Hotlist Info-Eco
Doors of Perception 3 (1994)
Ecology is the study of connections and processes. The objectives of design, increasingly, will shift away from finished products and documents toward the processes by which they are made. It is in this context that we have selected the following websites for you to explore as part of your involvement with the subject of information and the environment.
We are using five categories to structure the websites:
1. ecology: environment, science, process, complexity, etc.
2. information: computers, networks, etc.
3. behaviour: people, knowledge, community, etc.
4. economy: business, politics, work, scenarios, etc.
5. design: art, design, matter, etc.
Enjoy!
Ecology
Greenpeace is an independent campaigning organisation whose goal is to ensure the ability of the earth to nurture life in all its diversity.
Payson Stevens, one of the speakers at Doors 3, is president of InterNetwork, Inc. (INI), California. InterNetwork's core mission is to further Earth awareness and the issues related to global change: "understanding the Earth System requires not only a knowledge of science, but an all-encompassing view of the world and how we humans have become a force of nature."
Rainforest Action Network works to protect the Earth's rainforests and support the rights of their inhabitants through education, grassroots organising, and non-violent direct action.
This is a website that is devoted to the study of 'whole systems'. It offers pointers to books, people, periodicals, organisations, projects, models and tools, newsgroups, mailing lists, essays, and related websites.
This is a good starting point for eco-explorers with lots of pointers to other sites.
Amazing Environmental Organisation Web Directory! www.webdirectory.com
Amazing Environmental Organisation Web Directory! is now one of the world's largest web site directories dedicated to providing a free service to the environmental community. It includes sites from over 100 countries.
Information
ACM (founded in 1947) is an international scientific and educational organisation dedicated to advancing the art, science, engineering, and application of information technology, serving both professional and public interests by fostering the open interchange of information and by promoting the highest professional and ethical standards. Their Special Interest Group on Graphics (SIGGRAPH) is perhaps best known, but they cover a true multitude of disciplines related to computing. This site offers information about ACM Publications, Special Interest Groups, Conferences and Events, Chapters and local activities, etc.
Bill Mitchell (Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT) argues in his book City of Bits that the crucial issue before us is not one of putting in place the digital plumbing of telecommunications links and associated electronic appliances, nor even of producing content for electronic delivery, but rather one of creating electronically mediated environments for the kinds of lives that we want to lead. This website is a companion to the book.
Tom Ray's Tierra is an advanced platform for the study of the evolution of artificial organisms at the level of the genome. Tierra aims to provide an environment in which Darwinian evolution can proceed within a computer, without explicit direction or intervention from a human operator.
Howard Rheingold, author of the book Virtual Communities, maintains a list of resources about virtual communities. It offers meta-sources, articles, papers, answers to frequently asked questions, information about places, communities and virtual reality.
Behaviour
Hundreds of ideas for social innovation collected from all over the world by the non-profit charity Institute for Social Inventions, London, UK. You can rate how you like the ideas. The site also includes a number of published books on-line: The Book of Visions (1992), Social Innovations - a Compendium (1993), Best Ideas - A Compendium of Social Innovations (1995), Natural Death Handbook (1994), Before and After (1995).
If you want to maintain independence in the era of large institutions and mass media, you are going to need good tools. Most of the tools and ideas we need for independence in the 1990s are different from anything we forecast a quarter of a century ago. The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog integrates the best tools from the past twenty-five years with the best tools for the next twenty-five years, from old Whole Earth Catalog standards such as land use, community-building, whole systems, and medical self-care to new resources such as electronic mail, ecotourism, and green investing.
The Utne Lens website is a companion to the Utne Reader magazine: "As the industrial era grinds and whimpers to a close and the information age begins to restructure society, change is felt in every area of human endeavour. In the same way that the industrial age gradually transformed almost every aspect of individual and community life, the information era redefines us. Our aim is to become a base camp on the Web for people interested in ideas and culture."
The WGI is a non-profit, non-partisan global research and education organisation founded in 1972 and based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Inspired by the pioneering insights and work of Buckminster Fuller, the Institute today is an officially sanctioned United Nations Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), whose mission is to provide the perspective and information needed to solve the critical problems facing global society as we enter the twenty-first century.
Economy
This includes a mailing list with discussions about ecological economics that features mailing lists, archives and downloadable essays.
Resource Renewal Institute www.rri.org
The RRI promotes Green Plans as the path to a sustainable environment and economy. Green Plans are dynamic programs by which all elements of society agree on long-term environmental goals and take responsibility for achieving them.
Design
The First Festival of Independent Audio/Visual Arts Online www.fivaonline.com/fivaE.html
From their site: "It's not a trade show. It's not a conference. Nor a film festival. FIVA ONLINE 95 is a non-profit media arts festival -- the first of its kind -- online. The festival is a celebration of art. Many artists are exploring new forms of expression and finding new methods within the digital landscape. No entry fees, no parking problems, just the best digital art -- online."
WAXweb is the hypermedia version of David Blair's feature-length independent film, "WAX or the Discovery of Television among the Bees" (85:00, 1991). It combines one of the largest hypermedia narrative databases on the Internet with an authoring interface which allows users to collaboratively add to the story.
At the Doors 3 conference, Joachim Sauter will present ART+COM's TerraVision project. ART+COM is a Berlin-based studio and consultancy that Joachim co-founded. It is an interdisciplinary group concerned with the integration of computer technology, communication and design.
"Virtual Gallery" is a project which combines art and science, co-ordinating new aesthetic motivations with high technology. The goal is to reach the production of new meanings, outside the limitations of what we know as reality, and
the perception and transforming capacity that we have of it.
ARC - The Interactive Media Festival spark.com
Arc, The Interactive Media Festival, makes a pilgrimage once a year to Los Angeles: "This year, we assembled a gallery of interactive art and projects that best represented interactive media in its most advanced and newest forms." The Doors of Perception 1 CD-Rom received an award there. |