Global Guerrillas

RC JOURNAL: Survivalism?

Here's an aggressive version of the Resilient Community. May change it later to make it clearer. Suggestions are always welcome.
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There's a misconception within some quarters that solutions to growing global instability/failure that don't involve fixing the current system is an admission of failure. Further, this line of reasoning charges that efforts at adding resilience to local communities is nothing more than survivalism. This isn't true. Here's why:

• Local is the only choice. The ability of the global system to dampen instability and prevent failure is nearing zero. We have neither the organizational frameworks necessary for global governance nor the precise tools of global policy required (even IF we were smart enough to manage something this complex). Any chance of real global change must start at the ground level by correcting the true sources of the problem and spread virally. Resilient communities eliminate nearly all of the drivers towards global instability and mitigate the effects of instability already in the system. It's self-reinforcing.

• RCs guard against systemic decay and catastrophic failure. Survivalism assumes isolation, hoarding, and subsistence means to preserve only the bare essentials of life (the Jeremiah Johnson scenario). It's an approach that guarantees only long term privation and nearly inevitable failure. In contrast, resilient communities replace increasingly unreliable and expensive global sourcing of energy, food, etc. with locally efficient (and offer higher quality) alternatives. It also provides the ultimate level of protection against superempowered threats and hollow states. As a result, it preserves an existing quality of life (or lays the foundations for the creation of one where it didn't exist before).

• RCs offer a path to accelerating returns. In contrast to the isolation of survivalism, the RC is community driven -- both within the community's physical environs and across similar efforts (via data connectivity). As such, it will benefit (we are already seeing this) from rapid rates of innovation available through open source development -- across the entire range of activities from energy to food to product fabrication. Relatively quickly, the solutions generated from these efforts will convert a community that was once a black hole of economic productivity into its exact opposite: a fount of accelerating wealth and life improvement that is orders of magnitude more efficient in its use of mass, energy, space, time, and information.

RESILIENT COMMUNITY: Smart Local Networks

One of richest pathways towards improving the level of community coordination in the event of disaster/disconnection, is through the use of community Web sites that provide actionable information (here's an example of how this worked in San Diego during the recent fires) and reverse 911 data-sharing. Unfortunately, community emergency Web sites as well as basic data services are extremely vulnerable to disconnection. What's needed are smart local networks.

Smart Local Networks
(a local Internet or community Intranet)
Most of the local loops (from telco fiber to cable company coaxial) currently in place and/or being installed in the US are dumb (I suspect it is the same globally). They simply route data from local customers to regionally clustered corporate server farms and then outwards/back. This means that any disconnection (physical or logical fault) between local customers and these remote systems will result in a complete cessation of service. To correct this deficiency, communities need to start to think more like a corporation: security of data services are considered central to a company's survival. So, as part of future negotiations with cable/telcos, communities should request that companies allow them to piggyback on their "dumb" networks to create a smart local loops. This would entail:

• A high availability local network for emergencies. A local emergency network that connects all homes and business in the area by accessing the local aggregation nodes of cable/telco operators (which is actually a relatively trivial/inexpensive network exercise). It should become the default network if access to the greater Internet fails. Optimally, the network should sit astride both cable and telco services to provide a seamless community "footprint."
  
• High availability servers (computers that host Web sites) in the local loop. Servers that are on the community network and located within the communities environs. Back-up power should be provided to ensure that these servers maintain high up time.
  
• (futures) Community coordination software to sit on these servers. Easy to use and edit social software: blogs, wikis, etc. If the market is large enough, there will be software packages (hopefully open source) that replicate the functionality of a fully functional emergency response system (i.e. locally cached Google maps, etc.). In terms of operating this software, most communities could ask schools/boy scouts/etc. to maintain the software, even during an emergency (young people are much more likely to have the skill sets to do this w/o specific training).

THE RESILIENT COMMUNITY: SCRIP

A growing number of communities now use scrip (aka a community currency or loyalty program) as a way to keep business activity local and thereby increase community resilience to economic shocks. Here's how it works. Customers buy scrip that can only be used with local businesses to buy goods and services. This is usually done in response to a community initiative. Businesses that accept scrip can either pay employees with the same (to the extent they accept it), provide it as change to customers (again, limited by acceptance), or exchange this scrip for hard currency (usually at a steep discount). Examples of scrip range from the Ithaca HOURS, Berkshares, to the Totnes Pound. While these attempts at scrip are better than nothing, in almost all cases these efforts have fared about as well as most "green" initiatives:

• participation is meager (it is relegated to a lifestyle choice)
  
• velocity is weak (low turnover),
  
• it is vulnerable to economic contraction (when times are tough, participation among retailers falls off due to a scramble for a dwindling amount of hard global currency)
  

How to Accelerate Scrip
However, despite the spotty record so far, scrip is an extremely powerful means of accelerating local economic activity when nothing else seems possible (in economic extremis). Past experience with depression era scrip like Austria's Worgl indicate that the following will accelerate scrip adoption, velocity, and robustness:

• Allow community members to use it to pay all or part of their tax liabilities to local governments. This instantly establishes a market for the currency. Also, pay local government employees a portion of their wages in scrip.
  
• Deflate the value of the scrip (optimally, one percent per month) to promote immediate use rather than hoarding.
  
• To the extent possible, connect scrip to local production rather than retail. Locally produced food (farmer's markets), energy (via local microgrids), products (personal fabs), and labor/services. Further, work with local banks to establish checking accounts for scrip and to enable conversions hard currencies (at a slight discount).
  

NOTE: Scrip should also be considered to be a part of a 21st century approach to economic development (likely superior to microcredit), (open source) counter-insurgency, and disaster/crisis recovery. For more background read the economist Irving Fisher on depression era scrip. The rambling utopian tract by Silvio Gesell is also interesting.

RC QUOTE: Competitive Advantage

"We don't want to save the World and we don't claim that Marburg will revolutionize climate action. But we must chart new territory in order to ensure a future supply of energy independent of oil and gas.... No south-facing roof will be left unused." Fritz Kahle, the Mayor of Mahberg, Germany (80,000 people) on the change in the city's building code that requires solar collection (thermal or PV) whenever a roof is renovated, a heating system replaced, or an addition made.

How will a home or a community be valued by the marketplace in the future? By the amount of solar energy it captures (via heating, PV, or photosynthesis). Changing building codes is gradual way to make your community more competitive, reduce exposure to risks, and improve property values.

RC JOURNAL: DIY Tractor

Here's an open source effort to design a low cost (both assembly and maintenance) tractor called the LifeTrac. Key attachments: backhoe and well drilling. It uses modular design for versatility of use and low cost repair.

The "Open Source Ecology" wiki (of which this design is a part of) is yet another example of the many efforts underway to accelerate DIY technology development for Resilient Communities (The RC). As personal fabrication improves, these tinkering efforts will become MUCH more sophisticated at an ever decreasing cost. We (collectively, those of us engaged in decentralized thinking/action) are in the process of reinventing how the global economy is structured at a root level -- good thing we didn't ask permission.

Here's an archive for Resilient Community posts.

RC JOURNAL: Self-Replication in 3D

"Think of RepRap as China on your Desktop"
Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc., 8 April 2008

In the mid to late 70's a small group of tinkerers in the "Homebrew Computer Club" created many of the foundational technologies, techniques and concepts required for personal computers (it also attracted the ire of a protean Bill Gates). The early efforts of the group seem extremely crude by modern standards, but within a decade, it was clear that the process that they had initiated was remaking the world.

A similar tinkering process is now underway in micro-manufacturing. An open source project called RepRap is working on micro machines that can produce (fabricate) products on your desktop. Further, it has achieved self-replication (actually, a very close approximation thereof), so each RepRap machine has the capacity to produce a copy of itself. Again, it's early days, but the implications of how efforts like these will enable DIY production (for everything from consumer products to weapons) are clear as day. Personal fabrication on a global basis is less than a decade away.

RC JOURNAL: Microgrid Wiki

Since I last wrote about community Microgrids I've received lots of e-mails on the topic -- everything from those willing to share experiences to those needing help. Given the criticality of this to resilient community development, it might be best if we either set up an independent wiki or farm a section of wikipedia (easier) for the topic (there isn't a microgrid entry). All it would take is "five" people to start the ball rolling.

THE GUERRILLA CATALYST

Open source insurgencies and resilient communities are both decentralized networks. Critical to the success of both are people that serve as catalysts (like Henry Okah and Rob Hopkins). What do catalysts do? They accelerate growth and effectiveness by increasing the trust and connectivity of the networks they inhabit.

You can find a surprising good examination of the personality attributes and characteristics of catalysts in the book, "The Starfish and the Spider" by Brafman and Beckstrom. Unlike traditional leaders, catalysts don't organize structure, aggregate power, and give direction. Instead, the serve as

• Connectors. Able to map, mine and connect loose networks of people with similar needs/interests.
  
• Onsite helpers and Trust builders. Willing to work with people on the ground in the role of helper. Forges emotional bonds and encourages trust.
  
• Supporters. They let the network navigate itself forward by walking away from leadership responsibilities/roles. They trust the network and embrace its ambiguity.

DISSIPATIVE STRUCTURES

NOTE: Here's one more exploration of thermodynamics as an underlying driver for the high levels of systemic malfunction we are currently experiencing. It also implies that the global situation will get much, much worse before it improves.

Sorry for all of the high level theory, but it is proving useful in defining the parameters for successful decision making in the future and where/how violence will erupt.
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If we view our world as a thermodynamic system, a simple application of the second law of thermodynamics won't suffice. Everything doesn't get progressively worse over time. Based on our collective experience, the global system, as well as simpler biological systems, operate on a different basis. They don't run down with the conversion of energy. Instead, they increase their structural complexity over time.

The modification of thermodynamics necessary to accommodate this observable fact was formulated by the Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine in a theory called "dissipative systems" (read his excellent book: "The End of Certainty" for more). One important leap in this theory is that a dissipative system isn't a closed system. Rather, it lives within a larger system (an "environment") that it can interact with.

This upshot of this is that it can extract energy from this larger external environment to increase its structural complexity (build itself up through a process called self-assembly). It can also use this external environment to dump the entropy created during the energy conversion process to minimize the deleterious impact on its structure.

In summary, the global civilization we inhabit fits nicely within Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures. Unfortunately, there are numerous signs that that our system's structure has grown so large, that is now nearly equal in size of its external environment. This implies that disruptive fluctuations will likely increase in intensity (positive feedback loops) until the global system either reverts to a much simpler model (closer to thermodynamic equilibrium, think Kunstler's "World Made by Hand") or evolves into a more stable configuration (think "Resilient Communities").

JOURNAL: Why use the Thermodynamic Crisis as a framework?

As many of you already know, a large part of what I do is to provide people with useful frameworks for thinking through difficult or complex problems. To the extent that these frameworks get you thinking (even if you disagree with me, which is encouraged), they are a success.

The benefit of using the "Thermodynamic Crisis" as a framework is that it is a relatively complete and simple explanation for many of the global trends we are currently seeing. It also appeals to a scale that is beyond the noise generated by cycles of introspection (at the political, social, and economic levels) that forces analysis paralysis. As John Boyd points out in "Destruction and Creation":

...we find that the uncertainty and disorder generated by an inward-oriented system talking to itself can be offset by going outside and creating a new system. Simply stated, uncertainty and related disorder can be diminished by the direct artifice of creating a higher and broader more general concept to represent reality.

To repeat: by moving up the scale to a global thermodynamic systems approach, we can start to see the outlines of the real situation. A situation not adequately modeled by global and (even less) national political/economic analysis. Keep this in mind when I begin to expand this framework in the next months.

THE THERMODYNAMIC CRISIS

Globalization has catalyzed the decline of the nation-state and spawned decentralized violence/opposition (which is increasingly effective due to innovations in theory and DIY technology). The result has been an ongoing crisis in the global control system we use to mitigate the impact of emerging challenges -- our responses/efforts are therefore slower, less effective, and more divisive. Much of this has been documented in this blog and the book, Brave New War.

The Other Crisis
This "Control System Crisis" is particularly unfortunate since globalization has also created a "Thermodynamic Crisis" characterized by increasingly expensive energy (demand growth that far exceeds supply growth as well as expensive/inefficient substitution for declining sources) and ecosystem overload (global warming, pandemics, water/soil depletion, etc.).* The reason for this is that our global scale civilization has exceeded:

• The production capacity of stored solar (oil, natural gas, etc.) energy resources. As demand (driven by 2 billion more people, a 3x gain, becoming middle class consumers) continues to outstrip supply, we will see energy inputs become increasingly expensive.
  
• The carrying capacity and natural defenses of our ecosystem. More specifically, our civilization's entropy production has exceeded the baseline negative entropy of our environmental systems.
  
• Our global system's capacity for evolutionary change. Incremental changes to the global system through technological innovation, economic restructuring, and social reengineering can't produce the results needed to reverse or slow this crisis.

The Impact
Worse, there are signs that these crises are coupling into a global scale positive feedback loop that threatens increasingly frequent disasters (of a wide variety of types).

*I'll provide a MUCH more detailed examination of this in my new book, "The Resilient Community."

JOURNAL: Searching for Assumption Errors

One of the best ways to determine the viability of any future scenario is to examine its assumptions (aka its initial conditions). For example, there's an interesting 2001 report from Shell on energy futures called, "Energy Needs, Choices and Possibilities: Scenarios to 2050." This report paints a rosy picture of a technological fix (through an energy substitution process, which is commonly conveyed via intellectual fast food like the Whale oil story) to future energy needs. However, if you dig into the assumptions you find this:

“Personal Choices – related to values, the environment and lifestyles – influence the energy system. Affordability is not the key constraint in OECD countries.” (page 24)

and this:

"... scarcity of oil supplies -- including unconventional and natural gas liquids -- is unlikely before 2025... Technology improvements are likely to outpace rising depletion costs for at least the next decade, keeping new supplies below $20 per barrel. The costs of biofuels and gas to liquids should both fall well below $20 per barrel of oil equivalent over the next two decades, constraining oil prices." (page 18)

Of course, seven years of hindsight makes it easy to see these assumptions are false. It is much harder to find assumption errors that have yet to play out.

JOURNAL: Food and the RC

The global shift to the resilient community model (RC) won't be merely a function of systems disruption (as it is in developing economies and in COIN efforts). In the main, it will be driven by basic economic necessity as the costs for core inputs (food and energy/fuel) soar beyond affordablity. For example. According the the Wall Street Journal, price inflation for basic items is already very high:

The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.

The trend data appears solid, in that this inflation will not abate in intensity for some time to come (NOTE: this a natural outgrowth of a global market system that has expanded beyond the capacity for oversight during a substrate shift -- lots of dislocation will result). Food riots in Asia were just an early warning signal. Given that median incomes are static in the West (eight years of data), likely due to fierce global competition from below , these increases in core inputs are going to quickly reach an unsustainable percentage of the average household's disposable income. In tandem with the upward march of energy/fuel costs and a housing crisis (home foreclosures in California are running at 500 a day now), a widespread shift to the RC is increasingly inevitable. Don't expect any help from the nation-state on getting this done (unless the DoD helps out via the backdoor of RCs for COIN and stability operations).

JOURNAL: COIN without a model for Community Resilience is Futile

Here's a news story that describes how the US took parts of Sadr City from the Mahdi Army but is unable to deliver the basic services required for legitimacy:

Michael Gordon "In Sadr City, Basic Services are Faltering" NYTimes. April 22, 2008.

The Sadr City situation is yet another example of how, for want of a model for community resilience (there's a long discussion of the philosophy required for this in Brave New War) from tech to process to education, counter-insurgencies in both Afghanistan and Iraq aren't gaining traction despite the enormous cost in lives and treasure already paid. Also, it is a good indication that the new Africa Command will likely fail to establish any meaningful improvement on the continent (in fact, without meaningful alternatives like a package for resilient communities, it will likely default to the opposite by propping up brittle oil-based dictatorships like Equatorial Guinea).

How to correct this? Get smart people involved to define the scope, scale, and proposed response to this hard problem (in a fashion similar, but over longer period of time, than what I am doing for the NIC on another hard problem). Pour DARPA dollars into resilience technologies aimed at communities. Test prototypes to get data and insight. Find out what works.

WIM (what it means) long term? My strong belief is that if the DoD can help crack this problem, it will be as big a contribution to the world as ARPANET.

RESILIENT COMMUNITY: FABRICATION

It's normally assumed in most projections of a localized future (driven by disruption, expensive energy, etc.) that consumer products become very rare. Either they are too expensive (usually due to the vast expense globalized transport/delivery) or too infrequently available (due to disruptions) to support current lifestyles. However, in the longer term, that doesn't need to occur. In resilient communities that undergo the transition, a revolution in manufacturing currently underway (we are only at the very start of this journey) may provide a solution. What is it? Personal fabrication. It's a method of low cost and small scale production for anything from 3-D objects up to and including intelligent systems (it will get even more effective as the costs are driven down and capabilities increase in concert with Moore's Law). It has enormous promise and will likely provide a way for resilient communities to not only stay completely "modern," but even advance economically and in quality of life faster than communities dependent on traditional centralized sources of production.

I'm going to spend much more time exploring the limits and implications of this in the future (particularly in my upcoming book on the Resilient Community). In the interim, here's a broad/high level overview to get your head wrapped around the concept.

Personal fabrication is a method of manufacturing that has been recently popularized and accelerated by MIT (specifically MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms). Essentially, it takes rapid prototyping machines (which have been around since the early 90's) and combines them with easy to use design software to create a small local manufacturing shop that can produce a wide variety of original products. Here's an explanation of what personal fabrication is from the center's director, Neil Gershenfeld (read the entire article if you get a chance).

NOTE: Again, this has applicability to both development and counter-insurgency (although, over a longer time horizon). It also may be transformational in terms of warfare. Think DIY (do-it-yourself) weapons systems.

PS: I am on Twitter.

RESILIENT COMMUNITY: MICROGRIDS

Electricity is the lifeblood of modernity, but it is going to become much more expensive (fuel expense/availability) and unavailable (due to an increase in random failures via underinvestment to a plethora of black swan scenarios). As such, communities need to gain control over the flows of electricity in order to become resilient. One of the first steps towards this goal is through the concept of the Microgrid. Here's some background reading from the CERTS (Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions). Essentially it is a local power network connected to the national/regional grid through a smart switch.

Why the Microgrid?
There's been lots of exploration at the national level on incorporating computing architectures (data services plus sensors) into the grid system (known under the rubric "the Smart Grid"). Unfortunately, these efforts suffer from the step function problem. This means that the changes contemplated are too expensive and too wrenching to accomplish on a large scale (akin to boiling the ocean). The only way to implement these new technologies and methods is to find a way to do it organically. The Microgrid enables this by creating a local network (electricity plus data services) that can become a platform for the organic growth of a diverse and innovative ecosystem of solutions and providers.

What it Does
A Microgrid enables the ability to do the following:

• to disconnect from the national grid when there is a general utility failure. This enables a combination of back-up power systems from third party providers -- everything from flywheels to back-up generators (very much the same approach that data-centers use).
  
• to build a local market for power production. Since the Microgrid buys power in volume from the national grid, it will likely get dynamic pricing data (time of day, etc.). This data allows the Microgrid to offer local producers of electricity the ability to sell into the Microgrid at competitive prices (peer to peer production). Of course, if local power production is a priority, then the price comparison can be weighted via subsidies to favor local producers.
  
• to add smart features that will only get nominal deployment on the national grid. For example, the ability to add smarts to devices and homes to allow customers to manage their consumption of electricity at a granular level -- from price to device.
  

WIM (what it means)

It's important to point out that Microgrid technology and processes have applicability to:

• Counter-insurgency. Even though tens of billions of dollars have been invested in the reconstruction of Iraq, we still can't keep the lights on in Baghdad. Microgrids could make this possible.
  
• Development. Microgrids provide a mechanism for organic growth in developing economies plagued by badly functioning national grids.
  
• Competitive advantage. Communities that get this right (high availability power that is also very clean), will gain a competitive edge in competing for residents and business flow. The pay-off is higher home values and better/more jobs.
  

RESILIENT COMMUNITY: TRANSITION TOWNS

"How do we enjoy the benefits of globalization without being vulnerable to its excesses?"

The key to our collective future success (from maximal wealth creation to basic survival), will be in how we mitigate the impact of black swans generated by global instability. One of the best approaches I've encountered is to add resilience to the very fabric of our global system, the community.

NOTE: From the controls engineering perspective this approach both simplifies and adds resilience to the design of the global system. In short, it creates a bow-tie control system that enables extremes of complexity without egregious loses in both stability or efficiency (it's a control system that we see in use with both the Internet and in the energy production subsystem used by cells in our bodies).

One of the early (and very smart) approaches to this can be found in the grassroots Transition Towns movement. This movement started in the UK, with an academic paper and a follow on experiment in a town called Totnes (see the excellent 3 part YouTube presentation by founder Rob Hopkins). The movement has expanded to 600 towns across the world at various stages of implementation.

How To Do It
To focus the effort, the movement assumed two of the many potential black swan scenarios (in this case Peak Oil and Global Warming) would likely occur and their arrival would damage local life. This approach led them to focus on a reduction in oil consumption (and thereby long-distance transportation) as a means to improve resilience (a good start). Through trial and error, they were able to generate a blue-print (PDF and more expansive Wiki) for building local resilience entitled the "Transitions Town" network (note that many of these steps use the approach of open source insurgency and even uses the rule of five). Here are the steps:

• Develop a steering group to get it started (a foco). Five people is recommended. Plan to disband this group when things get started.
  
• Raise awareness (basic education on the effects of black swans).
  
• Network with existing groups (go open source).
  
• An event to launch the initiative (the great unleashing).
  
• Form working groups.
  
• Leverage activity with technology (social tech).
  
• Develop visible examples of progress.
  
• Reskilling and teaching (sharing skills/knowledge).
  
• Connect to the government (financial risks).
  
• Connect to elders (narratives and skills).
  
• Let it run itself.
  
• Complete the effort by formalizing a plan through the contributions of the sub-groups.
  

An Economic Case via Risk Mitigation
One of the most interesting offshoots of this movement is that they were able to generate an economic case for their efforts. Through audits of the energy use by local businesses, they were able to demonstrate the financial risks the businesses faced if energy prices spiked. This provided the movement with the opportunity to help the business source local resource alternatives and/or develop new opportunities that presented less risk.

Author's Note: I'd like to flesh this out in more detail, perhaps through a investigative trip sponsored by a magazine looking for a great article on the future of communities/consumption/etc.

THE RESILIENT COMMUNITY

It should be clear, as we watch the gyrations and excesses of global markets, that no organization/state/group has any meaningful control over its direction. The same is true for almost every other aspect of globalization, from the environment to transnational crime to energy flows. In short, we've lost control and our collective future is in the hands of a morally neutral system that is operating in ways that we don't fully understand (nor will we). The best defense against this emerging situation is not to call for new Manhattan projects or global treaties or Marshall plans, which won't work since we can neither marshal the resources necessary nor collectively agree on anything other than the most basic rules of connectivity, it is to slowly introduce organic stability into out global system. The concept I've latched onto as a solution is what I call the resilient community.

This conceptual model creates a set of new services that allow the smallest viable subset of social systems, the community (however you define it), to enjoy the fruits of globalization without being completely vulnerable to its excesses. These services are configured to provide the ability to survive an extended disconnection from the global grid in the following areas (an incomplete list):

• Energy.
• Food.
• Security (both active and passive).
• Communications.
• Transportation.

The resilient community has broad applicability beyond just improving the ability of those of us in developed economies to preserve wealth and a quality of life despite severe system shocks. It can also be applied to the problems of counter-insurgency in semi-modern urban environment (to radically update a process that was built for the last century) and provide the potential for organic development in underdeveloped areas of the world. The key is that we need to support the open source efforts currently underway to expand this capability underway such as the transition towns movement to MIT's low tech solutions effort.

I touched on this concept in Brave New War and here on this blog. Might need to put out a short book that really explores the concept in a way that allows people to get their heads around it.

JOURNAL: Platforms and Resilience in San Diego

Here's a great example of how two generic information platforms, Google maps and Twitter, are being used to foster local resilience. KPBS news, a public radio/TV station quickly leveraged these platforms to get updates into the hands of people starved for information on the status of the blazes. There is a lesson in this.

UPDATE: A smart reader pointed out a very good (rapidly refreshed) blog on the blazes at SignOnSanDiego. He also had a great term for what we are seeing here: "an open source reverse 911 system."