Sustainability Summit - Distributed Disruption

Although I never made it to the Sustainability Summit in France, I was able to attend its Irish predecessor event in Dublin. Plenty of stands. There were wow’s and a general sense of amazing new abilities of the human race. But this began appearing more and more as a game of roulette as the day progressed. Large capital for large gains. By the end of the day I was fully convinced that the majority view there was this point of view. Its main motive and the elephant in the room in one, was large capital for large gains firstly. The problem wasn’t started from Sustainability in the first place. The question appeared to start from how do we profit.

Solving the problem in a sustainable way should also include methods that have proven to be the most sustainable. Do note that we are still talking about large projects such as energy supply and distribution, migration issues and its causes. Within this macro of large projects, traditionally covered by compoundly growing large capital for compoundly growing returns we happen, not surprisingly, to find a distributed system.

But you can’t have madness coupled with such a large variety of stalls, idea’s and projects, without having some logic or reason prevail. One of these sustainable insights came in the form of an international construction company where employee ownership was practiced. What was an interesting result is that in today’s industry, with the need for sustainable solutions in the air, it was found that the majority almost always make the most sustainable decision. We all know the benefits of employee ownership, an increased quality and sense of duty, and like everything it comes with its downsides. But when it comes to decisions on pollution, environmental impact - sustainability - the majority decision comes up top. A problem remains, I was told by the salesman at the stall, the client that makes the final decision doesn’t always choose the most sustainable decision. US top employee owned construction companies

If the macro were taken as a hierarchical and tiered distributed system, then this result would come as a surprise. However, if we take the macro, the international mode of production, as a more complex and varied distributed system, it can be taken more like a semi-lattice, with almost the very same relationships as in Christopher Alexander’s A city is not a tree. Even if the attributes and nodes are different.

A simple thought experiment can also do justice in proving this point further. Take the island of Ireland. Ask all 5 million of its inhabitants to come up with a solution to “energy generation”. I’m not only fully convinced that the most sustainable option would be found, but that it would be so radical that it would involve very little work, costs and jobs, and to cap it off it would most probably include a method to sell on surplus to other countries.

Imagine what a distributed system of tool makers, engineers, coders and makers could do.