Glen -
No, I think you are spot on, and I can credit you with helping to have
moved my perspective some over the many years you have been
shadow-boxing at me (and others) on this list.
I am acutely aware that my 1800 sq ft home IS a mcMansion by many,many
standards, and that my myriad microprojects are one of my ways of
allowing myself some slack on living as remotely as I do when my
instincts and semi-formal understanding of the power-law distribution
challenge/opportunity. If I am part of the 99% in this country
(first world), it does me well to remember that I (we) are part of the
1% to the third world (or pick another ratio if you think 2 orders of
magnitude is too much/little).
I was hugely conflicted by Paolo Soleri's Arcology
<https://www.arcosanti.org/arcology/#:~:text=Arcology%20is%20the%20fusion%20of,functioning%20as%20a%20living%20system.>
vision when I first encountered it (I was in college 60 miles north of
Arcosanti <https://www.arcosanti.org/>as it was being built in the 70s)
and was drawn to the ideation of "right scaling" and "low impact" living
for humans, but offended by implications that I *must* become /homo
hiveus/ to be happy/healthy/survive. I have visited Arcosanti every
few years as an adult and befriended Tomiaki Tamura (architect/archivist
at Arcosanti) after a number of us made the effort to do a digital 3D
capture of the Paolo Soleri Amphitheater in Santa Fe when it was in
threat of being bulldozed. I still think it isn't the ideal Utopian
vision it wants to be, but it provides some very good parallax in
several dimensions.
Whilst in Stockholm 2 years ago with Merle, SteveG and I met the folks
behind Hubville <https://hubville.org/>which is a Swedish project to try
to re-envision mesoscale development... to fill in thoughtfully and
efficiently at the scale of Village to relieve both rural and urban
(esp. suburban) problems in development.... as the name suggests, to
become (yet more of) a Hub or return to fill the scaling niche they
filled when they emerged 100 or 1000 years ago. They were not only
working in Sweden but also with partners in Africa whose development
challenges were somewhat complementary to those in Europe.
Your point about our processes being perverted by our "delusional
identity as individuals..." and ".. delusional conception of private
property" is also well taken, in spite of my being highly charged up
with that conception and rhetoric both as a child and throughout my
adult life (and ongoing). I recently (1 year hence) read Robin Wall
Kimmerer's book "Braiding Sweetgrass
<https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass>" which addressed human
society/nature from a more ecosystem point of view. She is a trained
botanist but also a Native American and manages (IMO) to balance those
two perspectives very effectively. She talks a lot about
pioneer/frontier culture/species and succession growth in ecological
recovery. I was left with a strong feeling that we (/homo faber/)
really need to recognize that we are a (highly effective) invasive
species over most of the planet and that if what drew us to those
ecosystems/niches is at all valuable to us, we need to back the hell off
and recognize that we need to yield to a more robust/stable order that
comes with mature ecosystems, and be part of them, not the dominators of
the landscape where they once thrived. This applies not only to the
biosphere but to the cultural milieu where we (Western Civ Heroes)
colonized the hell out of those who *had* found a more mature balance.
I reject the literality of "/homo hiveus"/ as an aspiration, but
acknowledge that we are not even a little bit "right scaled" in our
participation in the human-sphere, much less the biosphere.
Kimmerer also introduced me to the idea of a Gratitude Economy which is
the next step along a chain of evolution beyond Gift Economies. I was
raised with an ideal of "generosity" but more in the way a hardcore
Liberatarian or even Republican might hold it (pride, ego, obligation,
fealty). This made it easy for me to embrace ideas like "Gift Economy"
and "Pay it Forward" variants... but it was really poignant when she
began to give examples of applying that "generosity" in a slightly
different context of "gratitude". I burn my firewood and even bask in
the sun with a very different perspective than I did when I felt like I
*deserved* those things. I'm less focused on getting a subsistence
garden to grow than nurturing/expanding proto-food-forests in existing
the microclimates already in place in and around trees and shrubs that
were already here when I came or volunteer (thank you birds!).
I only wish I had been more of this awareness when my daughters were
growing up. They benefited significantly from the Equal/Civil Rights
movements of my era, and Hippy-cum-Yuppie ideals of the bulk of my
professional/personal circle, but they are still stuck in rat races when
(if your vision were more fully elaborated and generated) they could be
living in a more peaceful/gratitude-filled "nest" or "ecosystem" ("Hive"
still carries too much specialization/non-power-law for me). We talk
about this some when we get together, but it is hard when you are a rat
trying to keep up in the race. The elder turned me onto Kimmerer and I
in turn turned her sister onto her... Kimmerer's "Gathering Moss"
wasn't as poignant for me, but for anyone who lives where moss thrives,
it might be perfect.
In the spirit of gratitude, I definitely gain a lot from your
oppositional instincts/style in this forum (and sometimes offlist).
I'm guessing your Saloon-Salon compatriots in Olympia groan (with
gratitude) when you show up for verbal fisticuffs and beer.
- Steve
On 2/8/22 10:45 AM, glen wrote:
It still sounds like rent-seeking to me. The answer is: Move to the
city. Centralize. Hivitize. We need to stop enabling those who think a
McMansion [⛧] in the forest/desert or the suburbs is, in any way, a
Good Thing. Suburban and rural populations are sucking way more than
they're contributing, living off the excess produced by the
centralized hubs.
It *seems* reasonable to assert that we should work on the "last mile"
problem, applying individualist solutions like personal vehicles and
private power lines (of whatever composition) directly to one's rural
homestead. But the last mile problem is only a problem because of our
delusional identity as individuals and our delusional conception of
private property. Correct those causes and that symptom will be
mitigated.
Sure, there will still be issues like transporting individuals from
the hive into the fields to do work (e.g. launching small groups into
space). But those would be the edge cases, not the center. If the
power law distributed majority of us lived in appropriately dense
hives, compressed air storage makes a lot more sense (as does
broadband communication, cultural transmission, and a host of other
processes perverted by our identities as individuals).
[⛧] Sorry, Steve. I know your homestead, littered with cool
micro-inventions and geeky tech, doesn't *seem* like a McMansion. But
it essentially is ... just tailored to a - our - subculture's tastes.
>8^D Even for those who go fully "off grid", when the sh¡t hits the
fan, those humans, massively capable harvesters of natural resources
that we are, will go back "on grid" to, say, get cancer treatment or
buy some canned beans or whatnot. But we can tolerate the few truly
innovative survivalists, and *not* pipe energy to their stead. It's
the blatant exploiters, rent-seekers, whose living out there is fully
supported by their ability to suck resources from the hive ... and our
abetting that parasitic relationship.
On 2/8/22 09:00, Steve Smith wrote:
As an amateur complexicist, I am a fan of multi-scale systems.... so
I look forward to systems like yours not being scaled (only) to
mega-industry. I wonder at how far out the existing distribution
chain you can push compressed air practically? I doubt there are
(m)any mechanics or private homes, for example, who could give up
their NG feed (heat mostly) for compressed air, even if the upstream
distribution were converting. The new(ish) DC-powered residential
scale mini-split heat-pumps would seem to operate well off of any
mechanical energy source (not just PWM modulated variable speed DC
motors) and the decompressed chilled air from the air-motor would go
right into boosting the efficiency rather than being yet another
source of waste heat. Not a perpetual motion machine, just a system
where some of the intrinsic inefficiencies are exploited/recovered
elegantly?
The big win seems obviously to be the major NG pipelines and existing
electric generation stations. I can't tell from your literature if
converting existing NG turbines to compressed air is even
reasonable... seems like this is probably why CAES is burning NG to
bring the charge up to the performance scale of existing turbine
designs? I believe that many of these plants were
designed/modified to be "peaking" plants which it seems your tech is
ideal for... let the
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