[p2p-research] ecotechnic future

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi Kevin,

feel free to take any take you want, though I believe that Greer's thinking
is actually quite sophisticated and precise, and he's not at all a
simple-minded primitivist ..

his current project is to create a huge commons for appropriate technology
knowledge that could be used for local communities,

I'm not sure what his take is on networked technology,

his response to my emails were: "read my book" <g>

Michel

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 12:38 AM, Kevin Carson <
free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7/16/10, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > could you have a look at this
> >
> http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2010/07/09/the-information-age-meet-john-michael-greer/
> ,
> > which refers to a review,and say something about how ecotechnic fits with
> > your own vision and that of lewis mumford whom you often quote in your
> work?
> >
> > thanks for considering it,
>
> I'll look into it.  As I recall vaguely from reading his blog, Greer
> is a primitivist sort along the same lines as Kirk Sale, who's hostile
> overall to high-tech stuff.  And as much as I admire his work, Dave
> Pollard is much the same way:  seeing the assorted Peak Everything
> crises leading to a post-tech future.
>
> If this is indeed Greer's orientation, I'd probably have to use him as
> a foil or straight-man for Mumford.
>
> What I don't understand about these guys is how they miss the obvious:
>  how digital technology and the network revolution are at the heart of
> what's creating the potential for a low-impact, less
> resource-intensive economy.  Green and high-tech are allies against
> mass production and the mountains of deliberately obsolete goods
> piling up in our landfills, and against the globalist economic model
> of truck/containership warehouses linking points of production and
> points of consumption thousands of miles apart.
>
> If any single thing reduces the need for fuel, it will be shifting
> wherever feasible from the movement of material to the movement of
> information.  Despite all the talk of how big the carbon footprint of
> server farms is, compare it to the carbon footprint of the low-hanging
> fruit they could replace:  replacing business air travel with
> teleconferencing, replacing most white-collar commutes with working at
> home, the sharing of digital designs with relocalized neighborhood
> manufacturers, etc.  If it's looked at in those terms, then the
> servers and communications infrastructure are worth their weight in
> gold, and will (along with freight trains) be given all the rationed
> fuel they can use even when fossil fuel ouput is at 20% of present
> levels.
>
> --
> Kevin Carson
> Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
> Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com
> The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
> http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
> Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
>



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