It includes contributions by Lonny Grafman (President of the Appropedia Foundation), myself, plus Michel Bauwens, Clay Shirky, Gil Friend and around 60 other thinkers whose work deserves to be better known. Jean Russell, an inspiring ambassador for the concept of Thrivability, herded and encouraged us in our contributions, and curated the work.

The best way to view the book is through the slideshow, above, but there is also a PDF version.

Thank you Jean!

                          

As we learn, we can do work.

As we teach, we can do work.

As a community we can bring challenges, lessons, opportunities and context.

Together we can have impact.

Thank you to the students and teachers already engaged with Appropedia, and thank you to those communities that have made it possible and worth it.

                          

An key tool for this is wikEd, which can be used (by those with a Firefox browser) to convert formatted text to wiki markup.  And now there's an even easier way to use it:  Just use the conversion box at Wikedbox. Paste in the formatted text, and press the "wikify" button above, which looks like this:  .  Voila - you now have wiki markup. Mostly it works very well, and saves a heap of time.

For more detail, see Using wikEd to convert formatted text to wiki markup.

Note that this isn't enough to handle PDFs - we're looking for people with access to Adobe Reader Pro who can help us with the first step (simple,  but you need the software) of converting PDF documents to HTML plus images.

                          

So here it is, on LJ: Appropedia Community.

Check it out, and if you're interested in contributing, then join the community and get in touch!

                          

The on-the-ground realities behind these growth rate numbers reflect massive cultural changes. The explosion of humanity shows a certain kind of progress toward things most of us want: improved nutrition, lower infant mortality, longer lives, better disease prevention, etc, for ourselves and our families. What I'm saying is that the population boom was not the result of some effective world wide growth campaign, but a combination of technology improvements in agriculture and health, getting the word out, and  people making their own choices to adopt new methods.

Now we don't have to be Thomas Malthus to imagine that untempered growth would be a bad thing in the long run, and that slowing the pace is vital to avoid all kinds of resource shortages, etc.  The growth came from people making predictable choices to take advantage of new options.  Is there any chance that we can somehow make use of the personal choice dynamic to bring us to the reduced growth?  Or will population be constrained through starvation and war driven by vast and excruciating shortages and through policies like compulsory sterilization?  Maybe "all of the above"?  It seems plain to me that the more that we can support and encourage the choice-based reduction in growth, the less we will face the tragedy of externally imposed reductions.

The Wikipedia page referenced above tells us that fertility is already falling regionally. Some of that reduction is the result of governance policies "encouraging" small families, but reduced growth is also present in areas without strict population policies.  Large groups of people are having fewer kids for their own reasons, making much different choices than their parents and grandparents did.   Much of that shift has occurred in the developed world.  It is also beginning in the developing world. The cultural changes that motivate lower fertility are multifaceted and include reduced infant mortality, improved education and literacy, the empowerment of women, and a shift from an agricultural model based on child labor.

How is such massive cultural change instigated or mediated?  How do we as individuals "choose our culture"?  We are not simply our parents children, nor did we learn everything in school (particularly not in areas where even primary education is not guaranteed).  Culture is not simply established by government or NGO educational programs, though these may help.   Few of us learned to use the internet in a classroom, and yet somehow that behavior has spread, pretty much through personal choice.  (By contrast, there's at least some evidence that cellphone usage norms may be learned in school )

I'm convinced that rapid cultural change is mediated by a zillion small and large individual decisions based on our experience in a world undergoing rapid macroeconomic change.  Amidst turmoil and uncertainty, many will seek to take their destinies into their own hands to improve their situation by trying something new (nicely exemplified, as I've said before, by William Kamkwamba).  The people who are successful will be imitated.  If enough people can make the right kind of choices, we will have a chance to create a stable world through peaceful means.

But time is tight. Humanity must adopt new behaviors quickly to avoid the "hard landing" that it (and other species) will otherwise face in the presence of our current practices. Appropedia's founders (myself among them) believe that we can have lives that are both rich and sustainable. Today, much of the rich world is not sustainable, and much of the sustainable world is not rich.  What can we learn from each other?

Global progress toward improving the human condition has always depended on technological advances coupled with a millions of individual choices.  Our current reinvention also depends on individuals exercising self determination in the presence of awareness, knowledge and insight.  Could we support the vital rapid reinvention through a massive information campaign?  Alternatively, how much will progress be impeded if practical information is hard to find? Wikipedia has shown that large scale voluntary information sharing campaigns are possible and relatively cheap.  Enlightened self interest shows that such a campaign is essential.

It's a matter of personal choice...

                          

So, yes, I marvel at the remarkable edifice that is Wikipedia, and I think it says something about what humans are capable of.  And yet, I've only made a few small edits there.  Instead, Wikipedia's success motivated me to create my own wiki around how we humans can work together in practical ways to make lives better.  ( "WinWinWiki" got as big as 14 pages before I joined Chris and Lonny here at Appropedia, which had more pages,  maybe even 100.)   Appropedia's  hard problem is that much of the information we value often resides nonverbally in people's heads  and not on some web page.  Find the words to describe how to select the best local dirt for your earthen blocks takes some cleverness.  Consider something as "simple" as rainwater harvesting.  Wikipedia has a nice overview page on the topic, but they don't provide enough information to build your own system.  Appropedia has a portal focused on rainwater harvesting, with lots of links to practical articles on actually doing some rainwater harvesting.  No doubt there are still unanswered questions, or regional variations that could be added.  Some of that info is hiding on the web somewhere, but some might be in your head.  Or in someone's head who (gasp!) doesn't spend much time on the internet, or perhaps doesn''t have regular access (at least for a couple of years).

Appropedia faces a lot of the same challenges that Wikipedia did, and  some different ones as well, but there's one challenge Appropedia won't face.  When Wikipedia was first getting started, many said it was impossible.  "Who's going to spend the time?  How can content quality be maintained?  How will disputes be settled? If you let just any unregistered Schmo edit, it'll be a spammer''s paradise. Yada yada, it'll never work."  But of course it has worked, amazingly well.  (Here's a nice self referential article about that, and, for balance, a discussion of criticisms. I just love that.)  And since Wikipedia has been-there-done-that, the notion that Appropedia is impossible seems rather naive or even far-fetched.  The question is not "if" like-minded humans can build a large open library of practical and sustainable solutions, but "how" or "when". I find that profoundly inspiring.

It's why I'm here.  Oh, and I have a 6-year-0ld son.  He needs to understand what's possible for humans to do by working together. When he's my age ("39"), he'll have another two billion people to share the planet with.  Maybe you can help me show him what we can do together?

                          

New community member Joe Raftery, one of our new community members doing lots of great work, created the page Electricity safety basics. Sections include:

• Measures to protect against electric shock - Extra Low Voltage, Insulate all live parts and Use an RCD (GFI)
• Protection against overheating, and
• Protection against overcurrent

Very useful, especially for those living and working in places (probably most of the world) where you can't just ring up a certified electrician.

                          

When Paul Currion asked Do you think it's time for a humanitarian wiki? my own thought was "What do you think we've been doing?"

Appropedia has been a humanitarian wiki since 2006, covering mainly the technical aspects of development and relief work (particularly appropriate technology). Increasingly this collaboratively built knowledge base has been covering the essential social and cultural questions as well - culture and community, and principles of development.

So the real question is "Do you think it's time to support this work?" Relief workers with your personal checklists and guidelines that are your tools of the trade - what's stopping you from sharing these, and helping others be more effective aid workers? How about asking your organization to adopt an open license policy, even a policy of actively sharing their knowledge resources through Appropedia?

Your mission is to save lives and relieve suffering. Effective knowledge sharing, using an acknowledged, accessible platform,  is an essential part of that.

Do you think it's time?

                          

If not... then a change of topic: Check out this article on Swales, a great form of water management and specifically Groundwater recharge. A simple design, popular in the permaculture approach to protecting and enhancing the water cycle.

                          

One of our challenges is that on any given topic we have many pages - howtos, project pages, designs, organization and collaboration, as well as subtopics, and more. Wikis have category pages, but they're normally only used by hardcore wiki geeks. How do we make them friendlier? And how do we point people to browse the categories?

Here's an early attempt. On the topic page for Permaculture is a notice that says:

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Browse this topic's subtopics, howtos, project pages, designs, organization pages and more at the Permaculture category.

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and on the category page is a longer notice:

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Permaculture is a form of whole systems design based on the sustainability of natural systems, seeking to reproduce that sustainability in our living environment.Read more about this topic at Permaculture. Browse this category's subtopics, howtos, project pages, designs, organization pages and more below.

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There's more to be done, and much work to do - especially portal pages, like our Appropriate technology portal.

What do you think?