Wow, it’s been five years since my last attempt at using my website to bare my soul to the whole wide internet! Let’s give it another shot with some cool people on the internet who inspire me and I think more people should know about. In no particular order,
Tony Santoro
Best known for his YouTube channel Crime Pays but Botany Doesn’t, Tony’s a passionate botanist who doesn’t hide his disdain for man’s arrogance towards nature. Quoting from his website:
The study and dedication to Earth’s plant life has provided my gruff, misanthropic ass a lens through which to view my own place in the world, along with a sense of peace and humility that can be hard to obtain through other means. Plants - when viewed through the “bigger picture” of ecology and evolution rather than what they can “do” for us (as if holding up the biosphere isn’t enough) - can provide us not only with an awareness and context for our part in the intricate web of life here on Planet Earth, but also with a philosophical underpinning that will enable us to weather and withstand some of the dark elements coming our way.
His videos are a healthy combination of knowledge bombs about botany, ecology, and geology mixed in with the occasional rant. He’ll also often remind you to kill your lawn:
Join our goddamned cult. Kill Your Lawn. Create habitat and eradicate the bland. create a native plant or a vegetable garden in your front yard. Killing your lawn and growing native plants is the best way to learn to identify the plants that USED to grow where you lived before the commercial automobile slum cesspool (trademark) was built. But most importantly, kill the lawn within yourself.
Suggested entry points:
- The Plant Ecology of Concrete, Garbage and Urine - Botanizing A Toilet
- Somewhat Verbally Abusive “Kill Your Lawn” Instructional Video
- …literally any video from his channel where he’s walking around a beautiful ecosystem and taking you along for the ride.
Hundred Rabbits
Hundred Rabbits consists of Devine and Rek, who sail around the world making somewhat esoteric software and art and dropping knowledge bombs. They’re also founders of the Merveilles community. As they describe themselves:
Hundred Rabbits is an artist collective that documents low-tech solutions with the hope of building a more resilient future. We live and work aboard a 10 m sailboat named Pino in remote parts of the world to learn more about how technology degrades beyond the shores of the western world.
They have much to say about off-grid living, the fragility of contemporary software practices, and doing a lot with a little.
Suggested entry points:
- Talk on Computing and Sustainability (permacomputing)
- Talk on their lifestyle and ethos (video)
- Orca: Cellular automaton-like sequencer
Lu Wilson
Lu (aka todepond) makes slightly-surreal videos and codes cool toys and tools that are all ultimately different flavours of simulating falling sand through cellular automata (not really). She has a cool wikiblogarden and I’m particularly inspired by her call to normalize sharing scrappy fiddles, which I’m trying to heed.
Suggested entry points:
Dave Ackley
Dave says:
I do research, development, and advocacy of robust-first and best-effort computing on indefinitely scalable computer architectures. Prior work has involved neural networks and machine learning, evolutionary algorithms and artificial life, and biological approaches to security, architecture, and models of computation.
Dave is a researcher probing some very interesting approaches to distributed and self-organizing computing he calls ‘living computation’. One instance of this is his T2 Tile Project:
The T2 Tile project is an attempt to build the world’s first indefinitely scalable computational stack. First, we suspend the idea that we must be bound to an architecture based on correct and efficient deterministic hardware and software. Instead, much like the physical world around us, we look to robustness as a foundational requirement, building living systems as vessels for digital computation that is firstly robust, then as correct as possible, and finally, as efficient as necessary.
His YouTube channel has regular updates videos on the T2 Tile Project. He is also co-host of the Computing Up podcast, whose content and guests I enjoy a lot!
Suggested entry points:
- An Introduction to the Living Computation Theory of Everything
- Artificial Life Creation T-0 and Launching
Kris De Decker
Creator of Low-tech magazine, a publication running on a solar-powered server (which might not always be up) about high-tech problems and low-tech solutions.
Technology has become the idol of our society, but technological progress is—more often than not—aimed at solving problems caused by earlier technical inventions. There is a lot of potential in past and often forgotten knowledge and technologies when it comes to designing a sustainable society. Interesting possibilities arise when we combine old technology with new knowledge and new materials, or when we apply old concepts and traditional knowledge to modern technology.
Their archives will make a great addition to your post-apocalyptic info stash.
