
50 years since the New Alchemy Institute created its ‘living machine’ (2019) - solvent
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/ng-interactive/2019/sep/29/the-new-alchemists-could-the-past-hold-the-key-to-sustainable-living
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sammalloy
> He soon hit a wall of institutional inflexibility: “The idea of doing
> activities from various disciplines – energy, architecture, agriculture,
> waste water, you name it – was simply not possible within the university
> setting at that time. A number of people, who became very close friends,
> were coming to the same conclusion: that we had to find new institutional
> structures to go after a larger vision.”

Could an expert on the history of academia please speak about the barriers to
interdisciplinary research and how (or if) it has been overcome? This is a
subject that has interested me for many years. In other words, what has
traditionally stood in the way of E. O. Wilson’s notion of consilience, and
are we on our way to finally synthesizing knowledge from different fields to
facilitate the discovery of new ideas and insights?

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carapace
Very important technology that's been neglected.

(I read about it in my parent's Whole Earth Catalog.)

I'm convinced we have all the answers we need, we just have to notice and
apply them.

~~~
foobar1962
I would love to agree, but I don’t think we even have all the right questions
yet.

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carapace
I worked as a TVC on the Google campus in Mountain View for a while. One of my
first impressions was that this was the baseline quality-of-life we as a
species should work towards: transportation, food, sanitation, etc.

I feel like it's a kind of "greatest common denominator" if you will, not a
utopia but close enough for the constraint "must exist in real life". We can
work out all the details in the fullness of time, but in the immediate future
(I think) we should concentrate on solving the easy, obvious stuff:

* a decent place to live

* healthy food (inexpensive)

* carbon-neutral energy

* health care

We have the resources and technology to do that (I believe.)

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dunefox
Very interesting. A shame that funding is always a problem - how much could
that have cost? 200.000$ year?

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mojomark
> Very interesting. A shame that funding is always a problem - how much could
> that have cost? 200.000$ year?

Agree, the things we (at least in the USA) waste money on is astounding. We do
it not only in government, DoD, but also the private sector. We've all seen
individual people or entire divisions and ask ourselves "why are these people
getting paid so much for doing so little?", and we stare at superficial
'constructions' such as a new "welcome to [insert city name]" sign that
probably cost $100K to make and install. All the while, brilliant ideas that
could be funded with 1/4 of these budgets are abondoned/neglected.

To me a lot of it stems from very weak leadership. "Leaders", from CEO's/top-
gov't echelons down to the lowest supervisors who are afraid to do anything
but keep pushing the same old rock forward to ensure self-preservation. I'd
argue the cumulative affect of weak lower-tier supervision is perhaps more
harmful than weak higher-level leadership, although ensuring strong leadership
at low levels is the ultimate responsibility of higher-level leaders.

God forbid we take a risk and fail and stock price takes a hit. God forbid we
hurt someone's feelings and cut their salary to match their actual
contribution. We, as a society, are not doing a very good job of prioritizing
the work that matters.

Wasted resources (most importantly, time) are the hallmark of fearful leaders.

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Nasrudith
I'm more than a bit skeptical about the claims, the presentation reeks of
sophistry. "Exceeding industrial farm yields" per what and for what inputs?

The claims about not needing nuclear energy because of it are fuzzy headed
nonsequitors based on what is ideologically fashionable and sounds
superficially good. Barring already fringe ideas involving mass desalination
nobody claims a need for nuclear for agriculture in the first place. It is
like smuggly declaring trucks obsoleted by your feet and then backing out when
asked to haul 20 tons of concrete 200 miles.

Organic farming efforts often show an outright willful ignorance towards
existing farming practices as "the enemy" as opposed to a starting point to
understand how it works and how to mitigate flaws in favor of small scale
wheel reinvention and number dodging. Its purpose is seems to be far more
about identity than any practicality. "New Alchemy" is a good accidental
description but not for the reasons they think.

