Rental Society

In my post the other day, I talked about the problem of the decline of mechanical literacy leading to passive consumerism. I also mentioned the connections between the DIY movement, whih is bringing back near-forgotten skills, and environmentalism. But there is another environmentalist take on who should control material goods, which is expressed by By William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their book Cradle to Cradle. In this vision of a "green" future, people will rent or lease everything, and at the end of a product's lifespan, the company will take it back for recycling; It' s a view of production and consumption based on an ecosystem. One problem is that this view of the world leaves no room for user agency and creativity. If corporations own all of my things, I can't do anything to personalize them unless it is authorized by those corporations. Another is that it renders problematic any dissent from corporate policies; if I publicly denounce the corporation that owns my clothes/books/computer, I may have violated the fine print of my lease, allowing them to come and take them away. Vivendi/Sony/Gap/Microsoft are not Mother Nature, and I am not a fruit fly. It freaks me out to no end that this rental movement seems to be gaining steam. Maybe I'm just stereotypically American, but I want to own the things I depend on. Dependence (as opposed to interdependence) is too dangerous a societal fate for me to countenance.

The Anti-Bush! UNscrew America.

If all environmentalists were this creative as the people at Unscrew America, the world would be a much cooler place (literally). Check out the awesome interactive animation!

If You Can't Repurpose It, You Don't Own It

What do the DIY movement, environmentalism, and intellectual property have in common? Read this post and find out! BTW, these issues have been playing bumper-cars in my brain for a while, so I would love it if you posted ideas, opinions, questions, etc. in the comments. (Yeah, you!)

Clive Thompson wrote an article in Wired Magazine recently on "How DIYers Just Might Revive American Innovation," in which he describes the decline of mechanical literacy in the US over the last several decades as a serious obstacle to solving some of the biggest problems facing our society. Americans have been steered away from putting time into developing manual skills in favor of skills offering higher economic value in the "information economy." But Thompson maintains that "when we stop working with our hands, we cease to understand how the world really works." When we can no longer “build, maintain, and repair the devices we rely on every day,” we are forced to accept the role of passive consumer. We give our power of decision-making over to ‘experts’; as Thompson puts it, “If you can't get under the hood of the gadgets you buy, you're far more liable to believe the marketing hype of the corporations that sell them.”

The ability to transcend the model based on categories of active producers and passive consumers, forming an identity as a ‘user’ and/or ‘tinkerer’ who does both, is an important element of a DIY culture. Make Magazine, one of several DIY magazines to crop up in the last few years, published the Maker's Bill of Rights (a.k.a. the Owner's Manifesto), based on the principle that, "If you can't open it, you don't own it"; the list includes such "rights" as: "Components, not entire sub-assemblies, shall be replaceable," "Ease of repair shall be a design ideal, not an afterthought," and "Schematics shall be included." However, Make had to publish the Manifesto for a reason: corporations make their products inaccessible because they want to foster dependency by keeping consumers passive so that they will constantly buy new products. And that is where the law and the environment enter the picture.

The research I’ve done for my Master’s Thesis includes a hearty helping of reading on the history and structure of Intellectual Property law (particularly copyright), and the unpleasant reality is this: as more consumer products include microchips (and thus the software to run them), fewer products are going to be legally owner-tinkerable, as more of them fall into the confusing and user’s-rights-limiting world of ‘intellectual property.’ Here’s why: when you ‘buy’ a product containing both hardware and software, you ‘own’ the hardware and a license to use the software that makes it useful. The copyright holder (usually the corporation that sold you the product) ‘owns’ the software itself. Often, these guys will enact “security measures” to ensure that users can’t use the software for any purpose not directly authorized by the corporation. And, since the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998, consumers have been legally barred from circumvention of these barriers, even for purposes legally protected by ‘fair use’ rights (e.g. making a backup copy of a CD in case the one you bought breaks.) (The way that they legally get away with this contradictory crap is way too complicated to be explored here, but if you’re really interested, leave your email address in the comments and I’ll send you the explanation that’s in my Thesis Proposal.) The really key point here is that the law puts no regulations on unauthorized copying. It bans unauthorized ACCESS. Corporations, rather than the government, get to decide how far their rights extend, since they get to decide what access is authorized. As one of their goals is the continued passivity of users, it is extremely likely that they will block access to anything that they see as facilitating tinkering of any kind. (Facilitating tinkering…sounds like a crime in a sci-fi novel…hmmm. I think writing all this dense legalese is getting to me.)

Which brings me to the environment. Reusing (of “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” Fame) is most often the product of at least minor tinkering. If the law stops users from the tinkering necessary to reuse, the law is harming the environment (which, in my eyes, makes it both unnatural and unjust.) Consider this: according to an article in the New York Times, “Some inkjet printers have chips in their ink cartridges that prevent operation if the cartridge has been refilled.” That’s right folks. You must buy more cartridges, use more resources, and increase profits. This example brings both major problems into focus: not only, as I mentioned above, is it illegal to disable that chip, but as Thompson points out, few Americans know how in the first place.

While the legality of tinkering for reuse is a growing problem, more waste is generated by the loss of manual skills. How many things do you throw away that your grandparents or great-grandparents would know how to fix (or that you could learn to fix with a little study), but you don’t? What else? How many pounds of greenhouse gases and carcinogens could have been prevented from entering the atmosphere and the drinking water in order to replace your belongings if you knew how to fix a clock? A printer? A chair? A shoe? What if you knew how to take in and let out clothes? Or how to build a table? (People sell wood from fallen trees all the time.) Many people in the DIY movement recognize this, and I see an increased level of manual skills in the general population as an essential part of our moving towards a sustainable society. (No. I don’t live in a tree…I’d probably fall out if I did.)

There is certainly hope. DIY is a growing movement. Many DIYers see environmental awareness as one of their primary motivations for taking more of their consumption off of the corporate path, and taking their identity from ‘consumer’ to ‘tinkerer’. ReadyMade, a DIY magazine, has a segment called the MacGyver Challenge, in which the readers send in suggestions for how to craftily repurpose a ‘broken’ object. Make Magazine and its sister publication Craft Magazine both frequently post articles on reusing articles that might otherwise be considered ‘worthless.” There’s even an entire blog devoted to eco-friendly DIY craft, Crafting A Green World. At the same time, though, I know that very few people the access and time to learn the skills that could be most empowering; those that do, need them least. If DIY does not evolve beyond a boutique movement making things like (and this is an extreme example) the Steampunk Workstation to become a grassroots movement to change the relationship between people and objects, then it won’t change a thing.

Scuppie Alert!

The Scuppie Handbook, for "socially conscious upwardly mobile people." Um...yeah. (Hat tip to Treehugger.)

Shades of Sustainability Series Part I

The Washington Post published a fascinating article today, "Greed in the Name of Green," that dealt with the problem of people trying to save the environment by consuming more (eco-friendly) stuff. At the same time, I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about the problem of eco-paralysis, where people acknowledge the enormity of our environmental crisis, but continue to go about their lives without changing anything. I'm convinced that these two phenomena are intimately tied together by a common cause. People have no idea what a "sustainable life" would look like. It's completely unreasonable to suggest that everyone has to go live in huts and become subsistence farmers (although I've heard this argument made), and simply buying organic versions of the same crap we buy now isn't going to cut it, but no one seems to have come up with a really compelling vision of what our everyday lives will need to be like to really achieve sustainability. In an attempt to contribute, even a tiny bit, to that process, I'm starting a series on different, cool ideas on living sustainably. I'll be posting occasionally on how we are to go about it. I'm going to start with Hobbits. A family in Wales has built a "Low Impact Woodland Home" that looks remarkably like the houses in the celluloid version of Hobbiton. That is, it looks beautifully cozy enough to make me want to break into their home and put the water on for tea. I definitely think that tea ought to be part of living sustainably...because without tea, you aren't really living.

Steampunk CD Player

Prof. Emilio Zuntaras' Bi-Orbital Spectral Audiometer (courtesy of Brass Goggles)


I can justify my steampunk obsession...Steampunk makes the world a better place because the culture is imbued with a DIY ethos and values things for their handiwork (read: durability) than their novelty. Often steampunk artisans recycle to make their projects, and when they don't they tend to keep them for a long time, thus helping save the planet. See??? Plus...SHINY!

Eco-Friendly Self-Cleaning Kitchen!

I MUST have this thing! The Aion Kitchen concept model uses the plants on top of the unit to make soap to wash dishes...after you PUT THEM IN THE SINK!!! YAY! Wow, I've been sucked in by pretty consumerism appealing to my laziness and my love for plants once again.

Steampunk Saves the Planet!

Ok, I'll admit it. I have an unhealthy obsession with Stirling Engines. But the idea that one of the most efficient ways to transform the sun's rays into usable energy is based on a technology invented before the American Civil War is just so fantastic! Now the world record for solar-to-grid efficiency has been broken with the help of...a STIRLING ENGINE!!! (Thanks to EcoGeek for the link.) The new record is 31.25% efficiency. Now if only the magic eco-power of shiny cogs and gears could be harnessed...

EfficienCity

Greenpeace UK's website has a cool little simulation called EfficienCity that shows a bunch of climate-friendly innovations implemented without much change in the way people live. I think that the graphical, nonlinear interface is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of drawing people's interest. On the whole I tend to think that these things would be more effective if some sort of interactivity were involved, creating a sort of game, but if Greenpeace made a game about a climate-friendly city, it would probably suck. A lot. Of course, the changes shown in the simulated city would work better in places where people live in more concentrated areas with access to public transit, but it's nice to see semi-realistic possibilities of what people could do. After all, if we need to cut emissions to 80% less than 1990 levels by 2050, we have to get started now.

Climate Special on National Geographic

"Six Degrees that Could Change the World" is showing on the National Geographic Channel tonight. The program shows what could happen as the temperature increases, degree by degree, due to global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted that by 2100, global temperatures will have risen to somewhere between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees above 1990 levels. 6 degrees is a doomsday scenario. Unfortunately, there is a significant problem with all of this information, as with much information in the field of climate change. Explaining a crisis is useless without translation. Scientists, along with much of the world, measure temperatures in Celsius. Americans measure temperatures in Fahrenheit, and most have NO CLUE of the conversion rate. They assume 6 degrees means Fahrenheit, which means they think it's about half as bad as it actually is. No wonder so many 'climate skeptics' seem to be Americans. (Disclaimer: I'm an American, born and bred. I also grew up in Washington, DC, where an increase of even 6 degrees FAHRENHEIT in the summer could increase the death rate pretty significantly based on the heat alone.) I suppose my point here is that before blaming Americans for ruining the planet, make sure that you aren't ignoring less-intuitive aspects of American culture that might make even communication on the topic harder. Another example of this is our heavy reliance on cars. I've hated cars since I was in a nasty accident a while back. I still need to use them, because our public transportation system is simply insufficient, even in areas where people live in higher concentrations. I'd be glad to pay higher taxes for better infrastructure, but I can't do it by myself. If there were fewer tractor trailers on the roads where she lives, my mom wouldn't drive an SUV. (The nurses in the hospital after my SUV was T-boned by a pickup truck said that my partner and I probably would have been dead had we not been driving one.) We could have more long distance freight rail. But we don't. And not all Americans can afford to live in cities. The ones who can, can afford to tell everyone else how good it is for the earth, but they're idiots if they think people live in Delaware and drive to DC for work because they LIKE the 4-hour commute. (Yes, I met someone who does this every working day, God bless him.) We need to involve people in change rather than lecturing them. Maybe then we can get something done.