what I’m up to right now
by Vinay Gupta • August 6, 2008 • Personal • 2 Comments
Gupta Option is where the policy work lives. Check out:
* Winning the Long Peace on appropriate technology as foreign policy.
* State In A Box – Identity Services Architecture on failed states and making biometrics safe for general use, particularly in bringing banking services to the very poorest.
* Severe Pandemic Flu Strategies on dealing with the real worst case scenarios on pandemic flu.
Hexayurt.com is where the free/open housing and infrastructure work lives. I particularly recommend the “Ending Poverty with Open Hardware” video linked from that site. This project is fully live, is commercially funded, and is moving forwards into mass production quite soon.
* Disastr.org looks at using Hexayurts to rehouse hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of Americans following a catastrophe.
* Live Unplugged takes a look at what high-tech low-impact self-sufficiency might look like for small farmers later this century. It’s a deeply inspiring vision of a positive future, and many people find it very useful for focussing on what needs to get done to make it real.
* STAR-TIDES is a volunteer project I helped start which includes many people at National Defense University which is focussed on developing appropriate technology infrastructure options for disaster relief, poverty and humanitarian crisis.
Global Swadeshi is a social network I cofounded which is connecting all the people who are working on solutions for self-sufficiency for everybody, from small farmers up to villages, towns, and eventually maybe even cities. Extremely high quality debate and cooperation are emerging from here.
Finally, I’m working on two new, long-range projects.
* An Free/Open Source Appropriate Technology license and associated patent pool.
A little further back, I spent some time volunteering at the Rocky Mountain Institute where I co-edited Small Is Profitable which was The Economist’s Book of the Year in 2003, and the highly acclaimed work on energy independence for the USA, Winning the Oil Endgame.
I’ve generally kept this stuff split up on dozens of different domains without much linking between them because I wanted each work to stand on its own, but I think it’s time to bring them together and make it clear that there’s a whole systems perspective here. I think I have a decent plan to fix the world, and I’d like you to consider appropriating pieces of my plans into your plans, and maybe working together with me on *our* plans to fix the world.
Hail, and welcome.
Vinay Gupta
Vinay,
Great overview. Thanks for the lead. Love the “Hail, and welcome” salutation. There are several areas of interaction I’d like to explore.
Lin
Yeah. Let’s just get it done. Linux User Groups can provide the connectivity for DIYers. Let’s have installfests all over the world, starting locally. Working on that right now, see if August has some funolympics, can we?