[p2p-research] Fwd: open sailing

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Eric Hunting <erichunting at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 1:57 AM
Subject: Re: open sailing
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>


Open Sailing - an organic approach to homesteading the sea.

The notion of marine colonization is, perhaps, almost as old as the legend
of Atlantis that so often seems to inspire it and, energized by industrial
prowess and stimulated by Modernist idealism, the 20th century saw the
emergence hundreds of different visions of marine settlement, though for the
most part focused on urban megastructures in designs ranging from the
straightforward (like the well known Sea City showcased in TV21 Annual in
1971 http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/sea-city.html<http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/%7Ebat/sea-city.html>)
to
the ridiculously fanciful. (like the Principality of New Utopia
http://www.new-utopia.com/) Even the famous oceanographer Jacques Cousteau
once had his own vision of a floating marine colony he hoped his Cousteau
Society might one day build. But towards the turn of the century visions of
marine living began to shift towards the smaller scale, driven by the
general cultural perception that everything big is now impossible because
social consensus is now virtually impossible and a compulsively self-serving
'establishment' (governments and corporations) has become a permanent and
automatic obstacle to damn-near everything good, fun, pleasurable,
empowering, and progressive. We now instinctively see as more plausible
solutions, concepts, and plans that work from the bottom-up rather than the
top-down and which offer some prospect of being accomplished entirely on the
level of the individual. As a result, in recent years the notion of
homesteading the ocean -at the scale of the individual household- has begun
to displace the idea of colonizing it en masse through megastructures.
Unfortunately, the sea is a tough environment that imposes great physical
and logistical challenges for which no ready technological solutions are
at-hand at modest scales. On the face of it, self-sufficiency at sea at the
scale of the household is utterly impossible and even the cost of the basic
architecture untenable to all but the ultra-wealthy. The viability of the
concept of homesteading at sea may be contingent on technologies that are
still 50 years or more in the future. But, lured by the romance of the sea,
imagination remains undaunted by practicality and so a steady parade of new
sea homestead concepts continue to emerge.

Open Sailing (http://www.opensailing.net) represents one of the latest of
these and, though it shares many of the basic flaws common to these concepts
with its proposed structures and systems quite nascent in design, it is
remarkable chiefly for it's pragmatism. Typical concepts for marine
homesteading are presented as turn-key solutions in the here and now when
they most obviously are not. They seem rooted in the old American business
adage of 'selling the sizzle and not the steak' -especially when you don't
have any steak. But nice CGI renderings and models, as important as they are
to mass communication of an idea, are not themselves a working plan. Though
perhaps less sophisticated in presentation than other concepts, Open Sailing
is much more sophisticated in essential concept itself and its participants
seem to be far more cognizant of the actual challenges their dream is
confronted with. And so they seem to not be 'selling' a packaged solution so
much as offering the prospect of participation in a big adventure revolving
around _learning_ how to make this concept work. That sort of attitude I
have no fault with whatsoever. That's the kind of attitude you need to
actually accomplish things rather than just talk about them -because with
serious projects it's ultimately never really about the end results but
rather enjoying the process of getting there. And, given what they are
starting out with, such pragmatism is wise because their initial habitat
designs will probably be about as comfortable to live in on the open sea as
a pup-tent on Mt. Everest -and that's OK when you aren't trying to push this
as some ultimate form but rather a starting point for experimentation. I'd
suggest they look beyond the examples of simple buoys to the more stable
neutrally buoyant structures such as the SPAR or pylon buoy -based on the
same principles of the FLIP research ships and able to support either
integrated habitat structures or Dymaxion style structures. (where a series
of radial decks are support by perimeter tension cables from the top of the
pylon)

Getting to the more technical aspects of the Open Sailing concept, the
sub-concepts of Instinctive Architecture, Nomadic Ecosystems, and Swarm OS
are intriguing and further demonstrates their pragmatic point of view. They
are looking beyond the notion of the all-inclusive hermetically
self-sufficient personal spaceship as home to communities of dwellings and
systems in dynamic networks of mutual support. This is a much more rational
way of thinking about marine living that takes its cues from nature
(colonial organisms like jellyfish and coral) as well as traditional nomadic
lifestyles where the focus is portable 'encampments' and not all-inclusive
houses. I have my doubts about the viability of some aspects of the
architecture they propose. They may be assuming a much more placid general
marine state than is the case on the open sea. But the principle is
promising. Too often sea homesteading proponents are inspired by the
cultural myths of the American frontier and the notion of solitary
households living in total independence in the wilderness. (a concept long
promoted by the establishment because it reinforces the anti-social concept
of the Nuclear Family as primary social unit -and conveniently 'fungible'
worker unit) Even if this nonsense were remotely historically accurate, that
sort of lifestyle isn't all it's cracked up to be in the first and only
seems attractive to people who live alienated by -and frustrated with- a
dysfunctional contemporary society.

The Nomadic Ecosystems compliments the core Instinctive Architecture concept
with a tethered and self-mobile collective of life support systems in the
form of deployable and largely independently floating modular units -again
borrowing the analogy of colonial organisms. This remains largely
undeveloped by the group so far and will be the more technically challenging
due to the necessary deployability of some complex systems. Free range fish
farming may be one promising addition to this. One of the key parts to this,
the Energy Animal, has seen more development but remains a highly
speculative design. A deployable energy tower may be a more workable option.

The Swarm OS concept is also interesting. As a way of managing the automatic
positioning of marine structures as a functional collective, it makes sense,
though, having first-hand experience with what passes as 'state of the art'
satellite Internet communicates today, I wonder about the specific telecom
infrastructure they envision. New technology may be needed here. But the
Swarm OS also has interesting implications for social organization and group
activity on land. We generally have very poor situational awareness in our
lives. Open access to diverse, dynamic, geographically mapped condition and
situation information could radically change the way we think about space,
property, and the sense of place.

One of the most glaring omissions with the Open Sailing plan is one shared
by all these sea homesteading proposals and which represents one of the key
technological challenges of the present; transportation. An over-emphasis on
self-sufficiency tends to lead proponents of the marine homestead to
underestimate the importance of transportation and thus overlook the very
critical problem of a lack of cost-effective options in the area. The Open
Sailing habitats are intended to be slowly self-mobile but this won't suit
the needs of routine or emergency travel. We don't yet have such things as
volantors (flying cars), let alone ones with an intercontinental range,
helicopters are inadequate, and sailing yachts both extremely slow and not
well suited to being 'parked' in the open ocean for extended periods of
time. To meet its sustainability objectives, Open Sailing would need vessels
that can employ energy produced at sea.

Another great but overlooked logistical challenge is industrial
sustainability -the ability for this marine settlement to source materials
for and manufacture most, if not all, the systems and structures it needs
from those same types of systems and structures on location. Here you have a
problem similar to that of the permanent space habitat which must deploy
structures of great size yet cannot actually precision fabricate on-orbit
anything larger than it can fit through a pressure hatch.

Overall, Open Sailing is by no means the most robust or well-heeled of sea
homesteading projects around today but it is most definitely smarter. It may
be a very long time before they realize their goals, but I suspect they
will, thanks to their more advanced concepts, produce a lot of promising
technology in the process and, with their better attitude, have a lot more
fun along the way.

Eric Hunting
erichunting at gmail.com




On Jul 13, 2009, at 6:09 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:

 Hi Eric,
>
> perhaps you could discuss this for our p2p blog?
>
> see:
>
> Open Sailing From P2P Foundation
> Jump to: navigation, search
> URL = http://www.opensailing.net
>
>
>
> [edit]Description
> "In order to live at sea, we’re pioneering an entirely new form of marine
> architecture. Open_Sailing acts like a giant organism, a cluster of
> intelligent units that can react to their environment, change shape and
> reconfigure themselves. They talk to each other. They’re modular,
> re-pluggable, pre-broken, post-industrial and self-sufficient. Open_Sailing
> is a project that is well underway. We are a constantly growing,
> international team of around 15 people designing and engineering a prototype
> that is being built now in the UK, France and Morocco – under the mentoring
> of numerous experts. We will set sail in May from London to Rotterdam. You
> can see the results of the test journey in July at the Royal College of Art
> and track our progress online at www.opensailing.net."
>
>
>
> --
> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>
> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>
> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
> http://www.shiftn.com/
>




-- 
Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com

Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
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