been made up by some devils advocate. That it was abundance that created scarcity.
There was a group of westerners doing some research in the African bush. They found the local monkeys began to get friendly and tame and came near to them. They started to give them lots of food. There was more than enough food for them, so much so, that it caused friction and fighting, whereass previously they hadnt been. As now tougher members guarded and took more of the food for themselves, and werent leaving any for the weaker members. They now fought over it, whereas previously they had shared. Do you have any thoughts on that?
A definately true scenario with monkeys, is a place in Japan, that had a large natural terrain enclosure, and within it there was a species of monkeys that they had put there which numbered more than 1000. They observed gang bullying and gang muggings. Also when they were thrown their food, each monkey, carefully guarded his piece, looking over their shoulders, and being careful that it wouldnt be taken. The behaviour came to resemble human behaviour not previously seen in the monkeys. This behaviour was put down to tribal, pack size, which in these monkeys, would have been no greater than 50 or 60, as there was no other unusual parameter apart ffrom this. It was postulated that above these group size numbers, others become more and more alienated and less and less bonded, as it is not possible for the brain to get to know so many. And so rather than living in a mutual comfortable supportive group. At 1000 members, each member lives in a supportive group of one!, all others being permanent strangers.
For humans, William Dunbar has put our group tribal, family size as a maximum of 150. As, amongst different primates, group size was found to corrolate to the size of a part in the brain.
AKA, When we do live in our group size we naturally 'share' with other members in these groups, and others outside the group become fair game. And here you have coming in the sheer fact that the human IS an animal. Taken out of his natural ecology, environment to live artificially herded together by the power that provides wage slavery, in big towns and cities, where we behave like battery chickens, amidst rows and rows and estates of block upon block of innumerable houses, a monoculture, in effect, where diseases, and violence and theft and crime become the accustomed norm and not unusual! In this size question many things are resolved, one is that there is no conflict between 'turn the other cheek', and 'an eye for an eye', because in the more natural state of living, you do have the two behaviours 'turn the other cheek' (in family= max 150), and 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' (with those fair game 'strangers', outside the tribe). So, we find ourselves in large groups that we live in as we do, thinking of it as natural, even civilised, but our brains make it always impossible to share and not compete. And we live in, and fret in and always talk about this conundrum, and are always and permanently wishing we were sharing. because its in us, its a natural part of us, and theres got to be a way to create freecycle and community sharing more in real life, and we need to find out the why its prevented and the how it can come about. I heard the miliatary use these numbers, and develope forms and social culture to keep their members in the most satisfactory cooperative and efficient good happy contented health mentally and physically. So maybe its worth looking at how they arrange their social culture.
Forgot to mention another point I wanted to make:
Globally co-operatives already employ much MUCH more people than global corporations do. :)
Something to bear in mind :)
Are you aware of the Open Source Ecology project? They should really be profiled on this site every week IMHO. Really inspirational stuff:
http://www.openfarmtech.org/
Also, not so sure how your proclamation that its big farms that feed us all. It may be party true now. But the fact is that big industrial farms are totally dependent of cheap oil and are depleting soils and water tables faster than they are replenished. i.e. they are unsustainable (note that unsustainable does NOT mean "not nice" but "cannot be sustained"). Moreover, small farms are actually MUCH more efficient by pretty much every measure, see e.g. the link given here:
http://globalswadeshi.ning.com/xn/detail/2097821:Comment:9741
One recent study in Turkey found small farms to be 20 times more productive than big farms.
Also, check out projects like http://opencoin.org and http://www.bitcoin.org/ (just two of many open source currency projects) and stuff like http://www.metacurrency.org/
Oh, and have you been following Mark "The Moneyless Man" Boyle, founder of the Freecomony Community http://www.justfortheloveofit.org
That's currently correct, though it has been submitted to Apple's iBooks store, I've encountered some issues validating the file according to Apple's stringent (and as yet, undocumented) ePub standards. However, it does not have to be distributed through the iBooks store to get the book on the iPad--any compatible ePub file can be synced to an iPad through iTunes. If I continue to have issues with the submission process, I'm going to just distribute it through the http://isgreaterthan.net website. This diminishes some of the visibility and prestige of selling through the iBooks store, but is a possible workaround.
Killer essay Benjamin. You've taken the dialog here up a notch or three. Your question struck a chord for me - "What would it take for these scattered pockets to coalesce and snowball, to become the dominant forms of social organization... and to be good at it?"
This is the question I ask myself all the time. Clearly, for such a large change, many things need to happen. One thing that we think helps, which we pursue on Shareable, is to make sharing seem easy, fun, smart, hip, practical, and everyday instead of a marginalizing counterculture response framed as deprivation.
Wondering what you and others think too. What other actions can help the sharing movement coalesce?
This is perhaps the most inspiring thing I've read so far this year! Thank you Rachel for putting together this interview!
I also have been very aware of this level of emergence that you seem to be referencing, an upward spiral of the human condition. I however am a bit concerned with our environmental standing... it seems that time might not be on our side when relating our continued social evolution with a rapidly depleting system of finite resources. It will be interesting to see how it pans out...
But wow, positive transparency is so incredibly important and needed today!... I plan on reading and sharing J Richards book w others in the near future... also intrigued with your book as well... It's becoming clear to me that as the idea of ownership defined the 20th century, access will define the 21st... when will your book be available?
On a side note, a concept that compliments this flux of positivity that I am currently working with is called thrivability... I'm hoping it will be a foundation for social development that would transcend sustainability, business and consciousness fields... focus more on restorative, holistic projects (collaboration will be imperative here!), filter out the 'little less bad is good' mindset of current green trends, etc.
Anyway, thanks again for this post!
-josh
My guess is that Mary switched during this story at the "Two minutes" paragraph.
Shareable.net would like to announce a contest:
Readers who are able to correctly spot the exact place in the typewriter triptych where Mary switched from a typewriter to a computer will win one of two free books: Either her forthcoming novel Shades of Milk and Honey
OR Jay Walljasper's forthcoming book, All That We Share: How to Save the Economy, Our Communities, the Environment, the Internet, Democracy, and Everything Else that Belongs to All of Us
Your choice!
To be eligible, you should become a registered user with Shareable.net--sign up here. Then leave your guess as a comment here or on any of the three stories.
Shareable.net would like to announce a contest: At one point while writing her typewriter triptych, Mary switched from a typewriter to a computer. Can you spot the exact place? Give it a try, and the best guess will win one of two free books: Either Mary's forthcoming novel Shades of Milk and Honey
OR Jay Walljasper's forthcoming book, All That We Share: How to Save the Economy, Our Communities, the Environment, the Internet, Democracy, and Everything Else that Belongs to All of Us
Your choice!
To be eligible, you should become a registered user with Shareable.net--sign up here. Then leave your guess as a comment here or on any of the three stories.
Shareable.net would like to announce a contest:
Readers who are able to correctly spot the exact place where Mary switched from a typewriter to a computer will win one of two free books: Either her forthcoming novel Shades of Milk and Honey
OR Jay Walljasper's forthcoming book, All That We Share: How to Save the Economy, Our Communities, the Environment, the Internet, Democracy, and Everything Else that Belongs to All of Us
Your choice!
To be eligible, you should become a registered user with Shareable.net--sign up here. Then leave your guess as a comment here or on any of the three stories.
Question: While writing these, I had to switch from manual typewriter to computer due to travel. Can you spot where my writing style changes?
Dogs are wonderful for connecting with neighbors.. My first dog I got for two reasons: so I would have to leave my computer (I was self-employed) and see the outdoors and so I would meet my neighbors. It worked.
When I got a full-time job I hired a neighborhood kid. Gave him his first real responsibility. His parents loved it.
That's great! But do I understand correctly that it's only on YOUR iPad then? Meaning it's not available in the iBooks store for other users, correct?
As someone who has/is also "losing" (or is that actually "gaining", huh) due to this G.R., I came across your blog a few weeks ago (dude, where's my car) while searching for inspiration. Ever since, I keep thinking about you and wondering how you're doing.
I share your love of creativity, just in a different way.. I'm a fine art printer and therefore "live" in Photoshop. Just for fun, if you ever grab an interesting pic with your iPhone camera, although it won't print very large, I'd print a few for you on canvas and/or fine art media.
Who knows, perhaps if we put our heads together we could work out a way to sell some in hopes of spreading your inspiration.
Karen Kaufman/Mo Media
(momedia at gmail dot com)
If two heads are better than one... imagine what three could do?
glad you're sticking around, Corbyn. I love you.
I gotta agree. I'm very happy for your positive medical outcome and wish you the best with your financial struggles.
Thanks Séamus. Experiences are great investments: you get to tell your stories over and over, so it's an investment that keeps giving. Jonathan, love the idea of food as a service. There are a few companies out there now that offer "subscription" food services, like organic soups delivered by bike courier. I think this is definitely something to watch for. I'd love to get regular, health meals delivered. Crowdsourced recipes could help here, and maybe food grown in shared yards.
I may not know much. But this much is true; you are a brilliant writer. Thank you.
Really cool concept for a business. Hope to see it succeed and grow. One thing...it would be nice to see a more diverse group of people in the video. It's all white people.
Thanks!
Yes. Entertainment is already a service: see Netflix and Pandora. I own zero DVDs, and few MP3s. Digital rights management, designed to protect content sellers, is helping to push us away from ownership entirely.
Next big issue: food as a service. Think CSAs, but better. More deliberate choices (thus more healthy), less hassle, curated choice guidance, solves transit issues, with community baked in - sharable shopping lists, seasonal ingredients ship with links to recipe wikis, etc.
Wow taxi cab sharing is a cool thing for sure. I mean I have never read about anything like that before. Keeping in mind that all the world is suffering financial crisis at the moment it could be really efficient thing. People don't have much money to pay for taxi in such a big town as New York is. Sharing will help the situation. Thanks for the great article by the way and keep publishing them in the nearest future too.
Regards, Jeremy Wattson from mediafire sims
This is a great thing, not only for getting the most out of computers, but for getting computers into the hands of the economically challenged. The digital divide will be narrowed via actions such as this one. When will we get an annex in Watsonville?
Nice post! One other thought for the not too distant future is that you'll eventually be able to 'login' to cars, as you do a computer at an Internet Cafe currently. No matter which car you get into, it will be personalized for you via the cloud - play your music, GPS will know your preferences, mirrors will adjust to your favored settings, etc.
Even with the strides that have been made in recent years to make transportation facilities more biker friendly, I still feel US Cities have a lot of room for improvement. I lived in Jyvaskyla, Finland for one summer and could bike to almost anywhere without having to even ride on a road with cars or trucks. I think this is very similar for most European cities