Go green? We have the technology, it’s the social organisation we lack
Back in 2008 I published a novel, “Inventing for the Sustainable Planet”. It follows technical writer Max Wahlter as he uses creativity techniques to invent sustainable technology. He was hoping to sell some to augment his measly salary. I had a great time writing it. One of the main dramatic plot lines involved Max coming to the realisation that the technology he is seeing is not new. What is different about this sustainable “land” is that it has another social order and known technology. He was expecting the opposite. I realised the other day, that we find ourselves in just that predicament.
The novel is an allegory for our situation. Like Max, we are hoping we can implement green technology to prevent global heating destabilising the climate and thereby increase our chances of survival in any large numbers. It is not said outright, but I suspect we are pinning our hopes on some young entrepreneurs who come up with some great idea that has a business concept that will make money for investors. These investors, presumably rich people looking to make a fortune and willing to risk some of their money, put in enough money to help the entrepreneurs business take off, and wham! We save the planet. The investors get rich and the entrepreneurs get bought out for a song.
Ask yourself: how realistic is that on a scale of one to ten?
Back to the land Max calls Porena. Similar to a sustainable Gulliver’s Travels, Max visits a world that is living sustainably, and he eagerly sets about documenting the technology they are using, hoping to find something he can patent.
He is baffled; none of the technology is new to him. After a short time he realises that he is in a world that has technology he is familiar with, but a social order that is new. He proceeds to document this social technology, and starts to ask “how come this society changed to this new social order?”
The novel follows Max’s blog posts from first steps into the world of sustainability. He takes us on an inner and outer journey from the annoyingly obvious though the impossibly simple via the inevitable awkward decisions to a deeper understanding of what we all need to do to secure this Earth for coming generations. It becomes obvious that we need to change the way we work together.
Max goes around asking questions like “what do you work with?” to meet the reply “Work? I stopped doing that years ago. Are you new here?”
You get the opportunity to learn Imagestreaming with Max. Imagestreaming is the creative technique max uses. And you get to explore what sustainability might actually look like. You will also experience, through his eyes, how to overcome the barriers that most people see as stopping us living sustainably.
Most of the insights in the book can be found operational already — you can verify for yourself on the internet. Some of the alternative ways of organising are also to be found, if you look hard enough.
Perhaps the most surprising thing in the book is when Max asked how it came to be that people abandoned money and work as the main paradigm. I won’t spoil it and give that one away!
Buy the book over the net by clicking here.
Some of the contents
- Max visits the sustainable city to find out why work and money are counter-sustainable
- Advanced transport systems allow increased population density and many green spaces
- One key to sustainable city design is to understand how to manage stress
- Technosphere: man’s connection to the biosphere
- Going from counter-sustainable to sustainable requires new techniques. Max encounters a behaviour-based methodology that proves highly effective
- Why technology isn’t the answer and social development is.
- Sustainable development study-circles
- How to put a price on the environment
- Re-thinking the supply chain gives better products and removes the challenge of waste
What readers say….
Where does he get it all from?
Eduardo Miranda, author of Implementing the high tech project office.
Most Intriguing.
Andrew Bibby, Times correspondent.
The conclusions drawn in this book are highly confronting to everyone.
Shirin Laji, member of Swedish IT Commission
Although the book is quite a few years old, I believe it holds some clues for how we can move forward: both using technology that we have better, but also developing a new social order.
