Human centered needs Wiki

[Andrew Jensen]

So I had this idea, a week ago, while flipping through my permaculture manual. One of my favorite aspects of permaculture is the input/output design methodology. When I tell people what permaculture is, I always describe it the same way.

"Think of a human being: think of all the things a human needs to live and all the byproducts they create. Things like food, water, shelter, oxygen, things like poop and carbon dioxide. Now, we're going to think of all the things that provide for those needs. What do they need, what do they produce? Each part is a peice of a puzzle, with inputs and outputs, and permaculture is about putting those puzzle peices together, so that the needs of one part of your system is produced by other parts of your system, as much as possible, to provide for the person in the center. "

So, I was thinking about that, and I realized that we can do exactly that. Start a Wiki, where the front page is a Human, and we list all the things a Human needs and All it's byproducts. Those are all links, and we follow those to pages set up about those needs. A page like, say, heat, or food. A "product" page. On a Product page, we generally describe the product, and then list what things need that, and what other things provide that. Those links go to "Component" pages, which describes a part of a system, like a chicken or a compost toilet, and what it's inputs and outputs are. Those of course link out to more product pages....

The goal here would be to have a constantly expanding design tool. When designing a permaculture system, you could use this wiki to look up what various components of your system require, and choose from lists of things that provide those needs or use the byproducts.

Like any wiki, this needs a large base of knowledgeable users to get working. My instinct says to start with the Human page and work outward. Does this tool interest anybody? Would anyone be willing to help me on this project?

[Lucas]

I hadn't thought about putting humans in the center, but it is of course the initial entry point in most designs.

It's cool and reminds me of Vinay's 6 Ways to die, with people at the center. I don't know if there might be some interaction here, as a way to map stuff. The main menu would be "People" and the sublists in that page would at least include "protection from the six ways to die": hunger, thirst, etc. Of course there would be other items that are not in Vinay's "extremely basic" list: "fun", "music", "respect for one's ideas" or whatever. I don't know that there's any undisputable categorisation of these items, but there could be several categorisation lists all in one page, for people with different tastes, from the "show me the infrastructure" guys to the "it's all about warm feelings inside" guys (all of which have a point, of course, 'cos at the end of the day we all go for endorphines, oops, I had to stick my own world-view here).

I've even thought about prototyping it as a wiki that links to wikipedia. There would be a page called Chicken, with a list of inputs and outputs, and maybe a list of designs it's used in. Each item in the list would be a link to the appropriate place in wikipedia. So "our" wiki would be a "meta" place, piggybacking on top of wikipedia and, while we're at it, on top of appropedia or whatever. The following would be a quick-draft example, with fake links:

Chicken

Needs: - Grains, preferably this kind of grain and that kind of grain.

- Heat, as in a range of temperature from 17ºC to 27ºC (or whatever it is), which is usually provided from this source and that other source.

Gives:

- Poop, about X grams per animal per day when they are young, and twice as much or whatever when they are older and bigger. It has lots of nitrogen etc.

Sample permacultural designs it's used in or is a part of:

- Chicken Truck.

Now, the question of how to design such an tool as an ecosystem, with enough different people wanting to contribute and use it, and as you say with a few people at first and then more and more, would need different thinking.

- Here we'd have people who enjoy contributing to a wiki, or at least don't hate it, either because they are good at it or because they feel passionate about it or because they are paid big bucks to do it, or even better a combination of the three. Chris of Appropedia may have done some pretty good thinking on that one, that's my guess.

- And we'd have people who benefit from the wiki, using it for their own projects, or using it as a place to show the world the many good things they have done or are doing, or as a place to ask for help or whatever. If the two populations are one and the same, so much better.

- And, as in every permacultural project, there's the element of design, redesign and learning from the experience. Which is why I mention making a fast prototype that can be wired in a rush, using already available resources like Wikipedia. Maybe such a prototype could be started at appropedia? Just a bunch of pages with a pre-name, like PCPWchicken, PCPWcarrots etc? PCPW would be People Centered Permaculture Wiki.

Does this make sense?

[Lucas]

In a sense, the wiki you propose would be, hmm, how to phrase an elusive idea, somewhere in between appropedia and http://permacultureinstitute.pbwiki.com/ and wikipedia.

I mean, appropedia seems to be more centered around technologies. Wikipedia is centered around actual things: chicken, nitrogen, etc. The permaculture institute, check their page for how they phrase it, seems to be more centered around permaculturists and their projects.

Different entry points, with borders for interaction and fertility and all that stuff.

The wiki you suggest, if I get it right, or at least that was my idea and why I like yours, would be centered around the elements used in designs: I already have chicken, what else could I add and how could they be part of the system in my backyard?

Is that it? More, less, different?

[Andrew Jensen]

That's exactly the idea, you look up the elements used in designs. That's great language and I'm going to adopt it as a better descriptor. I also like People Centered Permaculture Wiki as an acting name.

I'll search through appropedia and the permaculture institute's wikis for a while to see what they have and digest it. It had never occured to me to bootstrap this by using existing wikis, because I'm new to the whole open authorship thing.

Thank you, you've single handedly moved this from a pie in the sky idea to something I can put together over a weekend in Proof of concept form.

I was thinking last night, that though this is person centered, there's still a very real question. Do I focus on an individual human as our starting page, or a community? The individual person would be more akin to how permaculture is currently in use, as you usually are making designs for a single household. However, there are human needs that only really come forth collectively, and I think ideally we really want to scale up from just permaculture homesteads in the future. Should the front page list the inputs/outputs of a single human being, or the inputs/outputs of a community?

[Lucas]

I'd say go for individuals.

Because Person A's outputs can be Person B's inputs, the output of both can be aggregated, etc. I think we'd miss those things if we started at the community level.

And what's "community" anyway? Household level (aggregation of individuals), town level (aggregation of households), region level (aggregation of towns and the rich space between them), world level (we stop here, for the time being)?

I really recommend that you look at Vinay's "rings of infrastructure" video, somewhere around here. In my mind, plants and other animals are part of infrastructure. I may have stretched the concept a bit too much, but to me "infrastructure" is "what stands between the sun and the cold space to reduce or delay the six ways to die for me personally".

But that's what prototypes are for!

Hope this helps!

[Andrew Jensen]

Oh, I've seen it already. I plan on making my Scout troop make their individual SERAA maps as a project. I love it.

I was thinking community on the municipal level. It's going to have a page, since humans require community, It's just that part of me though maybe we should start there. I'm really big on the idea that it's not people who survive, it's communities. Well, the word I usually use is Tribe. I'm pretty big on the Dunbar Number concept too.

[Lucas]

I agree. I too use the word "tribe". In the "we're in this together, both when we have fun and when we don't". And also in the Daniel Quinn sense of people who shape the tribe through their contributions, such that a tribe made of fishermen is a fishermen tribe.

btw, Global Swadeshi may be approaching the Dunbar Number. What, if anything, does that tell us, I don't know. Or are we more like a meeting of representatives from many tribes? I'll sit down and let others take the talking stick.

[Thomas Bjelkeman-Pettersson]

Not everyone participates at the same level. Don't feel like you every talk to much Lucas. I enjoy reading what you say.

[Chris Watkins]

Lucas, Andrew,

Any more thoughts on this effort? Whether on Appropedia (my preference) or not, I'd like to support the effort.

[Lucas]

http://www.appropedia.org/Human_Needs_Centered_Wiki

Just started it but won't be able to write anything today. :-)

[Lonny Grafman]

This is a very cool idea!

I think that this would work great on Appropedia as a template. It could have some permaculture imagery and two columns: Input and Output that would be easily editable. In this way any page could have listed its needed inputs and delivered outputs.

To get a better idea see the new (temporary) permaculture box at Chicken basics. You can edit the list by clicking Input or Output. This could be made much prettier and more automated... just wanted to give an idea.

All that said an interface like the Visual Thesaurus, but editable and free, would be very, very cool.

Let me know what you all think.

[Lucas]

Yes, yes and yes. When and with what energy, I don't know. But yes. :-)

The "permaculture = inputs + outputs" is good. Maybe even add "designs it's used in" but that may be overkill or overload or part of the whole page's layout.

It's starting to make more and more sense. I wonder if we'll get to see all of this in cellphones across the world, a la Akvo and allies.

[Lonny Grafman]

I can add the "designs it's used in box", which will fit nicely across the bottom of the template. We can also semiautomate the adding of the templates to pages. Let me know if people still want to see this and what images, if any, should be used in the template.