1. Why we need a new story

We are cognitively impaired by a metabolic rift between our culture and the earth. Paved surfaces, and pervasive media, shield us from direct experience of the damage our actions inflict on soils, oceans, air, and forests. A unique epoch of energy and resource abundance added zest to a story of growth, and progress and development, that put the interests of ‘the economy’ above all other concerns

The comforting narrative of perpetual growth has now hit biophysical and financial constraints – and we all feel it. Only 15% of the global population feel that the system is working and ecoanxiety—the feeling of impending environmental doom—afflicts populations on a global scale.

This is why post-truth’ politics should be described as pre-truth politics. In this time between stories, populists have picked up on our justified anxiety – but divert our attention from the root but invisible causes of our predicament. It’s easier to blame a Muslim, than entropy.

But a new picture is now emerging in myriad projects around the world. Their core value is stewardship, not extraction. Growth, in this story, means soils, biodiversity and watersheds getting healthier, and communities more resilient.  Care for place – not money, and not GDP – is the ultimate measure of value.

In Ojai, California
In California, Terry Irwin and Gideon Kossoff are engaging with a water crisis that will not have a single solution. They use Transition Design (above) to coordinate multiple interventions over short and long horizons of time. by different actors and stakeholders: new technologies, institutional and legislative reforms, new financial mechanisms, platforms for long-term environmental stewardship.

These seedlings are inspiring to behold – but something more is needed to effect the system change we yearn for: a shared purpose, that diverse groups people can relate to, and support, whatever their other differences.

2   Bioregion: a story that reconnects

A strong candidate for that connective idea is the bioregion. A bioregion re-connects us with living systems, and each other, through the places where we live. It acknowledges that we live among watersheds, foodsheds, fibersheds, and food systems – not just in cities, towns, or ‘the countryside’.

In the Altiplano of Spain (above) John Liu  is leading the first in a series called Ecological Restoration Camp to restore a severely damaged ecosystem in a damaged dry landscape. A diverse community of researchers, landscape designers, farmers, gardeners, engineers and other professionals are restoring the landscape in ways that regain environmental, social and economic value.


Bioregions are not just geographical places; they also embody the inter-connection of our minds, and and nature’s, at a molecular, atomic and hormonal level. A bioregion repairs the unity of mind and world, that has been fractured by modernity.

A bioregion, in this sense, is literally and etymologically a ‘life-place’, in Robert Thayer’s words, that is definable by natural rather than political or economic boundaries. Its geographic, climatic, hydrological, and ecological qualities – its metabolism – can be the basis for meaning and identity because they are unique.

Growth, in a bioregion, is redefined as improvements to the health and carrying capacity of the land, and the resilience of communities. And because its core value is stewardship, not extraction, a bioregion frames the next economy, not the dying one we have now.

3. Scope of a bioregion

A bioregion is shaped by characteristics of the natural environment rather than by man-made divisions: Its geology; topography; climate; soils; hydrology and watersheds; agriculture; biodiversity, flora and fauna, vegetation.

Ecological systems are unique to each place, and the same goes for the social assets of a bioregion – individuals, groups, networks, and cultures.

A  bioregion is not a generic template. It meaning deepens during the discovery and mapping of its social and cultural assets.  Bioregional knowledge is socially created,  local,  experienced directly,  and embodied.
The embodied nature of land-based knowledge has shaped recent trends in agricultural knowledge and information systems (AKIS) and agricultural innovation system (AIS).

LUMA-Arles is a new contemporary art center and campus founded by Maja Hoffman in the Camargue region in southern France. In Atelier-Luma (above) designers and researchers, curated by Jan Boelen, working with local stakeholders, are exploring new opportunities for Arles and its bioregion. Projects range from the development of algae-based polymers to the use of biodiversity telematics in citizen science and ecological restoration.

With a focus on systems change towards sustainability,  agricultural ‘extension’ gives priority to participatory discovery, and experiential learning. Social network analysis is also being used to identify key players who can act as critical injection points in the system.

A lot of information about a bioregion’s social, cultural and ecological assets can be discovered  in overlooked archives and databases. This information is often dry, de-contextualised lists; wonders can appear when artists or actors are allowed access to these resources.

4. Cities, too

Cities are part of the bioregional story, too. They do not exist separately from the land they are built on, and the resources that feed them.

A growing number of blogs and platforms encourage a city’s citizens, and its managers, to re-connect in practical ways with the soils, trees, animals, landscapes, energy systems, water and energy systems on which all life, including ours, depends.

Seen in the context of its bioregion, a city is about more than architecture and hard (or electronically networked) infrastructure. In cities, it turns out, a wide variety of emergent ecosystems are developing before our eyes.

Some of these can be tiny. Biotopes – the smallest unit to be studied in a landscape, including urban ones – include hedges, roadside verges, drainage ditches, small brooks, bogs, marl pits, natural ponds, thickets, prehistoric barrows and other small uncultivated areas.

A new priority in the urban landscape itself is to connect these patches together. Green-blue corridors can transform a mosaic of discrete parts into a place-wide ecology. Attention is also turning to metabolic cycles and the ‘capillarity’ of the metropolis wherein rivers and biocorridors are given pride of place.

In New York, researchers are mapping its microbiomes.

Inspired by the power of the small to enrich the big, 45,000 vacant lots in Allegheny County, Pittsburgh, are being brought back to life, one by one. In that same don’t-knock-patches spirit, @ioby enlivens neighbourhoods block by block.

One likes to think that these and other cities have been stirred into action by by Wendell Berry: “The cities have forgot the earth and will rot at heart till they remember it again”

5  Food

The bioregional approach enriches economic relocalisation efforts that measure where resources come from; identify ‘leakages’ in the local economy; and explore how these leaks could be plugged by locally available resources.

One such ‘leak’ is food.  Up to 25 percent of the ecological impact of a rich city can be attributed to its food systems. Similar constraints apply to flows of textiles and clothing.

The relocalisation of regional food and fibre systems entails transition from a linear to an holistic, social and ecological approach to agriculture.

A farmer, in this story, is far more than a producer of agricultural commodities for the city.  She is also the steward of an agro-ecological system in which water, soil, landscape, energy, biodiversity, are a interdependent.

With ‘social farming‘ and ‘care farming’  the direct participation of citizens in farm-based activities needs also to be enabled by service platforms.

Ecological agriculture begins with an analysis of the carrying capacity of the land, and then growing crops, and rearing animals, in ways that regenerate the soils and biodiversity. In the transition to High Nature Value Farming, each location has to be understood and designed as an ecosystem within a bioregional web of natural systems.

This approach is more knowledge-intensive than the industrial model it’s replacing – and the scale and complexity of biodiversity data can be formidable.  An ecology metrics list on Github lists more than three thousand terms – from molecular phylogenetics to microrefugia, from myrmecology to ecophisiology.

A collaborative approach, and multiple skills in new combinations, are needed to cope with that complexity.  Open information information channels for the sharing of resources are a challenging design priority.

At a bioregional scale, ecological agriculture also includes the development of new forms of land tenure, new distribution models, processing facilities, financing, and training.

In England, the Ecological Land Co-operative  is creating smallholding clusters. The ELC buys agricultural land and seeks planning permission for new residential smallholdings as well as providing shared infrastructure. These ‘starter farms’ (above) are then leased to smallholders – at well below market rates – on a long and secure leasehold.

5   Time

All this takes time.

Industrial or ‘production’ approaches to the land treat agriculture as an engineering challenge. But nature is calibrated to a multitude of different time scales – in cycles that are shaped by the unique qualities of infintely diverse locations.

The tempo of bioregional work needs to be guided by eigenzeiten – the embedded times specific to an organism or system.

6.   Technology

Ecological restoration in a bioregion, and ecological agriculture, are of course supported, to a degree, by technology.

The Climate Tech Wiki, for example, lists hundreds of mitigation and adaptation technologies – from advanced paper recycling, to urban forestry.

Stewarding a bioregion involves measuring the carrying capacity of the land and watersheds; putting systems in place to monitor progress; and feeding back results.  Diverse arrays of networked microprocessors are being developed to this end.

In the Camargue bioregion of France Olivier Rovellotti , a biodiversity telematics designer, develops platforms such as Ecobalade (above) that equip citizens with the means to understand and monitor biodiversity assets on the spot and in real-time.

Under the umbrella of ‘precision agriculture‘,  developers hope that sensor applications might be also useful for farmers; applications range from thermal imagery and current soil moisture content, to soil surface porosity and water absorption capacity.

Some optimists also believe that regenerative agriculture and-robotics can benefit each other.

At @IAAC in Barcelona, their Smart Citizen platform (see photo above) enables citizens to monitor levels of air or noise pollution around their home or business. The system connects data, people and knowledge based on their location; the device’s low power consumption allows it to be placed on balconies and windowsills where power is provided by a solar panel or battery.

We can also measure oil contamination in our local river with a smartphone. Thousands of people are monitoring the air they breathe using Air Quality Eggs.

Monitoring – with or without tech – is most meaningful when it enables practical steps to be taken in ecological restoration at a bioregional scale. In Bangalore, the revival of  Jakkur lake began with a mapping platform developed by Aajwanti (an ex- Quicksand intern) working with @ZenRainman.

7.  Skills

Developing the agenda for a bioregion involves a wide range of skills and capabilities: The geographer’s knowledge of mapping; the conservation biologist’s expertise in biodiversity and habitats; the ecologist’s literacy in ecosystems; the economist’s ability to measure flows and leakage of money and resources; the service designer’s capacity to create platforms that enables regional actors to share and collaborate; the artist’s capacity to represent real-world phenomena in ways that change our perceptions.

How will these skills be learned, or accessed?

If the health of people, and the places where we live, are connected, what kinds of business can help them thrive together? With its own unique assets, North West Wales has the potential to lead the world as a living laboratory for innovation where adventure sport, tourism, and wellness meet. To realise this potential, and turn ideas into new livelihoods and enterprise, the region’s assets need to be combined and connected in new ways. Pontio Innovation is leading on this work.

Universities across the north-western United States have developed a Curriculum for the Bioregion that transforms the ways in which tomorrow’s professionals will approach place-based development.

The curriculum, which is taught across the Puget Sound and Cascadia bioregions, covers  such topics as Ecosystem Health; Water and Watersheds; Sense of Place; Biodiversity; Food Systems and Agriculture; Ethics and Values; Cultures and Religions; Cycles and Systems; Civic Engagement.

A impressive archive of completed projects is evidence that these are not just academic activities.

Multidisciplinary teams have evaluated water quality data as indicators of the health of an ecosystem; mapped stream channels in a local watershed; learned about the geology, hydrology, soils, and slope stability of a local town; analysed the environmental costs of metal mining; studied how indigenous peoples used to inhabit their region – and discussed how best to integrate this legacy into today’s new models of development.

At the University of Idaho, a Masters in Bioregional Planning and Community Design draws on the expertise  of ten departments; there’s the option of a joint degree from the College of Law. The Priest River Bioregional Atlas, created by the university, is one of the more compete documents of its kind out there.

in Europe, an online course on Land Stewardship:was produced by the LandLife EU programme. During the course, students presented case studies of land stewardship; designed a stewardship agreement; analysed collaboration methods and communication experiences; and explored funding opportunities for land stewardship.

A Soil Academy is being developed by a group called Common Soil. A Common Soil Campus is proposed as a learning centre for regenerative agriculture, land restoration, regional food systems, and land stewardship; the idea is equip the next generations of farmers and citizens the skills to become stewards of living soil.

If ecological restoration is indeed the “great work” of our time’ – then we need training centres in every bioregion. For this writer, the Nordic system of Folk High Schools has tremendous potential.

8.  Mapping

Maps –  in whatever medium they are made, or experienced – need to represent the ways a bioregion’s  social and ecological systems interact with each other.

 In the past, nature conservation was preooccupied by  the impact of habitat destruction on individual species. Today, there is increasing recognition that species interactions may be even more important.

As Jane Memmott explains, all organisms are linked to at least one other species in a variety of critical ways – for example, as predators or prey, or as pollinators or seed dispersers – with the result that each species is embedded in a complex network of interactions (see below).

In a bioregion, trophic interactions among humans and bacteria are a single story

Mapping exercises can reveal gaps. When researchers at the Stockholm Resilience Centre studied a wetland management network crossing all 26 municipalities of the city, it was found (see below) to be fragmented not just ecologically, but administratively, too.

9.  Local Knowledge

Role models and case studies are always important. ‘Mapping’ therefore includes multiple ways to collect and tell stories from other places – and other times – in ways that are easy to find, and share.

In this ongoing search for new and better ways of knowing – and being – we have huge amounts to learn from non-literate and indigenous cultures whose experience of the world is more direct than our own.

10.  Art

Bringing a bioregion to life means connecting with living systems emotionally, and not just rationally.
This is where art comes in.

Art can make us curious about “what we’re inside of”  (Nora Bateson) and tweak our interest in “the pattern which connects” (Gregory Bateson).

Art can allow us to understand complex interdependences, and enhance our capacity to understand processes and system conditions.

The ancient metaphorical power inherent in path walking, and path making, frame a project in Scotland called Cateran’s Common Wealth. Clare Cooper curates arts and cultural activities that connect together cultural, social and ecological assets of ‘Big Tree Countrry’;. Deirdre Nelson for example (above) makes handheld stories that weave words and wool, that value knitting and narration as ways of living.

Art can provoke encounter, engagement and conversation.

Art can trigger attentiveness to living systems, and foster a sense of obligation towards future generations.

Art can make us aware of the power of small actions to transform the bigger picture.

A growing biocultural education movement links nature and culture as a way of promoting learning about and respect for both, as well as the intimate linkages between them.

11. Making 



Makerspaces are not the factories of the future, but they can nonetheless be part of a bioregion’s infrastructure as a hub for community-based production that supports a sustainable local economy and create a local market for local products

Many human and technical resources – skills, workshops, machines – are scattered around – but not known about. MakeWorks, in Scotland, are changing that. They describe themselves (see below) as ‘factory finders’.

Farm Hack, in the United States are a community for open source farm innovation. Members of the network share tips on adapting machinery via hackathons and open-hacking camps.

A purely transactional maker economy, based only on selling things, is unlikely to be sustainable in the longer term. If it’s just about the thing, someone will soon find a way to source a similar thing, but cheaper.  The French cooperative L’Atelier Paysan therefore trains farmers to design their own machines and buildings adapted to the unique needs of each small farm ecology.

12. Governance

Social practices, more than technical platforms on their own, are the cornerstone of bioregional governance. Paying attention to the process by which groups work together is just as important as deciding what needs to be done — perhaps more.

It’s not enough to simply to proclaim the moral superiority of sharing, for example, and expect everyone to fall in line. Tough questions must be confronted, and not brushed under the carpet. Among these: How to define, map and name the resources to be shared; determining who is entitled to what; designing rules and sanctions; designing how to make the rules.

Dealing with difference involves a lot of consensus building, collective participation, and transparent decision making. New ways of ‘doing’ politics are needed that are shaped by the ways people live now – not the other way round.

A wide variety of collaborative services, policies and infrastructures is emerging in support of food co-ops, collective kitchens and dining rooms, community gardens, cooperative distribution platforms, seed banks, hothouses, nurseries, and other enhancements of community food systems.

Nurturing these kinds of social practice is a ‘soft’ activity – but no less demanding for that. It involves politics, governance, communications, training, empowerment – and, in particular, the ability to help people with different agendas, from different backgrounds. work together.

Thus stated, it lies well outside the comfort zone of most design professionals. But it’s not a matter or either social or technical innovation – we need both.

Besides, examples of such new approaches already exist in other domains. The free software movement, for example, has evolved a flexible and effective culture of cooperation.

In France, Colbris et l’Université du Nous have launched a Governance MOOC in partnership with 
360Learning

13. Policy

Bioregionalism is appearing with growing frequency in public discourse in European policy and among professional networks (if not always under the same name).

A tolerance for acronyms and buzzwords is demanded of the bioregional explorer, but with a bit of digging she too will discover such gems as: IALE (European Association for Landscape Ecology); the “Cork 2 Declaration” (on diversification in rural development); RISE (a European plan for more biodiversity friendly agriculture and food systems); ICLEI  (Local Governments for Sustainability); SURFNATURE (a regional development funding for biodiversity); EFRD (a big regionb al development fund);  NATURA 2000 (a big programme about biodiversity in cities); GI (all things Green Infrastructure); URBAN-RURAL LINKAGES  (to do with rural cohesion); LAND-LIFE (land stewardship principles and tools);  BiodivERsA ERA-NET (research on biodiversity and ecosystem services);  
EKLIPSE  (upport mechanism for biodiversity); IPBES  (“Science and Policy for People and Nature” ); GIAHS (Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems)’ ARC2020 (Seeding the Future of Rural Areas); or PEGASUS (“unlocking public ecosystem goods and servces from land management”).

There are surely many more – and do tell me if I have missed any – but you get the picture.

In any case, the plethora of blogs and platforms has emerged in recent times includes:Smart Garden Cities
The Nature of Cities Urban Ecology Lab Cornell Civic Ecology Lab Biourbanism Biophilic Cities  Cities Biodiversity Center and Biohabitats .  La Ciudad Verde seems to be the biggest with 93,000 Twitter followers.

13   BackToTheLand2.0



Reconnecting with our bioregion is not about leaving home to live in a yurt. For most of us, it it means re-connecting with the land and biodiversity  in the places where we live now – but in new ways.  These can involve social farming, place-based development, and learning journeys.

In a series of xskool workshops called #BackToTheLand2.0 we brought local actors together to ask: What are the key social-ecological systems in this place? What are the opportunities for  this city-region? How night one design in them?

We discovered that a rich diversity of city-rural connections is emerging. These include: Maker networks; grain and fiber ecosystems; outdoor and land-based learning; adventure tourism, sport science, mixed-reality gaming; ecological restoration; civic ecology; farmer-city connections; learning journeys: and the reinhabitation of abandoned  of rural communities.

We learned that myriad new ways for urban people to re-connect with the land are emerging: Ways that are part-time, but long-term; ways that involve an exchange of value, not just paying money; ways to share knowledge, land, and equipment in new ways; ways based on historical links between town and country – but reinvented in an age of networks and social innovation.

Designers and artists, we saw, can contribute to bioregional development in various ways. Maps of the bioregion’s ecological and social assets are needed: its geology and topography; its soils and watersheds; its agriculture and biodiversity. The collaborative monitoring of living systems needs to be designed – together with feedback channels. New service platforms are needed to help people to share resources of all kinds – from land, to time.  Novel forms of governance must also be designed to enable collaboration among diverse groups of people.

Another large topic, simply stated: What would a bioregion look like, and feel like, to its citizens, and visitors?

None of these actions means designers acting alone; their role is as much connective, as creative. But in creating objects of shared value – such as an atlas, a plan, or a meeting – the design process can be a powerful way to foster collaboration among geographers, ecologists, economists, planners, social historians, writers, artists and other citizens.

One way to begin the journey could be a Doors of Perception Xskool.  The outcomes of an xskool, typically, include a shared perception of new opportunities; new connections between motivated and effective people; and the determination to make something happen.

Thank you to these great friends who have been partners in many of the experiences that have informed this text: @helloQS  @andygoodman @SchumacherCol @regenesisgrp @bossestwit ‏ @abadiracademy  @relationaldes@CasaNetural  @StirToAction 
@Choraconnection ‏ 
@CateransCommon
@CACollegeofArts  
@ALBA_Lebanon
@zenrainman
@CMUdesign 
@zenrainman
 @iaac @stefi_idlab
 @GaiaEducation 
@mbauwens 
@davidbollier
 @alastairmci

The post Back To The Land 2.0
 – A Design Agenda For Bioregions appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Post-Truth: Matters of Fact and Matters of Concern—An Internet of Thinking Together (Global Digest, Seoul)

John Thang (JT) Global Digest: Let’s go with your background and work, first. Tell about your work in Asia, 10 years right?

Layne Hartsell (LH): Yes, and you and I have known each other for about that long; we met about a year after I first arrived. Over the past few years, I have been studying three technical areas: Convergence science and 3E (energy, economy, environment), Open reasoning and open science, and then SNET. In the case of the term “convergence,” I suppose it could just be called “deep generalism.” The developer of Wirearchy, Jon Husband uses this term, and I think it is easier.

Convergence science is based on the MIT declaration from 2011 for the convergence of life science and physical science with informatics and engineering. For 3E, at the Asia Institute, we study the technosocial reality of climate change and the absolute necessity to develop a sustainable and renewable energy system. To achieve such a project, it will require partnerships through stakeholders and the confluence of science, technology, politics, civil society, and economics. I intend the term “stakeholders” as inclusive, since I don’t think authoritarianism is going to solve the problem, even though I see some are tempted by it. Authoritarian systems got us into the current disintegration, both socially and ecologically. China says 50 trillion is needed for a complete revamp of energy and society. That’s not likely to happen, but it is a direction—the internationalism of societal innovation for an ecological or eco-civilization. For comparison, civilization means urban development and thus massive resource intensive and logistical supports coming in from extraction elsewhere, specifically, other people’s homes. Using this definition, we will have to convert civilization to eco-civilization where people and nature are central. Current societal innovation is not at that high bar but there are developments as China leads renewable energy development, and Germany has done quite a bit. Examples from China are its recent moves to decrease its use of coal in focusing on renewables. China also speaks of an eco-civilization though it has embarked on another development plan for a new Silk Road or intergovernmental mega infrastructure projects. To give an idea of this kind of thing, from 2009–2011, China used more concrete than the U.S. used in the entire 20th century. As for an eco-civilization, the U.S. is headed in the other direction as it is gearing up to extract its fossil fuels, particularly with its militarization, once again, of the land of the Sioux people. To continue like this, taping into those fossil reserves such as the tar sands in North America, climate scientist, James Hensen, said that it would be “game over” for the environment.

New Silk Road: Wall St. Journal, Dec. 1, 2015

In China, the new Silk Road, or I should say plural with a “s”, will go from the Guangzhou area in Southern China through Myanmar and Bangladesh and into the Bihar. And then, the other, larger northern route will go up over Pakistan on over to Russia and Europe. Recently, the first train, in a long time, arrived in Britain, from China, though there is a ways to go before that entire project goes into full action. One aspect that is interesting is demilitarization. The corridor is supposed to be for trade and cultural interaction.

Galileo Galilee, Siderevs nvncivs: Harvard Library

The second, open reasoning or rational common sense is a wide field that assumes democratic participation in the major topics of the day, and particularly in science and technology. Amartya Sen uses the term, public reasoning. Open Science is the specific derivation from open reasoning where interaction between scientists and lay people leads to a full engagement in scientific exploration, which is more or less the same as when Galileo and Kepler were working. Galaxy Zoo is an example of open science where laypeople look at NASA images and pick out possible galaxies, and develop technical abilities. In its first year (2007) more than 150,000 people got involved and looked through 50 million classifications. They naturally developed their own culture calling themselves “Zooites.” At this point, they have produced 57 research papers.

By the time of Galileo, around 1610, the Gutenberg Press had already been invented and people were carrying printed materials such as mechanical diagrams, books, the Bible, and such, about in Europe. They were discussing all forms of practical measurement in the shoppes of the mechanics and artisans. Independent thought was emerging, and I bet there was also fake news around as well. Contrary to what many think, Italy was somewhat open at the time, though the Church managed to torment Galileo and others.

Galaxy Zoo

Today, we have the Internet as our hyper-press, and then an ever growing commons of open code, design, and knowledge. P2P micro-manufacturing in a collaborative economy is emerging, slowly, too slowly…I wish more quickly. This emergence is what we are are studying at the P2P Foundation. Michel Bauwens who is president of the Foundation says that P2P is the relational dynamic of people interacting through the digital systems, and he takes it further to the larger commons such as what he, Yochai Benkler, and Elinor Ostrom developed in their own work. (ebook— The Wealth of Networks by Benkler)

By Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Kostakis

For philosophy, S.NET is a highly specific subfield in the philosophy of science, and then convergence, that studies new and emerging technologies. Paul Humphreys at the University of Virginia is a major researcher in the area. A basic example is if we take oxygen and hydrogen, there is nothing in either of these elements that we can perceive that looks or acts like water. Once the two are mixed together into H2O, emergence properties come about such as wetness, conductivity, and polarity. For us humans, water is important; however, the ultimate emergent phenomenon is consciousness and that is a mystery that fascinates perhaps all people once they recognize that they are aware, or are conscious of the fact of existence.

JT: You are from the United States? And, involved in activism as well?

LH: Yes, I am from Virginia, and attended Virginia Tech early on. You mean migrant workers, and how we met in South Korea?

JT: Tell about your earlier life. How did you become interested in science and then other wider topics.

LH: Well, the science part is from when I was very young. Just natural curiosity that all kids have. Later, while formally studying science at Virginia Tech, I was encourage to read widely and concluded that the economic system was unjust, particularly after reading Rachel Carson and Noam Chomsky; and then I was curious about what happened to American Indians. Later, after graduate school and a year in medical research at the University of Virginia, I went directly to visit the reservations in the western U.S. What I saw changed my perspective on what I would do in life. In fact, my partner at the time, Kelly, and I, worked with a Lakota medicine woman and her group to take provisions from Denver to the people at Wounded Knee and the Lakota Sioux.

The first thing I did when young was to renovate my life, almost immediately, to lead the life of a monk or scholar in the world. Kinda like what Emerson, Thoreau, and Gandhi did, where a lot of theirs was based on the radical humanism of the Enlightenment. Today, life and work is integrated with environmentalism. As a philosophy, I call it integral simplicity where the way of life involves the minimization of the use of resources from society and the natural environment, except for what is needed to live and work. This first step is to diminish complicity with living from a rapacious economic system. Next, knowledge, financial wealth, and so forth, are used for social and ecological work —the exercise of rights and duties. And the third is culture, or to enjoy and to participate in scientific and cultural treasures and development. The integral part is that these various tenets come together in an experiential whole with nature and consciousness. Or, it could be called openness. On this last part, perhaps Nagarjuna, the Buddhist philosopher, is a good source.

JT: How old were you?

LH: This started when I was in my late teens, but by mid-20’s, just out of graduate school and after doing medical research, I was able to articulate it. I went and taught science at the Navajo Nation for a year and then traveled to Mexico and Central America. While there, I learned about neoliberalism and structural adjustment, and then shared knowledge about molecular biology with those in La Via Campesina who had won a two year window from the courts so that they could study and understand the genetic alteration of their plants. The corporations were engaging in biopiracy of their traditional knowledge, which the indigenous people had developed for centuries. So, their knowledge was being pillaged. Later, I went on to Asia to study nanoscience and philosophy.

JT: That is when we met at the migrant workers’ events in Seoul. You were also teaching at. Sungkyunkwan Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology.

LH: Yes, you were doing work with migrants from Southeast Asia and I had been visiting the shelters and attending their protests. And then, you started the Digest. Well, at Sungkyunkwan University, I taught at the Language Institute and was an adjunct in life sciences—biology. The Institute was a little later. In the nanotechnology institute I gave lectures for physicists or materials scientists who were trying to understand the structure of DNA in order to mimic it in their research. Basically that means how do you build DNA or RNA, atom by atom. Nanotechnology operates at the very tiny, 10–7 to 10–9 meters. One billionth of a meter. At that level of physical matter, scientists have been trying to move and assemble atoms or to do “molecular manufacturing.” This research they are doing is at the very basis of material reality and is still in the laboratory phase. Carbon nanotubes are probably what most will recognize as nanotechnology or many might recall Drexler’s nanobots from his book. Actually, nanotubes just kinda grow due to natural forces, so nano-manufacturing would literally assemble itself once the right combinations are put into place. That is why nanotechnology is speculated to be both inexpensive and transformative of physical reality such as replacing the built system we see. Paris was the capital of modernity; and by the time of Napoleon III, it was extended into the massive metropolis model we are familiar with as the built system. The “technification” of that system is what I call the technosphere.

“Nanotechnology” has already been developed by nature’s blind adaptations, or the passing on of heritable traits, such as in the flagellum of the bacteria. Some of these tiny mechanisms look almost like gears. A quick search on Google images will show them. We are still a ways away from Drexler’s speculations; it’s all still science fiction, but nanotechnology is coming along as we understand more. There may be problems with quantum entanglement and then the reactivity and instability of elements at different sizes, but progress is being made. I studied at the nanotechnology institute for the scientific part of doctoral research in philosophy and access to the technosphere as a matter of global justice. I can remember vividly an intimate classroom lecture by the director of the Institute, Sumio Iijima, who is credited with the development of nanotubes. Everyone who wants to, should be able to see this information; it is just stunning. I am forever grateful to the institute and the scientists there for taking me in and teaching me. It’s an extraordinary place with people from all over the world who I was able to interact with at virtually any time of day.

JT: You are also involved in agroecology and public education outside of professional work? The proceeds from the book will go to building a knowledge cafe in Chiang Mai. What is this project?

LH: Here is where the book comes in, such as in general education. Yes, I have been advocating for agroecology for a while and created a commons-based farm in 2011, following the principles of La Via Campesina. As I mentioned, I think we should synthesize the technosphere with agroecology putting nature and humans at the center of an eco-civilization, and it may be that La Via Campesina is the group that saves us. Let me go into digital education, first.

For education, the idea is to build Centers for Digital Education/P2P Labs where people can come together to learn. To do this some friends and I rented a room and created a Center for Digital Education in Cameroon with the local council there; and it was done mostly through social media. I have never been to Africa. So, what happened was in 2013, I worked with a group out of Gothenburg, Sweden, called “Living Bridges Planet” that used Google’s new video platform to connect with people from around the planet. Bert-Ola Bergstrand (Sweden), Anna Blume (Germany), Jacob Urup Neilsen (Denmark), and Anne’ Kjaer Riechert (Norway), and I connected to create a dialogue with groups in Africa. Anne’ knew a group in Cameroon who wanted to do something with kids and education. As it turned out, we all shared knowledge and what we knew, and then the group with Clement Awanfe Ngueto in Cameroon shared their particular circumstances and ideas.

P2P Lab, Greece: An affiliate of the P2P Foundation

We needed some money for a pilot study, so I called a friend from the U.S. who happened to be in Seoul at the time, Tom Roberts, who is head of a division at UCB Pharmaceuticals in Tokyo. He donated money to get the projects going. Then, two of his friends (and their families) got involved, Ted Holzwarth and Phil Forrester from Arkansas. Ted is a VP at Comfort Systems in Arkansas, and Phil works in a new area in business development called B2B Sales Enablement Professionals. During 2014 and 2015, Tom and I were trying to figure out how to fund the project further when Ted and Phil got involved with donations of money and equipment for a girls soccer team. In Arkansas, girls and parents sent over equipment to the people in Cameroon, and then, the girls from the U.S. would meet with their soccer counterparts in the village in Cameroon via video call.

By 2016, Clement had gained NGO status in the country and the group had set up a website and arranged for computers to be sent from Germany. We were finally able to get the full Center for Digital Education/P2P Lab opened by May. The room we rented filled up immediately after the first few days, and the folks in the village were saying they needed to build an actual school!

The school project for Cameroon (or any location) is under the full control of the village council, and we act as advisers according to whatever expertise we have. If we can create more centers, we plan to connect all of the schools together with video capacity, P2P systems, and then manage it with the Ethereum blockchain. The last part is for the future though and would take a lot of resources beyond where we are at the moment. I want to add that the children in the village come from families that practice Christianity and Islam; they study, play, and work together. They speak English and French. The entire village project group for Cameroon, all of us, have all different kinds of ideas on religion, society, and politics. Some are liberal, conservative, social democratic, social libertarian and so on. I suppose this project is multi-everything.

Code, Design, Think Globally—Do Manufacturing and Agroecology Locally—Illustration: Fair-starts, P2P Foundation

The people in the village, the kids mostly, begin with basic computer skills, then will move on to coding, designing, and then micro-manufacturing.

At the P2P Foundation we say Code, Design, Think Globally—Do Manufacturing and Agroecology Locally. I use the term, peerist synergism.

To teach the children in 2017, I have asked other scientists, professors, and coders to join in. This year we will increase direct video classes. To do so, we bought the best Internet service possible so that the children would have that constant connection to the world. Last year, I wrote to Louis Dargin, a computer programmer from Michigan, and Abdul Rahman Raji, a materials chemist at Cambridge in the UK to join us and help with the science curriculum and to teach via video.

Louis has been working on the coding curriculum. Tom, Ted, and Phil are planning spreadsheet and business related notes for the kids. And, Abdul and I have been working on the basic reasoning and science curriculum. At the moment, the students are still learning about computers, though I do give a class, which is an open discussion on society and technology. Last year, when I gave a preliminary class on the development of the Internet, the children began to tell me about Pascal, the French philosopher and mathematician!

As you indicated, the next center we are planning will be at the farm in Chiang Mai, which part of the proceeds from the book will fund.

JT: The book is on that process of open-reasoning and education, and also society and technology.

LH: Yes, the book is bound up in all of this. Those projects were ongoing, and then the book kinda chose me. It is really about open reasoning as a social and Constitutional activity. I was thinking of a way to facilitate open reasoning, and I came up with a kind of Internet of Thinking Together—a Universal P2P Machine. Validation of accuracy of news could be done on the blockchain. Blockchain addresses have a private and public key. Unless someone steals one’s key, then we know that the address is verified, and time cannot be reversed unless there is a visible systemic change and to do that, it would take the consensus of “miners.” It is sufficient to say that this kind of system could be reliable for open information. From verified addresses, news could be analyzed, and then guaranteed according to who does the work on it. I will have to ask the hackers about this, but I think they could do it. In my case, I started out just trying to write an essay and developed these ideas from that process of thinking and writing.

Internet of Thinking Together, A Universal P2P Machine—Illustration : @Ciudad_basura y @maralpel forThinkCities.org, unrelated to the P2PMachine concept

This past November, around the time of the election, I had been to Japan to give a couple small seminars on open reasoning and P2P systems, and was also raising money to build the knowledge cafe in Chiang Mai. On November 8th, while I was in Kyoto, I watched the election coverage and the follow up. Post-truth emerged as the major concept of the year. No doubt, true. While in Kyoto, I also met with a friend for lunch, who is a political economist in agriculture at Kyoto University, Shuji Hisano. We discussed a number of topics around agroecology, the knowledge cafe, and then Japan and East Asia. He and his students had visited the farm in Chiang Mai, last September. I jotted down some notes and began an essay about two weeks later after seeing the debate on Al Jazeera between Medhi Hasan and Slavoj Zizek. The essay turned into a pamphlet, and that turned into a book by Christmas time. I figured some of the proceeds from the book could go to build the cafe.

JT: This book is a work in media literacy? Post-truth?

LH: The book brings together various elements of how we come to understand the world. It is about thought, history, the old broadcast mass media, and the new digital media. For post-truth, I define is as anything that does not use argument and explanation in the public forum. In the book, I argue that this is not new and it began due to 20th century democratic systems and popular action. I date post-truth back to Edward Bernay’s 1928 book called Propaganda. It may have begun earlier with the British during WWI. You can see it coming along from that era. At that time, everybody was doing it. Propaganda got a “bad” name with Joseph Goebbels, so it morphed into post-truth, but remained the same as with any state, and then with big business, advertising, and the public relations industry it became an art form.

Post-truth, propaganda, or whatever we call it, was designed to create fairy tales, or overly simplified stories with the outcome of people indulging in “quasi-hedonism” and not in democratic systems. There are bad people and good people; we are good and they are bad, for example. And then there was the whole parade of celebrities, sports heroes, romance and mass culture. It worked; while “liberals” set up neo-Nazi police states around the world, particularly in Latin American, to feed this consumerism. The height of that was neoliberalism by 1991, which was said to be the end of history. Basically, neoliberals assumed they had reached the formula for the management of society through scientific economics and technocratic bureaucracy that would adjust the levers of the system according to need. The real word for that system is neoimperialism; same old thing. Instead of kings and merchantilism, it was presidents, CEOs, “innovators,” and capitalism.

In fact, reading history, we can see that all empires gave a version of the same triumphalist story: civilization has reached its height in us. Many disagreed with neoliberalism and wanted democratic systems in society, myself included. In the midst of “market rationality,” two recent recessions, and an enormous bubble, the ideology of the most recent version of neoimperialism ended in 2008, devastating the world’s poor, and also regular people in the developed countries who lost their jobs, homes, families and sense of orientation.

If we want to understand the emergence of the Alt-right, this is where we should look. At the same time, the more democratically-minded elements of the populace nearly took over the Democratic Party and instituted Bernie Sanders’ policies that would get us at least back to the New Deal levels and better hopes of a new internationalism, leaving neoliberalism behind. It wouldn’t have been Scandinavian social democracy, but much better. Trump smashed the rest of the neoliberal system on November 8th. What we see now is something new, I think. It looks like a kind of plutocratic, corporate state or corporatism. The market has subsumed society and the state, and is managed by plutocrats and by suprastate entities. It is hard to know what that is, really, but certainly it is threatening to international relationships, particularly for the U.S. between South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines. And, these recent actions have put China, Australia, and probably India and ASEAN on the defensive. In the Western Hemisphere, certainly Mexico is concerned since at the border of the Rio Grande and then in Arizona the area is being militarized with a wall, of all things. Europe is having major problems already, and current developments in the U.S. leave it hard to know how Europe and the U.S. will turn out.

Someone recently asked me how all of this (U.S.) looked from an Asian perspective, and my response was something like: I’m not sure, but I know for one thing that if we had to obsessively worry about everyone’s skin color, and different languages, and robes, and so on, we’d never get a plane off of the ground to go anywhere. On probably every plane I take, there is a variety of people, languages; Islamic traditional dress, Myanmar dress, Karen dress, hill tribes, and so on. From India and Pakistan on over to Indonesia is the largest Muslim population. Then, there is Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, well, everything.

As all of the above was emerging, the way people get information changed dramatically with the addition of the smartphone to the older broadcast media on television. The digital, prosumer media has driven post-truth into overwhelming proportions where nearly everyone can create it; even bots (autonomous code) can do this. Therefore, what is actually occurring is a human response to being overwhelmed, and thus, we have the extreme form of post-truth driving hysteria. It’s a strange phenomenon as clicks and attention create the feedback loop since code will just follow along. Google and Facebook have made some changes to code to create other avenues, and people are starting to fight back in society. I think it important for many elements of society to point these issues out and we can see that indeed there is public response.

Participation in the public forum and in activism are fundamental to democracy; these are the duties and responsibilities to protect inalienable rights and values. If not, those will go away, as we can observe directly, and aided by grossly inaccurate information. So, the book was intended as a way to participate in the discussion, particularly in argument and explanation online. The old media looks like it has lost.

The media was hardly interested in precision in discussion with its focus on politicians’ clothes and lives, and then entertainment and advertising; it was more like a parade with various nodes devoted to circuses. However, at least we knew who they were and that they did some fact-checking and looked for corroborating evidence. If we want accuracy, and are interested in reality, the Financial Times is probably the best source. Since information is vital to both democracy and participation in the market, or what’s left of either of those anyway, then society will have to address the issues of the infosphere quickly.

The director at the Asia Institute in Seoul, Emanuel Pastreich, and I, have been discussing something like this idea. He wrote an article for the Huffington Post back in 2013 called something like a Constitution of Information, and it is this concept we have been discussing. We also have been wondering about a digital Republic of Letters after we looked at the Stanford center online. What would that look like if societies were to generate such a system on the Internet, we wondered? In the current book besided neoliberalism, history, and the media; as mentioned, I suggest an Internet of Thinking Together— Universal P2P Machine.

JT: For the book, you also practiced P2P with readers to help with the book?

LH: Yes, this was an exercise in P2P or peerist synergism working with others through the digital system. As I approached the end of the book, and had a rough draft, I posted on my timeline asking for others to read the rough draft, and to offer suggestions. A few people responded and some stayed with it until the end. This effort allowed for a measure of peer review so we could get the book out more quickly.

Due to current events, I wanted to primarily go with social media rather than a publishing company. In the core group there were folks who pitched in, which included: a high school teacher, a computer programmer, a game developer, a business person, and a dairy farmer and rancher (and Greek scholar). This allowed us to produce something readable in a short time due to the circumstances of the election, and then to send it out into the social media infosphere. I expect it will be an ongoing project with various additional publications. The book is arranged topically as a series of essays or reflections. The sections go together somewhat, but they could be read separately. There is more work to do as a follow up; probably further grammar work and then expansion of the chapters, along with the addition of further chapters. This one is a beta version.

JT: There is a Facebook group for the group?

LH: There are three of these groups with the invitation: “We are beginning a dialogue on the Internet of Thinking Together, Join us!” The first group is a general, open group called The Internet of Thinking Together. The second, is a group for analysis of particular articles such as comparison of various articles on the same topic (The Internet of Thinking Together (Media)). The third is an open group for adding corrections and suggestions for the book. For example, if readers find errors, they can post their corrections to that group, or if they have suggestions for further chapters, they can add in with links for sources. The final group is a store for the Internet of Thinking Together where we can raise money to build the knowledge cafe and further develop Centers for Digital Education/P2P Labs. These are just in development at the moment, but they can be joined. The main link is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/226438347767399/?ref=ts&fref=ts

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John Thang (Myanmar) is Editor in Chief of Global Digest, a social media publication from South Korea and Norway. He is a doctoral student at ChungAng University in Seoul and a human rights activist. Global Digest on Korea, Economy, and Ecology

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