The Bucky-Gandhi Design Institution

I’ve just released 4.3gb of files on State Failure and contingency management into the public domain at Archive.org. You can browse, watch and download individual files there. There is the start of a collaborative “reader’s guide” on Appropedia.

You can also download the entire set as a TAR file from Archive.org or try bit Bittorrent version here. At 4.3gb it’s ideal for burning on DVD. Just download the file, decompress (unzip etc. will do it), burn them on to a DVD and pass them out. Such a DVD would be a good starting point for people who want to get oriented to this kind of hard line resilience thinking. Most of the files are videos, and I’ve hotlinked the most important ones below and marked them with a *.

The files are all Public Domain, with one exception as noted below. Please distribute the widely, pass them around, and make the tools available to local community organizers who are trying to make a difference in these challenging times.

cheapid.guptaoption.com.6aug2011tar.gz – web site archive
emergency_shelter__The_Hexayurt_in_Haiti__Summer_2010.pdf – basic overview of a tough hexayurt
guptaoption.com.6aug2011.tar.gz – web site archive
hexayurt.com.6aug2011.tar.gz – web site archive
how_to_buy_food_for_disasters__Reykjavik__2008.pdf – simple, very, very easy food shopping – can be improved!
* Modeling_State_Failure_With_SCIM__Greenhouse_Ireland__29Sep2010.m4v (390mb) – hardcore mortality analysis of a failed state scenario
Observe_Orient_Decide_Act_OODA_2x2.pdf – Boyd’s OODA loop for organizations
On_Designing_Complex_Cooperation_A_Tour_of_The_Gupta_Dimension__Summer2009.mov – organizational theory for non-traditional partnerships, taken from civ/mil cooperation
* START_HERE__Dealing_in_Security__Simple_Critical_Infrastructure_Maps__July2010.pdf – speaks for itself. Do start here. This file is CC licensed NON-COMMERCIAL USE, please note that.
STAR_TIDES__BIG_OVERVIEW.pdf – appropriate technology and infrastructure theory from STAR-TIDES
STAR_TIDES__SMALL_OVERVIEW.pdf – a little more infrastructure theory, from a brochure
strategic_complexity_framework_for_dummies.pdf – light relief, but also vital
The_Free_City_State_Urban_Governance__The_Really_Free_School_London__Spring2011.mp3 (1)
The_Free_City_State_Urban_Governance__The_Really_Free_School_London__Spring2011__warmup_chat.mp3 (2) a new model of municipal governance which helps decentralize the power of the Mayor.
* The_Future_We_Deserve__Winchester_School_of_Art__6May2011_1of2.m4v (600mb) – general overview of my work, and our position
* The_Future_We_Deserve__Winchester_School_of_Art__6May2011_2of2.m4v (600mb) – second part of the talk, and Q&A
The_Future_We_Deserve__Winchester_School_of_Art__6May2011_slides.pdf – slides
TheGuptaStateFailureManagementArchive.tar – the tar file which contains all these files
* The_Living_City_on_US_Urban_Resilience__Arup_London__Nov2009.mov (100mb) – US Urban Resilience analysis we did for Arup. Focuses on cold weather grid stability and pharmaceutical supply chain management
The_Living_City_on_US_Urban_Resilience__Arup_London__Nov2009_slides.pdf – slides
The_Reykjavik_Briefing_on_Natural_Disaster__Reykjavik__2008.mov – long range, large scale thinking on natural disasters, including the seeds of what later became SCIM.
* Through_the_Looking_Glass__Greenhouse_Ireland__27Sep2010.mp4 (300mb) – how many groups can cooperate to provide essential services in a crisis scenario. introduces the concept of AIAC.
Through_the_Looking_Glass__Greenhouse_Ireland__27Sep2010_slides.pdf – slides
Time_to_Stop_Pretending__Uncivilisation_Dark_Mountain_Festival__29May2010.mp4 – a little on the global situation
Vinay_Gupta_and_Mike_Bennett_Collapsonomics__Uncivilisation_Dark_Mountain_Festival__30May2010.mp3 – a briefing on how pre-existing cultural faultlines can be just as dangerous as geological faultlines
vinay.howtolivewiki.com.6aug2011.tar.gz – an archive of this blog, up until yesterday.
* why_nothing_works_the_Goat_Rodeo_Index.pdf – on the limits of collaboration when people are not properly aligned at a psychological level

The entire package is many hours of video, containing a plethora of deep models for understanding systems and social resilience, and would probably take a couple of weeks to really get through if you were working on it every day. I will be preparing some simpler starting point materials in due course. The “Dealing in Security” document, however, is precise, general, readable, informative, comprehensive and short. You can safely start there.

There’s a fair bit that could be done to improve this package – it could be presented as an ISO file. For size, videos could be recompressed, and audio quality improved, slides intercut with the footage and so on. The PDFs could be ported into some kind of editable format and so on. Most of all, other material could be added, in the couple of gigs that might save, and we could have a genuinely useful “drop and go” community-level resilience DVD.

That’s going to be a project for somebody else, though. I’ve made my content available, I hope that other people will follow suit, and we can all be as well prepared as possible should there be significant disruptions in essentials services in upcoming years.

Godspeed.

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