Today, June 21, 2012, is a hot day for Providential Gardener's What Grows On in Rhode Island -- and not just because the temperature is over 90 degrees right now. I've submitted an application to the Knight Data Challenge proposing to develop this Rhode Island environmental information service beyond the prototype stage to a full-blown Environment/Energy InfoHub. And from 5:30 to 7:00pm I'm presenting a poster at the RI Foundation's Innovation Expo explaining the importance of Categories for determining what we notice.
Conceptualizing the overall idea, of which What Grows On in RI is the first segment, has been a major preoccupation of mine for several years now. It's gi-normous in its scope and potential usefulness, but it has been fairly exhausting and difficult to express the whole thing well. I gave birth to two 8 1/2 pound human beings, but this process is way beyond that and indescribable!
Recently at my Wellesley College reunion, My classmates asked me to put together a video and a presentation about what I'm doing. It gives a little background on the development of Providential Gardener's projects, but it also shows why it is important to organize information better about the things our lives depend on.
It is also important to organize LOCAL information so CITIZENS CAN SEE WHO DOES WHAT TO TAKE CARE OF WHERE THEY LIVE!
If public and academic libraries were organized the way public information is organized about the main categories of life (what I call infohubs -- see below), finding anything in libraries would be by sheer luck! But that is how we currently organize the information on which public policy should be based.
I will add the RI Foundation poster and handouts I'm preparing for the Innovation Expo later, but here is my 500-word Knight Foundation application for this project, my latest attempt to describe what I want to do:
Download KnightFoundationDataChallenge-ProvGardener-20120621.
The more I try to describe it, the clearer the overall project appears to me, at least. Eventually I'm sure people will see what I'm talking about, but it's such a different idea and we're so used to seeing things in a certain way that we can't imagine what infohub-centered information would look like.
Speaking of category infohubs, what IS an infohub, anyway? Here is my train of thought showing how I came up with this idea:
For healthy public-issue discussion, information should be arranged around what EVERY human being needs to:
- STAY ALIVE
- LIVE THEIR FULL LENGTH OF DAYS
- LIVE FULLY
The life-centered expression of these needs that even four-year-olds can understand are:
- EVERYONE BREATHES AIR
- EVERYONE USES WATER
- EVERYONE EATS
- EVERYONE CREATES WASTE
- EVERYONE NEEDS THE RIGHT TEMPERATURE RANGE
- EVERYONE SLEEPS
- EVERYONE HAS STUFF
- EVERYONE MUST MOVE
- EVERYONE HAS A BODY VULNERABLE TO INFECTION AND DISEASE
- EVERYONE HAS 24 HOURS A DAY TO SPEND
- EVERYONE CREATES WORK SIMPLY BY LIVING
- EVERYONE NEEDS A LIVING (but not necessarily a job)
Information should therefore be arranged around “infohubs”
1. ENVIRONMENT/ENERGY (To stay alive and well)
- EVERYONE BREATHES AIR
- EVERYONE USES WATER
- EVERYONE EATS
- EVERYONE CREATES WASTE
- EVERYONE NEEDS THE RIGHT TEMPERATURE RANGE
2. HEALTH/SAFETY (Military/Emergency Response/Fire/Police/Medical)
- EVERYONE HAS A BODY VULNERABLE TO INFECTION AND DISEASE
3. BUILDINGS/TRANSPORTATION (To be safe while sleeping, safe place for our stuff, where we sleep [live] determines how much we have to travel to get stuff we need and don’t have)
- EVERYONE SLEEPS
- EVERYONE HAS STUFF
- EVERYONE MUST MOVE
4. EDUCATION/COMMUNITY (What do we do with our lives? How do we relate to other people? What is our place in the world? What sense do we make of what we see?)
- EVERY LIVING PERSON HAS 24 HOURS A DAY TO SPEND
5. WORK/HAVING A LIVING/SYSTEM FOR SHARING GOODS AND SERVICES (ECONOMY)
- EVERYONE CREATES WORK - There is always work involved in living
- EVERYONE NEEDS A LIVING (but not necessarily a job)
I can talk about this forever, but probably no one has read this far! Let me know if you think this idea amounts to anything! More to come!
