Re: [ox-en] an idea looking for a home
- From: grok sprint.ca
- Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 05:01:05 -0500
This is pretty much similar to an idea I've long cherished: the tying-in of
scientific education (at the least), at all school levels, to *community
tasks* -- which 'for one reason or another' (smirk) are not getting done -
i.e. the example here of water-quality collection and analysis locally...
This would effectively make the entire populace, from an early age,
completely involved in the process of running society at all levels.
(there's more...)
It is my belief that these types of activities 'flow' naturally out of the
logic of a society based on a logic other than 'making the quick buck'
-- thus the fact that people *do* think these thoughts in parallel...
And I suppose the 'Nth monkey' angle is a way to deal with this logic
'algorithmically'.
I also see this applied to, say, _actual_ physical recreations of
physics/biology/etc. experiments -- 'reproducing' what is truly reproducible
-- and exposing flaws and 'gotchas', through the process of constant
repetition thru education...
I think human culture - not to mention Science - would quickly far outstrip
the piddly and parsimonious way of parcelling out these resources practiced
by today's ruling class...
-- grok.
At 06:00 PM 12/13/01 -0800, matt muttered:
The project would consist of a website describing a simple water quality
test you can do at home or maybe a middle school science lab, say lead
content (of course the particular test would have to be carefully
chosen) and a reporting/display facility. Drinking water fanatics (I'd
guess about 1 out of 10,000) people would take monthly local samples,
submit the results and then look at pretty colored data maps.
Here's what I'd hope would happen:
- people in provence 'A' would see that even though their water quality
meets legal standards, it's still worse than the water in provence 'B'.
They'd do something about it.
- people in provence 'C' would find out that their water does not meet
legal standards and they'd do something about it.
- people in provence 'D' would notice a local failure in the water
system before local authorities do, or before authorities do something
about the problem and pressure for a quicker fix.
- people in provence 'E' would notice that while their water quality is
generally OK, during spring run-off the quality drops briefly.
Investigation reveals a previously unmapped toxic dump that's only a
problem part of the year.
The last scenario is the big pay off: a bunch of high school kids,
retired citizens or whoever, working for fun in their spare time,
discover a toxic mess that the entire federal system missed. If the
federal government tried to build a 'real time', cross border water
monitoring system, it would take years and billions of $ but some
volunteers did it for fun.
If this worked, people would realize that much of the services provided
by government can be done by interested volunteers. Other projects
mimic and evolve. Taxes go down. Community spirit grows and flows
across borders. Productivity goes up. Utopia is upon us. :)
Comments, questions?
The Revolution will not be televised: News at 11...
grok
Independent canadian marxist
The U.S. ruling class: A godzilla monster
that stalks the world, devouring everything.
(apologies to Godzilla and friends)
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