About SusNet

Susnet Simple : #energy #civilisation #eco-feeding industry

SusNet is a repository of ideas about sustainability with emphases on energy production.

Energy production underpins industry and the colonisation of the planet by humans. What human civilisation has done to other life and the planetary environment is drastic. If energy production can be led towards sustainable methods, it may be possible to begin to redress some of the imbalances caused and repair some harms.

SusNet and the Environment : #ideas #communicate #collaborate

Sustainability relates the actions of people to the continuity of planetary life. The playground for these actions is the environment. The ideas we communicate determine what happens in the playground. 

Ideas are increasingly borne by the silicon world. An extra loop has been introduced into the circle of life. A virtually new dynamic exists. It is the speed and sheer scale of amount that has taken communication and its potential for action into new territory. Sustainability is among the foremost of topics that can now be projected through the threshold of inaction and truly dynamised. However, just as medicine is not always pleasant to taste, the work required to enaction sustainability requires all the help it can get so that people do not become habituated to the problems involved and the the sense of urgency diminishes. The ideas presented and questioned here are that we have a planetary problem and that it can be solved and that it needs new ways of thinking about who we are and how we collaborate. 

Networks and the Environment : #society #industry #ideas #networks

Even a single person on a fictional desert island would represent and embody a society. That person could be the seed for further potential societies, either directly or by leaving remains, such as art and other knowledge. 

That single person would be a society of one person, but derived from all the preceding generations that were not one-person. Societies are networks as regards communication. There are overlapping and partial groupings and sub-groupings of people in any societal communication. Interest in certain topics are shared or not shared and again even with the same people their groupings are different with other topics as the commonality, or rather as the communality. 

The brain likewise acts as a communication network of networks. Activation between regions is dispersed and grouped in many and subtle ways that change dynamically throughout life. 

Another form of networks is embodied by those of the computer world, where there are many different kinds of networks. They are used for many different reasons and are evolving and being increasingly emplaced in the world of products. The industries of transport and armaments have embraced such networks, so we surmise that they are here to stay and be further developed. 

What these three classes of networks have in common is that they all directly rely upon the environment. That may be for life force and fuel or for reason of use. These networks interface with the environment, they live with and courtesy of the environment.

Ex Silico Vivo : #symbols #society #computors #silicon era

The ouroboros is an ancient symbolism of life, death and continuity. The ouroboros is the notion of a serpent eating its own tail. That is one symbolism, from many, of the circle of life which is a concept found in most ancient traditions and that represents a constant item of thought. Until the industrial revolution, the globally disparate cosmologies and philosophies that centred around a circle of life all held true. Things were born, things died, things rotted, other things were born and the circle continued. The notion of sustainability was limited to people growing or finding food and to townships trying to maintain their existence. As nomadic tribes found their existence threatened by the changeover from previously, co-existential, small-scale farming to towns and cities and countries with armies, sustainability even for them became important. Sustainability entered the consciousness of humans for separate reasons, but although it had always really been there, invisible, transparent, it was not an issue.

With mining processes, pollution on a vast scale became a planetary scale vector as a disease of sustainability. The poisoning of nature became something that did not go away on a reasonable time scale. Chemical poison was followed by that of nuclear poisoning. With the advent of microcircuitry and plastic injection mouldings techniques, the mass production of plastics that could be cheaply sold and massively distributed introduced products that caused aerial, ground and oceanic pollution. How bad could it get ? 

Micro-processor production, mainly built on thin slices of silicon, were fundamental in computer production reaching a popular market and becoming a tool of knowledge and other communication, on an industrial scale.

The advent of popular computery has meant that the distribution as well as the production of nature killing materials and all the support services and populations that go with them has created a transaction basis that has the potential to control the existence of all life on the planet. The power of giving death, not life is firmly rooted in what can be called the Silicon World. The time of this can be called the Silicon Era. 

The Power of Silicon : #undo-pollution #supermarket vote

Since the transcendence from planetary pollution that-does-not-go-away on a reasonable time scale to planetary pollution that does-not-go-away at all, the direction of pollution has only been in one direction. The primary power of silicon is that it is through computation, of either human or synthetic based wisdom, that the potential exists to undo pollution. That phase is not yet here, and it may or may not arrive in time. Before that undoing can happen much has to be learned still and the philosophies of life have to change. We are still using the planet. We are still of no benefit, if we ever could be, to the planet. Productions increase, but as species begin to die, oceanic currents begin to change and the threat to supermarket supplies affects voting populations and the banking they enjoy. Short term financial projections are impacted and economies are forcibly being changed. Therein lies a secondary power of silicon, communication to populations. Communication controls production and distribution.

Ethos of Sustainability : #intention guidance

If there exists an ethos or philosophy to sustainability then it is heavily affected by the growing demise of many forms of life and the imminent loss of many more. The loss of life that is unnecessary derives from the pollution of the human species. That pollution, be it industrial or military, can be controlled. Knowledge is part of the key to this control of life. Ethos or intention is the other. Having knowledge and using it are two different things. The reason coupled with intention to use it is needed. To guide intention and develop an overall ethos of sustainability it is helpful to formulate some viewpoints or ways of looking. 

Elemental Viewpoint : #elemental metaphor #way of thinking 

A viewpoint, a language and a philosophy all share being, more simply, just ways of seeing things and knowing things. There are tools and methods in the world of knowledge and much history to draw upon when choosing a viewpoint. One popular phrasing from the times of popular, classical Greek ideas is that of four elements;- Earth, Air, Fire and Water.  These four elements, over the years, have had others added, with Spirit, Soul, Aether and Void as another four, arbitrary examples. Metal is one extra, proposed element that with the original four gives an interesting language of five elements with which to relate to sustainability. In this scheme the internet and the silicon world count as being part of the metal category.

All five of these elements can be said to be underpinned by the theme of energy. Without energy, they would not exist. Humankind has an innate compulsion and relationship with energy and seeks to control energy at every turn.

First Energy, then Life : #new arrow of time #economics #make it so

Because sustainability and its components are alive, there is no useful view in terms of static sustainability unless life itself can be explained. At present life can only be hintingly described and extensively catalogued, but not explained. The pollutions and wastes of today intimately become part of the evolutions of the new world of tomorrow. Even a well established, well documented and deep knowledge of some aspect of sustainability may become utterly redundant if a sudden change evolves. The rapid spread and death caused by recent epidemics is an example. New and massive impetus was required even to begin to come to terms with the outfall. A global mobilisation of people, resources and a dislocation of economics occurred. The behaviour of people was made to change. 

These sorts of events change many aspects of what sustainability of one sort or another is held to be. The scope and the remit changes. As earthquakes, flooding, drought and wars happen continuously, the economics of what makes something sustainable can and does change also.  

Network of Disciplines : #simplify #thesis #interdisciplinary

A five element thesis of sustainability and also of energy has perhaps been long overdue. Sustainability is such a huge subject that it can be likened to a network of dynamically interlinked activities. It becomes ever more complex so that a simplified approach may yield insights and allow more easy cross-reference between areas of research.