Envisioning a convivial post-corporate world requires a diversity of new/old concepts, policies, technologies, best practices, etc. that are imaginable or currently available for decentralized implementation.

This blog is intended to collate promising contributions to this vision from experts in many fields.

Participants are requested to classify each of their posts with one or more of the Category Labels (listed here).

December 09, 2013

Grassroots Innovations Trove


After decades searching for ingenious rural innovations, Dr. Anil Gupta and his suite of organizations (Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions [SRISTI ], Honey Bee Network, Grassroots Innovations Augmentation Network [GIAN], etc.) have compiled thousands of their findings online for use by everyone.

They are looking for help in setting up small manufacturing operations to commercialize some of these products to benefit their inventors. If you have any ideas or energy for that, do get in touch.



Rain Forest Advocate Taps Sugar Palm Energy

New Gifts from Old Cultures
- A Palm Tree with Countless Benefits and Virtuous Demands
A sugar palm energy researcher.
Scientist Willie Smits believes that the Arenga sugar palm may be the key to protecting tropical forest
 in Indonesia while providing opportunity for villagers through a unique process of biofuel production.

A Rain Forest Advocate Taps the Energy of the Sugar Palm
By Marianne Lavelle 
National Geographic News
June 22, 2011

One of Indonesia's most ardent rain forest protection activists is in what may seem an unlikely position: Spearheading a project to produce biofuel from trees.

But tropical forest scientist Willie Smits, ­­after 30 years studying fragile ecosystems in these Southeast Asian islands, wants to draw world attention to a powerhouse of a tree—the Arenga sugar palm. Smits says it can be tapped for energy and safeguard the environment while enhancing local food security.

Smits says that the deep-rooted feather palm Arenga pinnata could serve as the core of a waste-free system that produces a premium organic sugar as well as the fuel alcohol, ethanol, providing food products and jobs to villagers while it helps preserve the existing native rain forest. And scientists who have studied the unique harvesting and production process developed by Smits and his company, Tapergie, agree the system would protect the atmosphere rather than add to the Earth's growing carbon dioxide burden.

"The palm juice chiefly consists of water and sugar—made from rain, sunshine, carbon dioxide and nothing else," says Smits. "You are basically only harvesting sunshine."

October 29, 2013

Post Peak Medicine

DOWNLOAD BOOK

The 21st century will probably be unlike any other century before or since. It will be a century of peaking and then declining natural resources: first oil, then natural gas, water, food, coal and uranium. At the same time, we will have to deal with a record number of human beings on the planet. Our political, economic and media leaders have prepared us poorly for what is likely to come. The overwhelming message from mainstream sources is in effect that we have infinite resources and can enjoy continuous improvement and infinite growth without consequences, and that technology will find a way to overcome any obstacle. When these things fail to happen (which is almost inevitable) there is likely to be much confusion and anger and a lack of consensus about what to do next. This book can't solve all of these problems, but maybe it can help in a small way. It is intended mainly as a guide by and for healthcare professionals, to help ease our transition into a post-peak healthcare system. The book is unfinished and is a work in progress. You can download the latest version of the book by clicking on the "download" link at the top of this page. I would welcome any comments, praise, criticism or offers to contribute.

January 02, 2013

Appropriate Tech Redux

In the Seventies and Eighties when thousands of Peace Corps, VSO and other types of volunteers were working in the developing world, their individual and collective attention to the challenges facing Third World communities sparked an explosion of ingenious inventions that became known as Appropriate Tech. Intended "to increase the standard of living for the developing world without condescension, complication, or environmental damage,".AT has not exactly burgeoned since then, but the field has survived and continues to devise technologies that not only make sense for traditional village societies, but can intelligently serve modern sustainable communities as well.

The following is a short list of contemporary resources in the field, which continues to benefit countless lives and deserves far more attention and support. - Ed.